Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore

Christopher Moore used to rank way up there on my list of favorite contemporary writers, but the last couple of books that I have read by him have left me feeling rather-- eh. I used to feel like he was a more literary Carl Hiaasen, whom I greatly admire, but, with the exception of the extraordinary book Lamb, my more recent reading has rendered Moore no more than on par with Hiaasen (although his name is considerably easier to spell).

After reading the book, I'm still not sure who the "sequined love nun" is. I assume it is Beth, the Sky Priestess, although she ain't a nun, never did anything remotely nunly, and only appeared in sequins once. The book does take place on an island in Micronesia, so the Island part is accurate.

Love Nun is the story of Tucker Case, a womanizing screw-up pilot who begins the novel with his biggest screw up ever. While drunk, he crashes the plane of his Mary Kay-like employer, injuring the hooker passenger, and ramming a lever on the instrument panel through his naked love pump not once but twice. Broken, unemployed, and impotent. Ain't no way to go through life.

Mysterious circumstances land him on the island of Alualu, home of the Shark People and a cargo cult centering around an American WWII pilot/Jesus figure named Vincent and the beautiful naked Sky Princess painted on the nose of his bomber. An American missonary doctor and his wife have hired Tuck as their pilot and offered to pay him so generously that their intentions can only be criminal. But when he arrives (on a 20-foot boat with a cross-dressing navigator and a talking fruitbat during a monsoon) he finds that they have appropriated the native's mythology and Beth has assumed the identity of the Sky Princess.

It's fun, it's funny, and the writing is still excellent. But Moore's usual semi-magical realism feels more like a stretch in this one.

Briga-DOOM!: A Kate London Mystery by Susan Goodwill

See the full disclosure statement from Getze's Big Numbers. I don't know Goodwill as well, but she's part of the same posse.

You know, I am pretty sure if I caught my future husband, the mayor, caught with his pants down making whoopie to the town bitch, I would probably mow down his porta-potty with my golf cart, too. I'm just hoping that my local judge wouldn't send me to anger management with the off-her-gourd Dr. Al.

So what if Mayor Ass turns up dead in the trunk of my car, right? I can handle it. And so can Kate London.

I really enjoyed this breezy mystery featuring Kate London, newly returned to home town Mud Lake to be closer to Aunt Kitty. Kitty, formerally a B-movie bombshell, is the real star of the show with her Kool-Aid hair colored hair topped with a fez, her passion for musical theater and bongos, and her side-kick, the equally whacky Verna.

Goodwill is a great writer with an excellent knack for humor and pushing the limits of "just how bad can it get?" The book is really well crafted and moves along at a strong clip. The interwoven mysteries had me guessing until the end. I wish the love-connection hadn't been made so early on, especially because this is a series and I know the second book is in the can. I'd be more than willing to wait through two or more new books before Kate gets her Man.

I think I am supposed to refrain from calling this chick-lit, but it's hard to not go there. If Kate mentioned her Jimmy Choos one more time. . . but see, that's just a personal peeve of mine. I dig some good ol' chick-lit now and again, and this was more mystery than girl fare, but Lordy, am I the only woman in the world who's happy as can be in Payless?

Damn damn damn Carrie Bradshaw and the fact that she made "loves expensive shoes" shorthand for being feminine. Kate had it in spades before the shoe obsession.

Big Numbers by Jack Getze

Full disclosure: I’ve known Jack Getze for around five years. He’s a dear friend for whose writing career I’ve been a big cheerleader. I can’t even pretend to be unbiased about this book. Heck, I’m even mentioned in the acknowledgements. “Lou Reads” isn’t meant to be a forum to promote my friends’ books, but I just got back from dropping in at Writers Retreat Workshop, where I caught up with a bunch of folks, many of whom have published books since I last saw them. So I’ll most likely be tackling some Friends-of-Lou’s books in the coming weeks.

I’m still a little unclear as to what a “full-boat grin” is. I just Googled it and came up with a blog entry about Big Numbers. Indiana Jones has his whip and Luke Skywalker has his light saber, but for Austin Carr, the hero (or antihero) of Jack Getze’s first book, Big Numbers, the “full-boat Carr grin” is his weapon of choice.

