Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

I took a night off from cavorting in order to read Christopher Moore's latest tale of high adventure and goofball tomfoolery, Fluke, and found it hard to put down until I had finished it. The tale was, as fans of his will expect, full of great insight, goofiness, story, and belly-chuckling moments. Moore has not lost his touch, if anything adding more substance and texture to his innate wit.

Over the past few weeks, I had taken it with me to the pool for a few afternoon readings, in between doing a few laps to get relief from the summer DC sun. It's tough to concentrate at a public pool, with the roaming masses of frolicking children and near-naked bodies, not to mention the occasional unexpected sprinkler that doused you and your book (my neighboor noted that I'd been "fluked", with full ironic compliments).

However, sporadic reading times didn't detract from the bevy of laugh-out-loud moments that Moore sprinkled throughout his story about Hawaiian-based whale researchers and the extraordinary (for readers not familiar with Moore, when I say "extraordinary" I mean "don't be surprised if one of the characters rips off his face to reveal that he was a man-walrus the entire time [this is not a spoiler!]") adventure onto which they stumble. His characters, as usual, are full of wit and quirks, especially when confronted with the inevitable unbelievable situation. Moore has his greatest success writing the conversations between his leads, that little sparring time that's very endearing in his books (e.g., Bloodsucking Fiends is chocked-full of such banter). There was a lot of that in this one; I only wish there was time for more -- somehow I think that he could have written another 20 pages based on the sudden revelations toward the end, but that's a minor caveat.

So, in the universally recognized rankings, where does this one fit? I put it right smack behind Lamb, perhaps slightly ahead of The Promised King, and altogether beats the crap out of any James Patterson book ever.

PS. A "prize" goes to the first person who can place the quote from the heading of this article.