Moore, Christopher: Practical Demonkeeping

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For ninety-year-old Travis O'Hearn, who doesn't look a day over twenty-five, acting as the master of the snake-skinned demon Catch for the better part of the 20th century has been problematic. Granted, the position has its perquisites--immortality and the potential for world domination and so on--but on the other hand there is the difficult issue of the anthropophagous beast's appetite. Travis, unwilling demonkeeper and good guy that he is, has tried to limit Catch's diet over the years to drug dealers and other of life's non-innocents. But the situation is less than ideal, and Travis is eager to sever his relationship with Catch.

The solution to Travis's dilemma may lie in Pine Cove, California, a tourist town populated by intriguing characters like Howard Phillips, owner of H.P.'s Café, who believes that his daily specials may be the only thing keeping the world from subjugation to a pre-human race. (Howard insists that his waitresses describe the specials in memorized passages of overwrought prose. Ham and eggs is "a fiendishly toothsome amalgamation of scrumptious ingredients so delicious that the mere description of the palatable gestalt could drive one mad.")  Also arrived in Pine Cove is Gian Hen Gian, a rumpled little demon hunter who curses in blue swirls and hankers after table salt, and who once worked construction on King Solomon's temple.

Christopher Moore is a witty and imaginative writer, and Practical Demonkeeping, Moore's first book, is a fun read. Moore's oeuvre should appeal to the Hitchhiker crowd and Tom Robbins fans.