First published 2006
Tucker Case lives as a walking contradiction: a bumbling geek who looks like the cool guy he wishes he could be. He flies planes for Mary Jean Cosmetics Corporation until one catastrophic day when he crashes his boss's pink aircraft during a drunken midair encounter. Now Mary Jean's enforcers want his head, and Tucker has exactly one escape route available. He accepts a mysterious piloting job on a remote Micronesian island, working for a corrupt medical missionary and his seductive blonde partner who doubles as a local high priestess. The island turns out to be a carnival of madness populated by cargo cult believers, cannibals, deranged scientists, ninjas, and fruit bats that actually talk back. Tucker discovers he has landed in the middle of secret medical operations that blur every ethical line imaginable. Survival means navigating this tropical asylum where nothing operates according to normal rules and everyone harbors dangerous secrets.
Genres: fiction, adventure, contemporary, comedy
Vibes: suspenseful, thought-provoking, whimsical
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Micronesia
Period: Contemporary
336 pages · ebook · HarperCollins Publishers
Content warnings: medical-trauma