Customer Reviews

Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners

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This is truly a "dirty job" that no one thinks about, and for good reason... Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners by Alan Emmins. Emmins leaves his home in Denmark and travels to San Francisco to follow Neal Smither on his rounds. Smither is the president of "Crime Scene Cleaners", a company that comes in when someone has died and cleans up afterwards. While you often read about grisly deaths in the paper or see them on TV, you really don't think about what happens after the crime tape comes down and the room needs to be returned to a usable state. That's the world that Emmins writes about in graphic detail.

Smither is an interesting character, someone who sees death as his path to financial independence. He's crude, aggressive, and doesn't flinch at much of anything. He has no problems walking into a room where someone has committed suicide via rifle to the head, making a rather crass comment about the mess, negotiating a price to clean it all up, and then digging in. But as gruesome and revolting as it may be, he's fanatical about making sure *no* remaining traces of body fluids or parts are left behind to be discovered weeks later by others. Emmins undergoes a transformation during his month-long stint as a crime scene cleaner. He starts with the reactions that you'd expect... nausea, dry heaves, bizarre dreams. By the end of his trip, he's diving into cleanup operations like a pro, more irritated at the mess than grossed out by what happened. He also has to come to grips with the feelings of wishing someone would die so he'd have more material for his book, realizing that he's become somewhat jaded by the experience.

In terms of being exposed to a hidden world, Mop Men was OK. But it's less of a technical read than an exploration into what drives people who deal with death on a daily basis, as well as a large side trip into one particular murder crime scene involving a person living in an apartment with a dead body that was decomposing for about a month in the bathtub. He goes into the cleanup a bit, but he also tracks the investigation and trial of the person accused of the crime. I felt that part of the book strayed somewhat from the main subject, and as such had me skimming a bit to get back to the main story.

Mop Men is a very different read, and not one to start if you are at all squeamish. You probably won't look at news stories involving dead bodies quite the same way again, either...

Picking up `Mop Men' I was as out of my comfort zone as the author, Alan Emmins, was when he donned a white protective suit and picked up the industrial cleaner. Not a fan of blood and gore (I hide behind a cushion during CSI), I didn't know what to expect and wasn't sure if I wanted to `go there'. But Emmins took me along for the ride. And after the opening lines, I went willingly. He faces each new day and every new scene to clean with a fresh eye and a fast pulse. The reading experience mirrors Emmins' own fears as he, and by extension, the reader, face their own bloody mortality. This is prose on speed. Emmins scrubs away at blood stained walls and his own tainted thoughts, as he attempts to make sense of his changing responses to death and life. At once horrified and intrigued by Smither's own attitudes, Emmins gradually understands that to see death, you have to get up-close and personal. And it ain't pretty.

The rooms Emmins and Smither clean up are littered with somber reminders of the living, and the tragic aftermath of their dying. And Emmins takes a long hard look at what it means to be here and what we leave behind. Moving, keenly observed, darkly comic, Emmins can make you laugh, cry and gag in the space of page. Describing Neil Smither, the owner of Crime Scene Cleaners Inc. as `indelible' - Emmins continues, "Neil is so harsh that once he has entered your head you will remember him for the rest of your life. He himself is like a bad stain that you can't scrub away." The impact of Emmins' powerful prose is equally indelible. This is the best way to be ink stained. And you won't forget it.

Alan Emmins' prose style is direct, blunt, and absolutely perfect for his theme, the story of Neal Smither and his company, California-based 'Crime Scene Cleaners'. "Although the body appears free of decay immediately after death," he informs the reader, "there are bacteria inside the body that feed off the contents of the intestine. When the body dies, the bacteria start eating the intestine itself." Curious and at points unashamedly unable to hold down his lunch, Emmins' guides the reader through suicide scenes, garbage houses, filth and gore in his acutely observed and highly disturbing odyssey.
Mop Men would be a prime contender for the sort of prurient pseudo-reportage that often winds up in weekly magazines aimed at pubescent boys. It's got all the hooks; month-old corpses decaying in bath tubs, chubby maggots doing their grim business, there's even an anecdote about a teenager whose liver explodes messily after a prolonged alcohol binge.

However, Emmins' portrait of the work done by Smither's 'trauma scene' cleaning company goes a long way beyond the mere recounting of grisly stories. Focusing on the banal profusion of Hollywood violence and the growing dislocation felt by many individuals in the modern world, Emmins' book attempts a deeper understanding of a culture in which Smither's motto, 'Gore sells, my friend,' holds such currency.

Interestingly, it is when Emmins' material unexpectedly dries up, an unprecedented spate of joy and life in California threatening the completion of his book, that his thesis comes into its own. Having initially chastised Smither's blasé attitude to the misery and death that he deals with on a daily basis, Emmins is quick to realise that he, like Smither, is also 'praying for death, baby,' and thereby equally implicated in the death industry.

A masterful, compelling portrait of a man just doing his job.

I have never found myself wanting to stand in the middle of a crime scene, and would have always felt I would resist if somebody tried to take me into one, yet Mop Men managed exactly that. The chatty way in which the author unravels his experiences and insights completely brought down my resistance, and before I knew it I was in the middle of murder and mayhem. Mop Men is more than a journey through blood and gore; the authors openness about what these crime scenes do to him make each scene worth reading. Emmins does not hold back, even when it costs him personally. Great reading, whether you want the gore or not.

It's not often you find yourself laughing with a true crime book, but Emmins seems to know exactly when the text needs a lift and uses his own experiences within his research to do this. It's a very gory read in places, but the book is so much more than blood on a wall. It's a sociological study of how modern society deals with, reacts to and makes money from other people's deaths. If you are a true-crime reader you will enjoy this book immensely. If your interest is more in line with reportage, memoir or humour you will enjoy it just as much.

