If you were Tucker Case you'd be surprised too if someone offered you a job flying a private Lear jet. It's not too often you can crash a plane with an initiate into the mile-high club sitting in your lap as you attempt to land, destroy the plane, cause bodily harm to the one straddling you, while your blood alcohol level is somewhere in the stratosphere, and still be considered a viable choice for flying a few million dollars of private plane.
So Tucker is to be forgiven if he's a little suspicious of the offer, but at the same time he knows that short of hijacking a flight he won't be seeing the inside of a cockpit anywhere the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) have anything to say about the matter. With no other alternatives lining up, and a sudden need to leave the country (in the form of a civil suit filled by a certain young lady who most recently filled his lap and his plane's windshield)
That's how things go for Tucker Case; things happen to him without him taking much initiative. He had drifted into being a pilot through happening to meet someone. It was the same for getting the job flying the pink jet of The Mary Jean Cosmetic Company. That it was said jet he left in pieces on a runway made it all the more imperative that he leave the country. If hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, hell's never met a pissed off corporate, Southern Belle Christian, make-up executive who carries a Smith & Wesson in her handbag..
So Tucker doesn't even wonder that much about why a couple of Methodist missionaries need him to fly one a top of the line Lear jet from a mysteriously well-financed compound on an isolated island in Micronesia. Of course in his travels to get to the island Tucker has run into a fruit bat named Renaldo who wears aviator shades and speaks Filipino, his cross-dressing owner Kimi, Victor the ghost of a bomber pilot from World War Two who is worshipped as a God by the Shark people of the small atoll Alualu, caught in a typhoon in a small boat, almost eaten by sharks, and then almost eaten by the one Shark person who still thinks they should practice cannibalism, (humans taste sort of like Spam) so he's got a little bit more on his mind when he first arrives then to wonder about his new bosses.
Some of you might have picked up a few clues by now, but for those who are like Tucker and content to just play along and hope things turn out okay, I'll let you in on the secret. This is just the opening salvo in the full side barrage of strangeness that Christopher Moore has in store for you in his 1997 novel Island Of The Sequined Love Nun.
Christopher Moore has specialized in writing bizarre stories where instead of having heroic characters that look danger in the eye and laugh at death, death is usually having a good laugh at his characters but has the decency to invite them to join in. Danger is something you would avoid if you could but the story wouldn't be half as good if there wasn’t any so the characters will just have to suck it up and cope as best as they can.
Article comments
1 - Nik
Hah, I just finished reading this myself a couple weeks ago, I've been getting into reading Mr. Moore's books a lot lately. Excellent review, it's so rare to find a writer like Moore that pulls off humor well - I find most attempts at "funny" novels to be pretty lame.
2 - Regis Schilken
I'll have to read this book. It's great to find something that is really humorous.