He's back! Pocket washes up on a Grecian beach in Shakespeare for Squirrels, Christopher Moore's third hilarious adventure (after Fool and The Serpent of Venice) starring the Fool of Dog Snogging, along with the great beef-brained Drool and the chapeau-obsessed (perfect forking French, eh?) Jeff the monkey. Set adrift by pirates, the trio is rescued by Cobweb the fairy in a nick-of-time turn of fortunes that leads to magical, bawdy, exuberant antics, with a murder mystery thrown in.
As in his previous 16 novels, (Lamb; Sacré Bleu) Moore parodies classic works, and A Midsummer Night's Dream is the perfect framework for Shakespeare for Squirrels, with bits from mythology and the Bard. In a delightful afterword, Moore shares how he blended these elements; reading this first might enhance appreciation of Pocket et al. Nighttime frivolity reigns, but danger is real. After just one night in Greece and a surprise shag with Cobweb, whose lust for Pocket is insatiable, Pocket is wrongly accused of killing Puck, the esteemed jester. He must find the murderer, while convincing both Tatiana, queen of the fairies, and Theseus, ruler of Athens, that he is also fulfilling their commands. And Oberon, the Shadow King, and his goblins are not to be slighted. "The play's the thing," of course, and in a rollicking climax the Mechanicals, a troupe of local merchants, perform for their lives, Pocket scripting from the stage. "We have no master but the road," Pocket announces when all has ended well. --Cheryl McKeon, bookseller, Market Block Books, Troy, N.Y.