Mop Men starts a little slow for your average true crime book, but by the third chapter I was totally hooked. Not only are the book's characters fascinating and engaging, but so is the writing itself. Mop Men does a great job of placing you right in the middle of the crime scene, but an even better job of removing the masks that many of us wear around death. When the author flinches at his own behaviour, and his own part in `death as entertainment', he doesn't run from it as some might, but puts it on the table for examination. This is a very honest book, both tender and tragic.

I picked up Alan Emmin's book, Mop Men, for the same reason I slow down and crane my neck when I pass a gruesome accident on the freeway. I'm horrified, but I can't contain my curiosity. So it was with Mop Men. Ultimately, however, this book wasn't just a foray into the grotesque. It challenged me to look at the world from a drastically different perspective. It dared me to explore my own relationship with death and own up to flaws in my character. After all, I, like Emmins, grew desensitized in spite of myself. In the end, it provoked a head-on collision with existential angst. When the mess was cleared, I was left with insight the likes of which not many books have fostered.

I dare you to read this book and remain just the same when you finish it as when you began.

I am a squeamish person. This book took me to the edge of squeamishness only to bring me back to moments of uncontained guffaws. Alan Emmins shows his genius by weaving the dark realities found at the crime and suicide scenes that generally only those on the "inside" see with outrageous morbid humor. Right when I felt the twinge of nauseousness, he brought me back with laughter. I was filled with the strange combination of disguist and delight. Never have I experienced this odd combination of emotions.

This is the nonfiction story of a man, Neal, who created a successful business by cashing in on the marketability of death. It is the inside story of what it is like to clean up the scenes left by dead corpses soaking in a puddle of blood, or worse decomposition. It is a story of the experience that the people who clean these scenes experience first hand. Almost assuredly, 99% of us never want to tread there. We will gladly leave this experience to someone else; but, this book allows us to be momentary voyeurs into a part of death that we are protected from experiencing.

The "Mop Men" do the work that others are repelled by, but work that must be done by someone, nevertheless. Neal has created a successful business doing it. Alan writes about his experience getting to know Neal, first-hand. Not sitting down at a nice coffee shop sipping lattes. No, Alan enters Neal's world - the world of the dead. The world of decomposition. The world of brain spattered all over the bedroom walls. Alan takes us there and walks us through the scene.

I found this to be an amazing book. I was awestruck, uncomfortable, but oddly entertained. Alan is a brilliant writer, offering up twists, just at the right moment. I can highly recommend this book, but warn those who are squemish to keep your vomit bag nearby.

I purchased the book because I work in the mortuary field. I began reading and could not stop. The author is very forward in his descriptions of the crime scenes. There is some profanity, but its all part of placing you in Neil Smither's mind. Overall this is a very good read for anyone interested in crime scene clean up.

This is a sensational read, it's entertaining, informative and a book that once you start you won't be able to put down. Most non fiction authors, especially those dealing with this sort of subject matter provide very factual but text booky type reads. Alan Emmins has produced a book that reads just like your reading a great fiction novel. Emins comes across similar to say a Harlan Coben type character, an average guy who is suddenly in a situation (well a few) where he is out of his depth and comfort zone. If this was fiction he'd have someone trying to kill or something but other than that, Emmins is just like any well written everyday guy character.

Emmins is a British guy whose been living in Denmark for quite some time (long enough to start a young family there). Since Denmark has virtually no violent crime, and he has just worked out death is what sells freelance articles, he travels to San Francisco, California to tag along on a crime scene clean up with Neal Smither who owns Crime Scene Cleaners Inc. Emmins observes Neal's glee that the suicider left blood in the motel bathroom, make fun of the victim's lifestyle, offer him the victim's porn DVDS which were to be thrown out, sing morbid songs as he cleaned up and formed a judgement that he hoped Neal or someone like him wouldn't be cleaning up after his own demise one day. With the success of that magazine article Emmins decides a book is where the big money lies so contacts Neal to let him tag along for a few weeks this time.

As Emmins is taken to crime and or bloody death scene after crime and or bloody death scene, he realises he was totally wrong about Neal, as he learns more about Neal on and off the job, sees him interact with employees and his young family his attitude quickly changes until ultimately he is doing one of the very things he couldn't understand about Neal, hoping someone would die so he could get more material for his book.

This is not a how to clean up gruesome deaths 101 type textbook for the budding would be crime scene cleaner. It is a look at the death industry, particularly the immediate aftermath by friends and relatives through the eyes of those on the scenes. It is also a portrait of a successful businessman who overcame the odds and everyone telling him he had a stupid idea to create a million dollar company. There are a number of hilarious scenes both at crime scenes and away from them. Emmins also passes the time between deaths visiting a funeral home where coffins come with ridiculous 25 year guarantees, visits a cryonic storage facility, the San Francisco morgue (although this is one of Neal's clients) and follows the trial of one of the murder victims' killers whose crime scene he helped clean up (to be honest we could have done without these court scene chapters). Alan Emmins is one of those rare people who know how to tell a tale that has you riveted from the beginning. I'll definitely pick up other books he writes.

This 2008 published book is a reprint and updated version of the author's earlier 2004 book called Mop Men: California's Crime Scene Cleaners so if unavailable you may want to consider settling for that. Another great non fiction book that reads like fiction on the industry of death is Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach, I suggest you get them both!

You should also check out Alan Emmins' previous book 31 Days: A New York Street Diary where he lived on the streets of New York as a homeless person to try and prove a stereotype wrong.