Just why do humpback whales sing? That's the question that has marine behavioral biologist Nate Quinn and his crew poking, charting, recording, and photographing very big, wet, gray marine mammals. Until the extraordinary day when a whale lifts its tail into the air to display a cryptic message spelled out in foot-high letters: Bite me.

Trouble is, Nate's beginning to wonder if he hasn't spent just a little too much time in the sun. 'Cause no one else on his team saw a thing -- not his longtime partner, Clay Demodocus; not their saucy young research assistant; not even the spliff-puffing white-boy Rastaman Kona (né Preston Applebaum). But later, when a roll of film returns from the lab missing the crucial tail shot -- and his research facility is trashed -- Nate realizes something very fishy indeed is going on.

By turns witty, irreverent, fascinating, puzzling, and surprising, Fluke is Christopher Moore at his outrageous best.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Just why do humpback whales sing? That's the question that has marine behavioral biologist Nate Quinn and his crew poking, charting, recording, and photographing very big, wet, gray marine mammals. Until the extraordinary day when a whale lifts its tail into the air to display a cryptic message spelled out in foot-high letters: Bite me.

Trouble is, Nate's beginning to wonder if he hasn't spent just a little too much time in the sun. 'Cause no one else on his team saw a thing - not his longtime partner, Clay Demodocus; not their saucy young research assistant; not even the spliff-puffing white-boy Rastaman Kona ( Preston Applebaum). But later, when a roll of film returns from the lab missing the crucial tail shot - and his research facility is trashed - Nate realizes something very fishy indeed is going on.

By turns witty, irreverent, fascinating, puzzling, and surprising, Fluke is Christopher Moore at his outrageous best.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

For all his paranoia-fueled plotting, which escalates to the level of a threat to virtually everything on the planet, Mr. Moore takes his whales seriously. His Author's Notes at the end of the book address conservation issues and suggest ways the reader can help. — Janet Maslin

The Washington Post

Moore is probably the funniest writer of comic fantasy novels working today. — Paul Di Filippo

Publishers Weekly

From Jonah to Pinocchio, men have dreamed of stowing away alive in the bellies of whales. Nate Quinn experiences this doubtful honor in Moore's outrageous new novel (after Lamb). Nate studies whales, operating a small research unit in Lahaina in Maui along with Clay Demodocus, a famous undersea photographer, and two seasonal hires: Amy Earheart, supposedly a grad student from Woods Hole Institute, and Kona, a dreadlocked Hawaiian stoner. When Nate spots a humpback whale with "Bite Me" tattooed on a tail fluke, mysterious disasters start to strike. Then Nate, out with Amy, is swallowed by the tattooed humpback. Technically, this is impossible, nature having created narrow throats for humpback whales, but the tattooed one is a living ship, a simulacrum of a humpback run by a crew of humans and "whaley boys"-human/ whale cross breeds. Nate learns that they were designed by the Goo. (The Goo is a giant, intelligent organism that evolved undersea billions of years ago and has lately been spying on humans with fleets of false whales.) The whale ships dock in Gooville, an underwater city populated by supposedly drowned humans and horny whaley boys on shore leave. The place is run by the "Colonel," Nate's old teacher, "Growl" Ryder. Nate runs into Amy and helps foil the Colonel's mad plan to destroy the Goo. Meanwhile, Clay and Kona plan to come to Nate's rescue. Moore is endlessly inventive in his description of the rubbery, watery world of Goo, and his characters are perfectly calibrated, part credible human beings and part clever caricatures. This cetacean picaresque is no fluke-it is a sure winner. (June) Forecast: Moore's wacky fantasia may not be for everyone, but Morrow is ensuring that it reach the maximum number of readers possible, with a 16-city author tour and a major ad/promo campaign. Cult classic? Could be. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Ever since introducing us to a salt-munching genie a decade ago (Practical Demonkeeping), Moore has been a little offplumb. Here, in the second part of Fluke, he presents an organic, macrobiotic cosmos called "Goo," located some 600 feet below ocean surface off the coast of Chile, populated by "whaley-boys" (don't ask), historical personages and researchers captured when they start to figure out the "meaning" of whale song. In Part 1, we meet some such researchers who meet with one calamity after another until their leader is captured by a "whale-ship" (looks like a whale, acts like a whale, isn't a whale) when he starts to crack code and is taken to "Gootown," where he finds a long-believed-dead former professor changed into the megalomaniac "Colonel" who believes the world headed for a war of Genes (the "Goo") and Memes (the rest of us) and wants his Goo fiefdom destroyed. World-saving (two worlds, really) is in order. Sound complicated? Yes, but this is still one funny sociopolitical-scientific-cultural fable. For most popular collections.-Robert E. Brown, Minoa Lib., NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The culture of cetacean research is cheerfully lampooned in this antic seventh novel from the Tom Robbins/Douglas Adams-like author of Lamb (2002) and other gag-filled romps. The setting is the coast of Maui, where marine biologist Nathan Quinn, his associate Clay Demodocus, and lissome research assistant Amy Earhart are studying the "songs" of humpback whales. The tone is breezy, and the plot quickly fishtails into agreeable absurdity. Rude invective is detected on the thrashing flukes of a frequently sighted specimen. "Old Broad" resident Elizabeth Robinson claims to communicate with whales (one requests a pastrami-on-rye sandwich). "Ersatz Hawaiian" boathand "Kona" is jailed (after Quinn's office is vandalized), and narrowly escapes the amorous attentions of a gigantic Samoan detainee. So it goes. Clay and Amy become disconnected from their boat during a dive and are feared lost. Nathan is "eaten by a giant whale ship," reluctantly bonds with a super-race of piscatorial mutants, meets "the mysterious overlord of an undersea city," and eventually learns-from a radically transformed old acquaintance-what all the singing is really about. Few readers will be surprised to learn that all this is (rather stagily) thematically related to the integrity of the ecosystem and the punishments nature is storing up for humans who have slaughtered whales and otherwise traduced the natural order. Moore is far from at his best when thus veering into sermon mode, but he's a facile, entertaining writer, and has infectious fun hacking away at such targets as Canadian hockey violence, "whale huggers," the US Navy's shortsighted appropriation of oceanic resources for covert tests and experiments, cetaceansexual peccadilloes, supertankers, and a whole lot more. Smooth as a pi-a colada, and just about as substantial. Still: let Moore be Moore, and he will show you a good time. Agent: Nicholas Ellison/Nicholas Ellison Agency. Author tour