HBO Orders Series Pilot based on The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston

Deadline.com is reporting that HBO has ordered a series pilot based on the 2009 crime novel The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston. The screenplay was adapted by the author and will be directed by Alan Ball, who developed the True Blood series based on Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire mysteries for the network.

"All Signs has a hard noir feel but it’s also ironic; it’s graphic and gritty but human and very moving at the same time," says Ball.

The project is now casting for an August production start in Los Angeles.

About The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death (from the publisher): With his teaching career derailed by tragedy and his slacker days numbered, Webster Fillmore Goodhue makes an unlikely move and joins Clean Team, charged with tidying up L.A.'s grisly crime scenes. For Web, it's a steady gig, and he soon finds himself sponging a Malibu suicide's brains from a bathroom mirror and flirting with the man's bereaved and beautiful daughter.

Then things get weird: The dead man's daughter asks a favor. Every cell in Web's brain tells him to turn her down, but something makes him hit the Harbor Freeway at midnight to help her however he can. Soon enough it's Web who needs the help when gun-toting California cowboys start showing up on his doorstep. What's the deal? Is it something to do with what he cleaned up in that motel room in Carson? Or is it all about the brewing war between rival trauma cleaners? Web doesn't have a clue, but he'll need to get one if he's going to keep from getting his face kicked in. Again. And again. And again.