Fluke

Written by Christopher Moore

Narrated by Bill Irwin

Marine biologist Nate Quinn is in love with the majestic ocean-dwelling behemoths who have been singing their haunting song for twenty million years. But why do the humpback whales sing? That's the question that has Nate and his crew filming, charting, and recording every whale that crosses their path. Until one day when a whale lifts its tail to display a message spelled out in foot-high letters: Bite Me....

No one has ever seen such a thing; not Nate's longtime partner, not world-renowned photographer Clay Demodocus, not their saucy young research assistant, Amy, not even spliff-puffing white-boy Rastaman, Kona. And when the film returns from the lab missing the crucial tail shot--and their research facility is trashed--Nate realizes that something very fishy is going on.

It only gets weirder when a call comes in from Nate's big-bucks benefactor, saying that a whale has phoned her, asking for a hot pastrami and Swiss on rye. Suddenly the answer to the question that has driven Nate throughout his adult life is within reach. And it's not what anyone would think.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Jan 5, 2005
• ISBN: 9780060818432

Christopher Moore

Christopher Moore is the author of eighteen previous novels, including Razzmatazz, Shakespeare for Squirrels, Noir, Secondhand Souls, Sacré Bleu, Fool, and Lamb. He lives in San Francisco, California.

Reviews for Fluke

[bfertig_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The first half of Fluke was amusing, and Christopher Moore actually researched cetacean (marine mammal) biology and mentions a few actual scientists, which is kinda cool to see. But ultimately, the second half of the book dragged the premise down, veering off the wise-alecky humor into some pure fantasy.

[juva_3 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book is weird, but unique. I promise, it's practically guaranteed to surprise you. Nathan is a whale biologist who's obsessed with discovering the purpose of the humpback whale's song. He's in Hawaii, recording whale song, identifying fluke markings and plugging away at his research. Everything starts to go off the rails when he sees the words "Bite Me" written in bold letters on a whale's flukes. Next thing he knows, his office has been ransacked and his research is destroyed. Strange things keep happening and his team seems to be plagued by bad luck. Is he going crazy? Or is he on the brink of the greatest scientific discovery in history?

[elizajane_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a wonderful book! I won't even try to give a plot summary as it starts out weird and just gets weirder and weirder from there. Even though strange, I found the story incredibly compelling; this was a book I couldn't put down. Also very funny, in a Terry Pratchett kind of way. Not as burst-out-laughing funny as A Dirty Job, but still pretty hilarious. This is my second book by Moore and I now must read everything he's written. He's simply brilliant. His characters are so real, even though they are very eccentric and often times out-of-this world (literally) they come across incredibly real and likable.

[thedivineoomba · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

So the first time I read, a long long time ago, I didn't like it. But a Friends husband was seriously confused why I didn't like it, so I thought I would give it a second shot when I found a copy in a thrift store.And.... the husband is right. It is a great book. Funny, witty, and intelligent. Christopher Moore did his research. Characters a written fully, complete with faults. My only real criticism is the ending... everything is resolved, but it seems too fast.

[jessica_olin_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not his typical tongue-in-cheek paranormal shtick, but just as deliciously irreverent as his other works. I've yet to meet a Christopher Moore book I didn't adore.

[kittycunningh-815148 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The beginning was fun and fairly typical of Moore. The end was just dumb.

[billycongo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I started down the Moore road with this one. I have no idea why. A book about whales? It was just so incredibly funny. And strange. This guy has a major talent for being someone that I like.

[librarycin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

3.5 starsNate is a biologist, studying whales in Hawai'i and trying to find out why they sing. He is working with Clay, a photographer; Amy, a new research assistant; and Kona, a local. One day, on the water, Nate notices something a little strange about the underside of a whale's flukes (the "wings" on the tail): it says "Bite Me". Not only that, things start happening, like the lab being trashed and one of their boats being sunk. It was good and there were funny parts, but the second half of the book got very... um... odd. I enjoyed the first half of the book, and the focus on and information about the whales and the mystery surrounding what was going on, but the second half was just very odd. I also liked the characters and I appreciated that Moore gave us some info at the end of the book about how much about the whales was true, as well as some info about conservation. Despite the focus on whales, I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as the other books I've read by Moore.

[berly_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Just finished Fluke by Christopher Moore. I do love this author! His plots are highly improbably, yet they work for me and he has such a great sense of humor. This one follows a marine behavioral biologist and his photographer as they try to decipher songs of the whales. Except that then one of the whales flashes our heel a note on the back of his tail, which reads "Bite Me." And things get weirder from there. There's a little romance, a funny Rasta boy, some cool marine info and lots of fun. Great summer read.

[chellebearss · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

After trying Moore's Sacre Bleu many years back, and having it not work for me, I avoided starting anymore of his books. That was clearly a mistake that I am happy to have rectified. This is now the third book of Moore's that I've loved. This was fun and I love his smart ass sense of humour. I will keep going with Moore's novels. I've been loving them on audio and I think I will keep with this format.

