Christopher Moore

Reviewed by Stephen

Christopher Moore was born and raised in Ohio. He attended Ohio State University and Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara. He moved to California when he was 19 years old and lived on the Central Coast until 2003, when he moved to Hawaii. Before publishing his first novel, he worked as a roofer, a grocery clerk, a hotel night auditor, and insurance broker, a waiter, a photographer, and a rock and roll DJ. Chris has drawn on all of these work experiences to create the characters in his books. When he's not writing, Chris enjoys ocean kayaking, scuba diving, photography, and sumi-e ink painting. He divides his time between Hawaii and San Francisco. Learn more at Christopher Moore's website.
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Pine Cove — (1992-2004) These humorous novels take place in Pine Grove, California.

Practical Demonkeeping — (1992) Publisher: Granted immortality by Catch, a lovable demon, a young man named Travis O'Hearn struggles to rid himself of this man-eating gremlin, who promises to make eternity hellish for him, in a supernatural comic romp through a California tourist town.

The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove — (1998) Publisher: Autumn in the sleepy California town of Pine Cove is turned upside down by the arrival of a Mississippi Delta blues musician, a huge sea serpent drawn to the sound of the steel guitar, the explosion of a tanker truck at a gas station, and a mysterious trailer that shows up in the local trailer park.

The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror — (2004) Publisher: Christmas crept into Pine Cove like a creeping Christmas thing: dragging garland, ribbon, and sleigh bells, oozing eggnog, reeking of pine, and threatening festive doom like a cold sore under the mistletoe. 'Twas the night (okay, more like the week) before Christmas, and all through the tiny community of Pine Cove, California, people are busy buying, wrapping, packing, and generally getting into the holiday spirit. It is the hap-hap-happiest time of the year, after all. But not everybody is feeling the joy. Little Joshua Barker is in desperate need of a holiday miracle. No, he's not on his deathbed; no, his dog hasn't run away from home. But Josh is sure that he saw Santa take a shovel to the head, and now the seven-year-old has only one prayer: Please, Santa, come back from the dead. But hold on! There's an angel waiting in the wings. (Wings, get it?) It's none other than the Archangel Raziel come to Earth seeking a small child with a wish that needs granting. Unfortunately, our angel's not sporting the brightest halo in the bunch, and before you can say "Kris Kringle," he's botched his sacred mission and sent the residents of Pine Cove headlong into Christmas chaos, culminating in the most hilarious and horrifying holiday party the town has ever seen.

Love Story — (1995-2010) Publisher: Here's something different: a vampire novel that's light, funny, and not at all hackneyed. Between scenes of punks bowling frozen turkeys on the graveyard shift in a supermarket, or snapping turtles loose in a loft and gnawing on designer shoes, this novel has comic charm to spare. But it also packs an appealingly downbeat message about the consumer culture: Becoming a vampire has given the twentysomething heroine "a crampless case of rattlesnake PMS" — a grumpy mood in which she realizes that she can dress to the nines as a "Donner Party Barbie" and still end up disillusioned and unhappy, just another slacker doing her own laundry and watching sucky TV 'til the sun rises. Jody never asked to become a vampire. But when she wakes up under an alley Dumpster with a badly burned arm, an aching neck, superhuman strength, and a distinctly Nosferatuan thirst, she realizes the decision has been made for her. Making the transition from the nine-to-five grind to an eternity of nocturnal prowlings is going to take some doing, however, and that's where C. Thomas Flood fits in. A would-be Kerouac from Incontinence, Indiana, Tommy (to his friends) is biding his time night-clerking and frozen-turkey bowling in a San Francisco Safeway. But all that changes when a beautiful undead redhead walks through the door... and proceeds to rock Tommy's life — and afterlife — in ways he never imagined possible.

Christopher Moore Love Story 1. Bloodsucking Fiends (1995) 2. You Suck (2007) 3. Bite Me (2010)

Bite Me

Tired of reading about sexy vampires having sword fights… or orgiastic love fests? What about tragically misunderstood yet sensitive and compassionate vampires? Much as MaryJanice Davidson is the godmother of vampire chick lit, Christopher Moore owns the market of the stoner-loser vampire. In Bite Me, the sequel to You Suck (which was in turn the sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends), Moore once again puts the fun in dysfunctional and demonstrates why he is the king of crass, the executor of non sequitur... err, anyway, one of the funniest fantasy authors writing today.

It starts with the sometimes narrator. Imagine Juno’s snarky heroine, recast as a tragically gothic vampire wannabe. Now cut her verbal filter in half. Yeah. A journal entry:

The City of San Francisco is being stalked by a huge, shaved vampire cat named Chet, and only I, Abby Normal[note: her real name is Alison Green],emergency backup mistress of the Greater Bay Area night, and my manga haired love monkey, Foo Dog, stand between the ravenous monster and a bloody massacre of the general public. Which isn’t, like, as bad as it sounds, because the general public kind of sucks *ss.

The story itself is a vehicle for a wide range of funny characters, situations and conversations. Witness the following exchange between Foo Dog and Allison’s gay friend, Jared, who is wearing her Skankenstein boots.

What bothered Foo was not that Jared had on girl’s boots, but that he had on the boots of a girl with distinctly small feet.
“Don’t those hurt?”
Jared tossed hair out of his eyes. “Well, it’s like Morrissey said, life is suffering.”
“I think the Buddha said that.”
“I’m pretty sure Morrissey said it first — like, back in the eighties.”
“No, it was the Buddha.”
“Have you ever seen a picture of the Buddha with shoes on?” Jared asked.
Foo couldn’t believe he was having this argument. What’s more, he couldn’t believe he was losing this argument.

What’s not to like? Well, there’s a lot of crass language in this novel so, for those who find that offensive, be warned. More to the point, everyone’s taste in humor differs, and I’m pretty sure I enjoy reading humor more than most; so take my recommendation for what it is worth. But I’m a huge Christopher Moore fan. And this is one of my favorite of his novels.
—Stephen Comments

More Moore Novels:

Coyote Blue — (1994) Publisher: Sam Hunter, a yuppie salesman who has everything he needs except the beautiful Calliope's love, confronts Coyote, the Indian trickster god, and his own forgotten and buried life as Samson Hunts Alone, a native American outlaw.

A Dirty Job — (2006) Publisher: Charlie Asher is a pretty normal guy. A little hapless, somewhat neurotic, sort of a hypochondriac. He's what's known as a Beta Male: the kind of fellow who makes his way through life by being careful and constant — you know, the one who's always there to pick up the pieces when the girl gets dumped by the bigger/taller/stronger Alpha Male. But Charlie's been lucky. He owns a building in the heart of San Francisco, and runs a secondhand store with the help of a couple of loyal, if marginally insane, employees. He's married to a bright and pretty woman who actually loves him for his normalcy. And she, Rachel, is about to have their first child. Yes, Charlie's doing okay for a Beta. That is, until the day his daughter, Sophie, is born. Just as Charlie — exhausted from the birth — turns to go home, he sees a strange man in mint-green golf wear at Rachel's hospital bedside, a man who claims that no one should be able to see him. But see him Charlie does, and from here on out, things get really weird... People start dropping dead around him, giant ravens perch on his building, and it seems that everywhere he goes, a dark presence whispers to him from under the streets. Strange names start appearing on his nightstand notepad, and before he knows it, those people end up dead, too. Yup, it seems that Charlie Asher has been recruited for a new job, an unpleasant but utterly necessary one: Death. It's a dirty job. But hey, somebody's gotta do it.

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