I quite enjoyed this wacky and bizarre novel by Moore. The novel takes place in 1947 San Francisco shortly after the end of WWII. Sammy "Two Toes" Tiffin is the evening bartender at Sal's Saloon who meets up with Stilton "The Cheese", a beautiful blonde named after a type of cheese who catches the attention of everyone in Sal's especially Sammy. Well Sammy and The Cheese get mixed up in a wacky plot involving a black mamba, an Air Force General from Roswell, New Mexico, two men in black-type agents who are after something, a racist cop, a group of Chinese men who drink snake piss for its aphrodisiac powers, a mysterious group of rich men in the Bohemian Club, a group of lesbian women who impersonate men, and a possible alien from the moon. This all sounds very bizarre but then of course it is Christopher Moore who tends to always go over the edge.
The novel is full of one-liners that mimic the prose from such authors as Mickey Spillane and James M. Cain. I have always enjoyed the noir novels of these and other authors and thought that Moore did a great job in his satirization of the genre. The novel was laugh out loud funny in a lot of places and way over the top. I also really enjoyed the setting of 1947 San Francisco. I lived in the Bay area and worked in San Francisco from 1984 to 1997 so much of the setting was familiar to me although some of what was there in 1947 is now long gone such as Playland by Ocean Beach. I've also read a few other novels by Moore and I have several still to be read that I'll be looking forward to.
The novel is full of one-liners that mimic the prose from such authors as Mickey Spillane and James M. Cain. I have always enjoyed the noir novels of these and other authors and thought that Moore did a great job in his satirization of the genre. The novel was laugh out loud funny in a lot of places and way over the top. I also really enjoyed the setting of 1947 San Francisco. I lived in the Bay area and worked in San Francisco from 1984 to 1997 so much of the setting was familiar to me although some of what was there in 1947 is now long gone such as Playland by Ocean Beach. I've also read a few other novels by Moore and I have several still to be read that I'll be looking forward to.