[sbenne3 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I have read a lot of Christopher Moore and get the humor and far fetched premise of his books . . . but this one - no thanks. i just could not get into the concept and had a hard time finishing this one. I guess I just didn't get it.

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A great book! Christopher Moore is funny, imaginative and a great writer to boot. Nate Quinn is a Canadian marine biologist studying the song of humpback whales in Hawaii. Sounds like an ideal job for a Canadian. (I remember when I was in my last year of undergraduate university when I was trying to figure out what to do next receiving a brochure from the University of Hawaii around the middle of January. Given that I was attending the University of Manitoba and that it was, as always in Winnipeg in January, about -30 deg. C. with 5 feet of snow outside, it's a wonder I didn't hop a plane immediately.) However, Nate has his problems in paradise. He's been studying the whale song for years and he is no closer to understanding why they sing than he was when he started. He has a new female research assistant, Amy, that he is attracted to even though he realizes it is highly inappropriate. His partner, Clay, has hired another helper who failed to show up for his first morning of work. But what is even more disturbing is that when he was out with the whales he saw (or thought he saw) the words "Bite Me" in foot-high letters on a humpback's tail. He thinks he got a picture of it but has to wait until the film is developed (obviously prior to the days of digital photography) to be sure. Meanwhile he goes back to the compound to find that it has been trashed and all the research of decades has been destroyed. Then up pops Kona, the missing helper, who talks in a mixture of Rasta, pidgin and surfspeak that is barely understandable. The fact that Kona is white and high on dope makes him even more suspicious but Nate decides to give him the benefit of the doubt. So that's the main characters of the story. From the subtitle you can guess that Nate figures out why the whales sing but the path to enlightenment is circuitous, to say the least. Moore had to learn a lot about scientists and research and especially whales and, although I can't speak about the whale info, he gets the stuff about scientists and research right. And I love the fact that he made Nate a Canadian. At page 40 he has this to say about Canadians "...Canadians hate, above all things, to offend. It was part of the national consciousness. 'Be polite' was an unwritten, unspoken rule, but ingrained into the psyche of an entire country. (Of course, as with any rule, there were exceptions: parts of Quebec, where people maintained the 'dismissive to the point of confrontation, with subsequent surrender' mind-set of the French; and hockey, in which any Canadian may, with impunity, slam, pummel, elbow, smack, punch, body-check, and beat the shit out of, with sticks, any other human being, punctuated by profanities, name-calling, questioning parentage, and accusations of bestiality, usually--coincidentally--in French.)" How can you not like someone who writes like that about one's nationality?

[pamela_sc-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fascinating! Way far out and wacky, but, fascinating. I will say no more. You must read this book if: you have an open mind, you love that science can break its own rules, and you are able to suspend all disbelief and spend some time swimming in a totally impossible fantasy. I thought it was pretty cool. This book takes you to another world. I think it's called Gooville...

[mrs_mcgreevy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Christopher Moore is one of the most consistently funny authors working today. He’s written about hungry demons, turkey-bowling supermarket night crews, magic fruit bats, and a lonely sea beast named Steve. This book is about whales, but in typical Chris Moore fashion, it’s also about environmental issues, a scientist in love with his research assistant, Amelia Earhart, a rastafarian surfer dude from New Jersey, and some sentient pink goo that may be the earliest form of life on the planet. Somehow Moore ties this all together into an imminently readable, side-splittingly funny tale. I don’t know how he does it, but I’m sure glad that he does.

[dlmorrese · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A respected cetacean biologist, whales that aren't really whales, a Hawaiian Rastafarian from New Jersey, and a hot intern who isn't who (or what) she appears to be are just some of the many odd components of this story. But this one isn't just slapstick funny. This one has a point. It's informative. You could learn stuff (about whales and whale research). Well, a little, anyway.

I've read a few books by Christopher Moore, and although I always get a smile from them, the humor tends to be a bit too crude for my personal taste. It's his characters' in-your-face foul language, sex obsession, juvenile behavior, and fondness for frying their brains that rather puts me off. I really can't like or admire people like that, either in fact or fiction. This book is different. It's more Science Fiction than Fantasy, a bit more grounded in reality, and the characters are pursuing a worthwhile goal. Yeah, there is a fair amount of absurd silliness in Fluke. The characters are still pretty goofy, but they're a bit more believable than Moore's normal cast of clowns.

This is probably my favorite of Christopher Moore's books so far. I can recommend it to readers who have enjoyed Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett.

[carmenmilligan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was a very entertaining book. I had no idea what would happen when I turned the page. It has a bit of language and drug use, but is a very good summer read.