(Is it full-boat, as in a fishing charter captain’s grin when he’s happy to have a full boat? Or full-boat, as in the grin’s so big it looks like a boat? Full boat almost sounds like a poker term.)

Big Numbers opens with Carr in trouble. Big trouble. On a boat duct-taped to a fishing pole with a 600 lb giant tuna at the other end of the line kind of trouble. Mr. Blabbermouth apparently wants to kill Carr with a bit of panache. Just as Carr’s about to go sailing over the rail, we flash back to the events leading up to his big nap with the fishies. And no surprise—it’s hard-boiled thriller, after all—it’s a redhead.

Carr is a down-on-his luck Jersey Shore stockbroker who’s $58K behind on his child support payments. His wife has issued a restraining order until Carr can make the payments. In the meantime, he’s living out of a rusty camper in the parking lot of Luis’s Mexican restaurant—a convenient back yard for a man who likes his tequila shots doubled and in the morning—when he finds out that his “monster” client is terminally ill and has a red-headed knockout girlfriend who would rather not wait for her inheritance. Trouble ensues.

One can only hope that Carr has hellagood health insurance with Shore Securities. He makes no fewer than four trips to the hospital during the course of the book.

Big Numbers is funny and dark. Getze has a ton of fantastic zinger lines that make me so proud to know him. I have a soft spot for assholes, and Carr is a narrator who is both conflicted and decidedly wrong-headed (and downright shitty) at times. And while to some degree he’s almost a caricature (Getze cites Bugs Bunny and Vince Vaughn as inspirations), more often his serious and nearly-fatal flaws make him feel real.

It’s a quick read, a perfect beach book. I read the last half in a single sitting. And—I say this with no bias at all—Big Numbers was published by a relatively small press and the book is not getting the attention it deserves. It’s easily as good as most of the series mystery/thrillers that my family devours by the dozens. The book looks deceptively like the self-published crap you find in local bookstores. It’s a shame; what’s inside is first-rate stuff.

Visit Jack Getze's website.

A Dirty Job: A Novel by Christopher Moore

There’s no way in Hell Mike Rowe would take on Charlie Asher’s dirty job, not even if there was a free baseball cap involved. Which there isn’t. In fact the only things Charlie seems to get for free in exchange for his services as a “Death Merchant” are a couple of hellhounds to protect his toddler Sophie from the Sewer Harpies, a copy of the Great Big Book of Death, and some excellent deals on the estates of dead people for his thrift store in San Francisco.

And actually, with the exception of a few bloody run-ins with the Sewer Harpies and various ancient incarnations of Death, the job isn’t all that dirty in the Mike Rowe sense of the word.

Christopher Moore remains among my favorite contemporary writers. As a reader (and a writer) who surfs between literary and genre, I am satisfied by Moore on both fronts. Many people can tell an engaging and amusing genre story, but few can tell one with such literary panache.

I haven’t read the entire Moore catalogue, but A Dirty Job has taken its place at #2 on my list of Moore books, just under Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal. You don’t get much better than Lamb for linked humor and profundity, and while A Dirty Job was thick with “I’ve got to read that line again” humor and there were a few moments of touching sorrow, it didn’t plumb the same philosophical quandaries as Lamb.

More importantly, A Dirty Job’s ending left me unsatisfied. Another book “ruined” (it’s hardly ruined so much as sullied) by a token romance tossed in as what seemed to be an afterthought. The romance, accompanied by its 14-inch high skull-faced squirrel minions, read like a hurried and chaotic response to some editor saying, “Chris, the book’s good, but it’s a downer for widowed Charlie to not have a love interest. Funny books should be uplifting.” The romance is neither funny nor uplifting, and it casts Beta Male Charlie in a decidedly shallow light. Really, Charlie? The hot redhead? You’ve got to be kidding me.

The one-dimensional redhead aside, you can’t beat Moore for “I wish I’d written that” characters and zingers. A Dirty Job is no exception. And perhaps readers less cynical than I—perhaps the ever-hopeful Beta Male readers— would consider the romance Charlie’s long overdue just reward.