Manny works for a travel agency called the Department of Death, or DOD. The DOD runs a background check on any prospective client, just to check if they were good little boys and girls when they were alive.  Depending on the results of that background check, the DOD salesmen can offer their prospective clients various packages, ranging from sports cars to the coveted #9 Express railway, which reduces the four-year trip to a luxurious four days. Manny was once the slickest salesman the DOD ever had, but he's losing his touch. What clients he gets now are the type who need to go on a self-improvement course before they can qualify for roller-skates.

Manny Calavera

 The slickest salesman in the DOD is now Domino Hurley, who's getting all the good leads, and Manny does the obvious thing- he steals one of Domino's clients, a lady by the name of Mercedes "Meche" Colomar who, according to the DOD background check, is (or rather, was) a virtual saint. At long last, our hero has a client who qualifies for the #9 Express...visions of otherworldly bliss are already dancing behind his eyes (well, eye-sockets) when there's a mess-up in Manny's computer and he contrives to scare off the most valuable client he ever had. Meche runs off. Manny is fired from the DOD for incompetence. He sets out to find Meche, to discover just why he's not getting any good clients anymore, and plunges into a conspiracy-ridden, nightmarish quest for the truth, which is surely, as they say, out there.

He'll have to meet and interact with lots of people to get to it, though. This being the Land of the Dead, all of these people will be more than a little strange. Other than the DOD crowd, - Manny's boss Don Copal, his secretary Eva, Domino Hurley- a couple of the most interesting are the obsessive Salvador Limones, underground revolutionary leader, and the manipulative mob boss Hector LeMans. Manny's companion through his travels and travails is an oversized elemental called Glottis who gives new meaning to the phrase "speed demon".