Island of the Sequined Love Nun

July 31, 1997
A screwup pilot goes to Micronesia to fly a couple of organ thieves bankrolled by the Japanese in Moore's (Coyote Blue; Bloodsucking Fiends) tiresomely goofy fourth novel. The premise is as complex as it is outlandish: Tucker "Tuck" Case runs afoul of his firebrand boss, cosmetics magnate Mary Jean (read Mary Kay) Dobbins when, loaded on gin-and-tonics and in flagrante with a hooker, he crashes the company Gulfstream (and in the process wounds himself a la Jake Barnes). Fleeing a civil suit, Tuck takes a job with a "missionary" couple on a tiny Micronesian island where the natives worship the memory of an American WWII bomber pilot who once visited their island in his plane, The Sky Priestess, and founded a "cargo cult" revolving around American products. The corrupt missionaries, Dr. Sebastian Curtis and his wife, Beth, have taken over the cult--with Beth in the role of the High Priestess--in order to maintain a healthy population of unwitting organ donors. Aided by a transvestite Filipino navigator and a talking bat, Tuck overcomes his need to fly (and his infatuation with Beth) to rescue the natives from their exploitative Mr. and Mrs. Kurtz. Moore relies for his comic effects on lamentably old-fashioned types (the ignorant native, the cheesecake sexpot)--though, for some reason, he mentions the weight of his female characters more often than their measurements). Despite Moore's indisputable talent for wisecracks and his over-the-top 1940s-style musical-comedy panache, this island fantasy--lost somewhere in the neighborhood of Vonnegut, Robbins and Douglas Adams--is too complacent for satire and too silly to turn its jokiness into page-turning entertainment.