Book review: “Bite Me: A Love Story” by Christopher Moore

The seven guys who make up the Animals had been through a lot in Christopher Moore’s earlier goofy novels set in San Francisco Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story and You Suck: A Love Story.

As Moore explains in his follow-up Bite Me: A Love Story:

In the last two months, the Animals, the night stock crew at the Marina Safeway, had hunted an ancient vampire, blown up his yacht, stolen millions of dollars’ worth of art, sold it for pennies on the dollar, spent the remaining hundreds of thousands on gambling and a blue hooker, got turned into vampires, were torn apart by zoo animals, then burned up by sunlamps when they attacked Abby Normal, then turned, by Foo, back into seven guys who stocked shelves at the Safeway and smoked a little too much weed.

More about Abby Normal and Foo in a bit, but let’s stick with the Animals for the moment.

As often happens with adventurers when the adventures end, the Animals are now finding themselves more than a little bored “and a little worried that nothing exciting would ever happen to them again.”

 

A huge vampire cat

Not to worry.

The guys are soon recruited to combat a new threat — well, threats — to wit, a huge vampire cat, named Chet, who growing increasingly intelligent, and his gang of vampire cats who are preying on (i.e., sucking the blood out of and turning to dust) dozens of street people.

To say nothing of three badass and very old but very comely vampires, one guy and two girls, who have journeyed to the City by the Bay to clean up the mess left by that ancient vampire who’d hunted the Animals. Their idea of cleaning up the mess is to erase from the face of the earth anyone who knows anything about all that earlier vampire stuff, such as the Animals.

Oh, and then there’s this flock of fifty or so cherry-headed vampire parrots who, it turns out, aren’t much of a problem because, unaware of the limits that come with being a vampire vis-à-vis the rays of the sun, they took off one morning just before dawn,

circled Coit Tower and headed out toward the Embarcadero, where, suddenly, they all stopped flying, burst into flames, and fell like a smoldering storm of dying comets into Levi’s Plaza.

“Well, you don’t see that every day,” said the Emperor.

He’s the old homeless guy who thinks he is the leader and protector of the city because, well, everyone, in their quaint ways, act as if he is. More on him too, but we’re still focusing on the Animals.

 

“Jesusy”

So, now, when they’re not working or smoking weed, the Animals — the oldest of whom is 23-year-old Clint, a former drug addict, endlessly teased by the others for having become a born-again religion freak — are all about saving lives.

[S]ince being murdered by a blue hooker turned vampire, then resurrected as vampires, then restored to living by Foo Dog’s genetic alchemy, they had been feeling what they could only describe as Jesusy.

“I’m feeling extra Jesusy,” said Jeff, the tall jock.

“I always feel extra Jesusy,” said Clint, who always did.

Be that as it may, it remains to be seen if the Animals are up to the task of facing the three new arrogant old vampires. And all those really feral cats.

 

The city’s line of defense

Indeed, San Francisco has been going about its blissful days oblivious to the looming threats, and it’s a sad commentary on, well, everything that the city’s line of defense is what it is:

To wit:

• the Animals.
• the wooly-headed Emperor and his two dog companions.
• geeky science nerd Steve “Foo Dog” Wong, a Ph.D. candidate at Berkeley who has become an expert in anti-vampire technologies.
• and Abby Normal, Foo-Dog’s main (and only) squeeze, a precocious (and involuntarily perky [she’d rather be moody and mysterious]) 16-year-old whose real name is Abigail Green.

There are actually two representatives of San Francisco officialdom, Detectives Alphonse Rivera and Nick Cavuto. Rivera is a snappy dresser, and Cavuto is a gay man who, at 6’3”, 260 pounds, looms and who, Moore writes, “if he’d been a flavor of ice cream, would have been Gay Linebacker Crunch.”

But they are somewhat hamstrung for fear that if they alert their superiors to the problem of vampires, they’re likely to be reassigned to the loony bin. Also, there is the little problem of some of the old vampire’s money ending up in their unofficial retirement fund.

 

“Fur and goo”

Readers of Moore’s first two vampire books may be wondering where Tommy and Jody are in all of this. They were the central figures in those books, and, as Bite Me opens, they’re both vampires and both locked in a bronze sculpture.

That limits their involvement in the plot for a while.  Eventually, they get out and join in the defense of the city, but it’s Abby who’s the one holding centerstage most of the time, such as in an early battle against Chet and the other vampire cats.

Out of the doorway ran a thin, impossibly pale girl with lavender pigtails wearing pink motocross boots, pink fishnet stockings, a green plastic skirt, wraparound sunglasses, and a black leather jacket that looked studded with glass.

Little did the cats know that Foo Dog had created this jacket with panels that replicated sunlight.  Abby knew.

The cats turned their attention to her, and were crouching, readying to leap, when her jacket lit up like the sun. There was a collective screech of agony from the vampire cats as all around the street, cats and cat parts smoked, then ignited.

Burning cats made for the alely across the street or tried to hide under cars, but the thin girl ran after them, darting here and there, until each ignited, then burned and reduced itself first to a bubbling puddle of fur and goo, and finally, a pile of fine ash.

We’re not talking Pride and Prejudice here.

Except, well, Abby dealt with the cats with, to use that spy euphemism, extreme prejudice.  And she was very proud of herself.

And, really, if you want Jane Austen, read Jane Austen. If you want the sort of silliness I’ve described above, read Christopher Moore.

 

Patrick T. Reardon

4.30.25

 

By the way, I reviewed this book several years ago.  If you’d like to see that review, click here.