Moore’s latest a bit moody, but it’s just as daffy as ever

Christopher Moore, the author of 15 wacky novels, explains in an afterword that he had planned for his latest book, “Noir,” to be about a “poor working mug” who got entangled with a “dangerous dame” in a dark and desperate story involving a lot of fog, gunplay and danger.

The central character of a Moore novel is always a beta male, i.e., a nice guy who’s more than a little aimless, distracted and confused. In “Noir,” that’s Sammy Tiffin, a bartender in 1947 San Francisco who has a damaged foot and a past that he fears will catch up with him.

Often, Moore’s guys are rather randy fellows, such as Pocket, King Lear’s jester in “Fool,” his 2009 adaptation of Shakespeare’s play. Moore is nothing if not gutsy when grabbing and remaking the works of great writers from the past. Indeed, he even retells — hilariously and, in an odd way, reverently — the story of Jesus in his book “Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal” (2002).

Sammy’s not quite as randy as Pocket or Biff, but, like other Moore heroes, he falls in love in the first few pages. Sammy’s love is a war widow whose first name is Stilton, like, she explains, the English cheese. From then on, he calls her Cheese or the Cheese — and, in the test of true love, she enjoys it.

While “Noir” isn’t Chandler or Thompson, Moore has produced a book that’s moodier than his usually snappy fare. For his cast of characters, occupying the lower levels and the margins of society, postwar America is a place of job shortages, housing shortages and “broken veterans” as well as racial prejudice and sexual exploitation.

The day after Sammy and Stilton have a fight, Sammy feels bad, and he knows she’s hurting too because she’s “a good kid, maybe a little daffy, sad daffy … but sweet daffy.”) After a night of strenuous lovemaking, they sit outside under a blanket watching the sun rise over San Francisco Bay:

Lest any of Moore’s regular readers think he’s gone sappy, it’s worth noting that he’s as silly as ever. Consider the opening sentence about Stilton’s arrival in Sammy’s bar:

The hallmark of most Moore novels, in addition to the snappy dialogue and descriptions, is the involvement in everyday life of some otherworldly entities, such as vampires, demons, or “the stupidest angel.”

In “Noir,” the otherworldly element is a diminutive space alien, called moonman by Sammy and the Cheese. Oh, and a talking snake named Petey who bites a character who deserves it. Yet, as Petey, who does a bit of narrating in the novel, explains:

“Humans are a waste of venom. You can’t even eat them …. I’ve tried. You get one hand down, maybe up to the elbow, then you have to barf them up and go find a rodent or bird or something decent to eat. Just for the record, I am not the villain here.”

The villains are teams of identically dressed secretive government agents, who pose as taxmen while kidnapping and killing people. Two agents get their comeuppance when moonman puts together a ray gun out of spare parts and vaporizes them.

In the aftermath, the alien makes a lot of clicking sounds, which neither Sammy nor Stilton is able to decipher. “Maybe,” Sammy theorizes, “where he’s from they just go out vaporizing stuff for fun and this was like bowling for him.”

“Noir” is a sad and daffy and wacky, and surprisingly heartfelt, novel.