Practical Demonkeeping

This book isn't exactly laugh-out-loud funny. Too many people are devoured by the demon for it to be tongue-in-cheek...unless it's the demon's cheek and our tongue we're talking about here. However, "Practical Demonkeeping" is witty, shading into heavily ironic. It is blackly humorous as in the scene where the demon coughed, "...and a red spiked heel shot out of his mouth and bounced off the windshield, spattering the glass with hellish spit."You might guess that the red high heel once belonged to a woman, but it's not that kind of novel. As a matter of fact it belonged to a motel night clerk named Billy Winston who was a transvestite from the waist down (the parts that the motel customers can't see below the counter). Most of Moore's characters have some redeeming characteristics, even the scum-bag drug dealers and pool sharks, and I was really sorry when the demon ate Billy.Even the demon whose name is Catch has his likeable moments--usually when he's reading Cookie Monster comic books and in between snacks. He also has a sense of humor, the kind of humor you'd expect from a cat toying with its next meal.Some of the book's real humor comes from a second supernatural creature, the King of the Djinn who has been chasing after Catch ever since the glory days of King Solomon--except for a few thousand years of down time in a lead jar at the bottom of the sea. He expresses himself in phrases such as, "By Aladdin's lamplit scrotum," and "Tell us where the Seal of Solomon is hidden or we will have your genitals in a nine-speed reverse action blender." The true hero of "Practical Demonkeeping," owner of Pine Cove, California's bait, tackle, and fine wines shop thinks the King of the Djinn looks like "a prune in a Carmen Miranda costume." Nevertheless, this unlikely pair teams up to do a bit of demon-hunting.Wickedly funny. That's the term I'm searching for. This book with its winos, pagans, wrinkled-prune Djinn, and hungry demon is wickedly funny. Read it and you might even die, especially if you ignore its warning not to pick up hitchhikers near Pine Cove, California.

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 Cafe, 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.Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

Although this book had me laughing my ass off there definitely was a darker story behind it. I'd assume trying to ditch a demon would be a pretty difficult thing to do but...within these pages is a story that ties it all together. The characters feel like friends and the connections through time past to present unleashes a wonderful story.

Very cool story and great characters and just a fun time in Pine Cove just kinda Squirrley and awesome and just more to ponder

It sure was a bizarre story, but that is why you read this author’s books! A little factual history and plenty of fiction in between.