Valerie Riordan, the sole psychotherapist in Pine Cove, California, has switched all her patients' antidepressants to placebos -- a reaction to the apparent suicide of Bess Leander, one of her patients, who, Val thought, might have lived had Val done more talk therapy and less drug therapy. As a result, business is booming at The Head of the Slug, the local Blues bar, run by Mavis, whose clients swear that underneath her ancient, wrinkled, liver-spotted skin there lurks the Terminator. Problem: those lonely Blues notes from her new hire, Catfish Jefferson, have attracted the attention of an enormous, 5,000-year-old marine reptile named Steve who has a thing for petroleum tanker trucks.
With the advent of Steve, Pine Cove suddenly turns lustful and is hit by a weird crime wave with no understandable explanation. So Theophilus Crowe, the town constable, must find out what's wrong and what to do about it.
Enter all our other old friends from other novels of Moore's -- Molly Michon, the aging but still-beautiful and deadly Warrior Babe of the Outland (well, she was, until a stupid accident that wasn't her fault left her with a scar that got her canned by the movie studio); Mavis, proprietor of The Head of the Slug (originally named "The Head of the Wolf," but the local Greens decided the name was cruel to animals and forced her to change it); Dr. Val, the aforementioned psychiatrist; H. P., proprietor of H. P.'s Cafe, which features delicious delicacies such as Eggs Sothoth; Skinner, the happy-go-lucky idiot dog belonging to the Food Guy, biologist Gabe Fenton; and numerous others. Enter also some local villians who do meet timely, deserved, and hilarious ends, such as Sheriff John Burton, whose ranch hides a nasty secret, and who has been blackmailing pothead Theophilus Crowe into being the town constable for years; and Joseph Leander, the late Bess Leander's adulterous, murderous husband. With a less-than-together supporting cast of -- well, check them out for yourself.
As one reviewer said, Christopher Moore must have been laughing his head off while writing The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, and likely taking hits of nitrous oxide between sentences. The title alone is worth the price of the book, which could be substituted most successfully for every antidepressant in the pharmacy.
As a bonus, the biomedical and scientific aspects of this novel were researched down to the bare bones by the author. All that is missing from it is a lawsuit by Toho Productions for inappropriate appropriation of their star character (we know who he is!) -- and that may be forthcoming at any time.