[auntie0nanuuq · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Ok....I've been reading this for the past 6 months, and I still am only 1/2 way through! I just can not get into this book. In fact I find it rather boring and not even near as funny as his other books....

I am sadly disappointed.

[belles007-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Classic Christopher Moore. Wit and sassiness combined with a whale of a tale. ;)

[dirac_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The book is an easy and fun summer read. Not the best by Mr. Moore nor his worst. It is entertaining, though, I found some parts to be 'meh' in feel. If you are looking for something for the dog days and are a fan of Moore, pick this up and give it a go.

[edward.lorn · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Having only read one other Moore novel, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, I was a little disappointed in this one. I must say, this is only personal preference, as the book is well written and engaging, enough so that I was able to continue reading, anyway. I just didn't care about the characters.

E.

[dabble58 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent, laugh out loud funny, another score by the clever Christopher Moore. Lots of good info about Whales throughout, and at the end a call for activism.

[willoughby_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I save my 5 star reviews for books I think are so excellent that they just might rekindle your love for all that is bookish. That said, if I could give Fluke by Christopher Moore 4.5 stars, I would. This is an almost offensively well-written book considering the daftness of the still-quite-engaging plot. I often wanted to rush to my computer to quote my favorite lines to friends, to encourage them to read it too. The drawback is that Christopher Moore likes plots so out there (see the 'lost years' chapters in Biff: The Story of Christ's Childhood Pal) (or just see Biff: The Story of Christ's Childhood Pal) that if you're not into his style of writing or his characters you might just respond with a 'what in the what, now?' and stop reading. Moore's women characters are also sometimes a tad under cooked. Some of their back stories come in quick parenthetical updates, as if an editor said to Moore 'I know you have a reason in mind why she responded this way; care to fill the rest of us in?' Still, his women are both smart and strong (if anything, he has trouble introducing faults with them). For this reason, I wasn't bothered by the women characters, I just wish the dial on them had been turned up a notch. My only real complaint with this book is I just couldn't wait to read it on a vacation near water, as the well realized setting of Hawaii just screams 'beach read.' tl;dr: If you like funny books with well-crafted turns of phrase and don't mind outlandish tales this is a book you may well come to love.

[nomadicrose · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book right up till the end. What a disappointment. All this build up and then blah.

[bexaplex · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A whale song researcher spots a whale with the words 'bite me' written on its tail, suffers a string of research setbacks, and ends up on a 20,000 Leagues-style cruise.There's something seriously bizarre about Christopher Moore's books, and I'm being literal. He says the most outrageous things, and then just plows onward with no winks, nods or pauses. It's almost unnerving.

[russdaniels_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Just great fun. LibraryThing recommended Moore based on my Tom Robbins books (and apparently Carl Hiaasen). It certainly hit the target. Wildly inventive story, a scientific research setting, interesting and mostly likable characters, irreverence, and just the right amount of goofiness. I look forward to reading more....

[norabelle414 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Awesome, as usual. Funny and lewd, but deep in its own way.Nick Quinn is a marine biologist in Hawaii, researching humpback whale songs. What are they saying? Why do they sing? Who are they singing to? He's accompanied by an amazing cast of characters, including his pretty young research assistant Amy, a stoned wannabe-Hawaiian surfer named Kona, an old woman who claims that the humpback whales called her on the telephone and want Nick to bring them a pastrami sandwich, and his ex-wife who became a lesbian after being stuck in the middle of two dueling prehensile Blue Whale penises.One day, while snorkeling with a particularly obliging humpback, Nick gets smacked in the head by a tailfin that definitely has the words "BITE ME" painted on it. He's unconscious, without an oxygen tank, and sinking fast. And then shit gets really weird . . . I can't say much more without spoiling it, but this book is great. It's extremely scientific, and extremely crazy, and extremely enjoyable.

[yarkan_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Such a strange story. It was mildly amusing and then it took a big left turn into the bizarre. It was fun to read.

[lindseyrivers · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Christopher More is a genius. This is the second book by him I have read and I want to read them all.

[laphenix · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I wouldn't call this a funny book so much as a book with funny parts. I'm not very impressed with my first Christoper Moore book, but from what I heard as I was reading, it's a lot deeper than his other books, and probably not the best book of his to begin with.

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I have genuinely loved every Moore book I have read, but this novel was missing a certain something. It started out promisingly enough: A whale researcher is treated to the puzzling sight of the words “Bite Me” clearly printed on the flukes of a diving whale he is photographing. But the follow-through gets a little messy and, quite frankly, strains even my very elastic suspension of disbelief. (I won’t go into details, lest I spoil it for someone.) I quite enjoyed some of the high theory of the book – ancient war between genes and memes, themes of early life being akin to God, the spirituality of whales – but Moore didn’t seem to completely follow through on any of these interesting ideas. All in all, a promising story that left me feeling a little unsatisfied.