Aftermath, Inc.: Cleaning Up After CSI Goes Home

Ewwww. Ick. Gross. All that and more. This is a book about the people who clean up when grandpa is found decomposing in the hallway three weeks after he died in the house where he lived alone. This is the story of people who scrape the brains off the wall after junior blows his head off with a shotgun. This is the tale of the maggots and bugs and vomit inducing stench of decomposition. You think you've got stain removal challenges? You don't have stain removal challenges. Bioremediation technicians have stain removal challenges. And after they solve them they spend a long time in the shower before they go home to their families. This book tells their stories.

My spouse checked this book out for my son, almost 15, who likes CSI shows. I show more think on balance I'm glad he wasn't interested in it. We sometimes speak of the awfulness of death as an abstract matter, of nothingness and loss. This is the other awfulness of death, the more visceral sense, the horror of the dissolution of the human body in the summer heat and in turbine engines and at the end of a gun. This is about the noise that the maggots make and the chemistry of decomposition, about the HazMat suits and the problem of waste disposal.

The book itself reaches for more philosophical weight than the author seems capable of sustaining. His ruminations about death and life and the reasons for his own fascination with his subject are disorganized and rambling. His attempt to go beyond the clean-up problem and play forensic investigator on some of the crime scenes he encounters falls flat. But there was enough gruesome detail about the experiences of the employees of Aftermath Inc. to keep me turning the pages.

Now I can add "bioremediation technician" to the list of jobs I'm glad I never had, and never will have. show less

An interesting foray into the world of bioremediation. Aftermath is a company that cleans up crime scenes after the police and CSI have done their jobs. Thank goodness for people like this company who do this job. It gives the family a piece of mind that they will not have to deal with this horror as well as the loss of a loved one. Gil, the author, goes along with the crew of Aftermath to several jobs to see what this company is all about. There is definitely some horrific descriptions in this book, but it is part of what this company does so it is to be expected. Not a bad read, not earthshattering, but it sheds a light onto an otherwise silent subject.

I have a stomach for gore. My father walked in on his grandmother bludgeoned to death when he was 18, and forbade me to watch horror movies or Law & Order growing up because the vicarious enjoyment of other people's pain via popular entertainment is (let's be real) fucking disgusting.* At any rate, I saw someone reading this on the subway and figured I'd pick it up from the library. It was like a long Maxim article about death with occasional attempts at depth, and the physical book smelled really bad--like super-pungent tobacco smoke plus nailpolish remover--which serves me right.*One time recently I said, "Dyl and I are gonna go see the Host" and my dad said "Oh, is that a horror movie?" and I said "yeah" and he said "Oh, you know I show more hate those, because--" and I said "I KNOW" and he said "Because my grandmother was murdered. What, I don't talk about it ALL the time!" show less

Quick entertaining read by an author who can tell a good story and knows how to pack his prose with interesting facts. If this kind of stuff is to your taste (and it's definitely not for the skittish), then by all means pounce.

This was NOT what I expected. I expected either the founding and job to job workings of the Aftermath, Inc. or the memoir of a man going job to job with them. What this book IS is a crime writer showing up at a couple jobs (with a brief history of how each place needed cleaning), b-sing with the workers, and ruminating on life. At times interesting, but most of the time, pretty boring.

A good read. I enjoyed it, though the I felt lost at certain stages because the author went off on different tangents.

Do not read before bed or with meals. Very interesting but gory.