At first, reading this collection of essays — which glorifies the obituary as the "most creative writing in journalism" — is a lot like chatting with a quirky friend who's obsessed with an obscure hobby, say, taxidermy or philately. But Marilyn Johnson, who has written obituaries of Princess Diana, Jacqueline Onassis, and Katharine Hepburn, among others, possesses an unapologetic enthusiasm for her passion that will ultimately win over those unfamiliar with what she wryly calls a "living art form."

Johnson's travels in morbidity take her from the Sixth Annual Obituary Writers' Conference in Las Vegas, New Mexico, with its cast of gloomy acolytes and professional obituarists, to London, where she meets with obit editors from the Times, the Independent, the Guardian, and the Daily Telegraph — who are known as "the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" for the dry snarkiness and serious opinions with which papers set the standard for the genre.

Online, Johnson gleefully discovers the Blog of Death, which contains scores of recent fatalities, as well as the creepy discussion board alt.obituaries. On the latter, each first sniff of celebrity illness generates hundreds of speculative posts. The board's moderator says, "We know who's sick and who's dying, and we know how many of the original cast members of Gilligan's Island are still alive." When those hotly discussed do finally pass, Johnson describes a mood of elation among the death-trackers that can only be described as macabre. Even this tasteless titillation pales in comparison, however, to a recent high-water mark for this subculture: the moment that Reagan's death was announced during the annual obituary conference — and a room of ecstatic writers instantly raced to call their editors.

For a book all about death, Dead Beat's tone is surprisingly lively and humorous. Take, for instance, the editor who explains that instead of ending with the usual "He was 93," prefers to close with a random fact about the dearly departed, such as, "He couldn't abide ratatouille or pesto." Although some of Johnson's essays are overrun with the breathless interjections of an obsessed fan, her book provides a captivating glimpse into an often overlooked (but perpetually busy) corner of journalism.

-Sarah Gonzales