The town psychiatrist has decided to switch everybody in Pine Cove, California, from their normal antidepressants to placebos, so naturally — well, to be accurate, artificially — business is booming at the local blues bar. Trouble is, those lonely slide-guitar notes have also attracted a colossal sea beast named Steve with, shall we say, a thing for explosive oil tanker trucks. Suddenly, morose Pine Cove turns libidinous and is hit by a mysterious crime wave, and a beleaguered constable has to fight off his own gonzo appetites to find out whats wrong and what, if anything, to do about it.
If there’s a funnier writer out there, step forward.”
— Playboy
Author's Notes from The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
Like most people, I woke up one day to find that everyone I knew was taking antidepressants, and since I wasn’t, I figured that I must be the cause of their depression. Friends explained that I was paranoid, that everyone was on antidepressants – even people who didn’t know me – and that I should just chill and get a prescription for Prozac or Zoloft or something.
So I thought, Hey, if so many people are depressed, maybe depression is supposed to serve some purpose in the evolution of the human species. (Like, keeping us from getting so cheerful that we forget to eat.) Or perhaps, like nearsightedness, depression is something that would have been “selected out” in the wild. (After all, saber-toothed tigers always ate the member of the tribe wearing the thick glasses.) And perhaps a predator had evolved that was specifically adapted to prey on the depressed (much as the saber-tooths adapted to feed on early nerds). And what if one of these predators still existed and was drawn to a small town where everyone had suddenly been taken off antidepressants? And what if his name was Steve?
Well, Im sure you were thinking the same thing. So thats why I wrote this book for you.
Sincerely,
Christopher Moore
