I received a copy of Barry Maher's novel The Great Dick and the Dysfunctional Demon directly from the author. The novel opens with a prologue set in the 1960s. Professor John Harris gives his last lecture at Harvard before disappearing and suggests that Moby Dick and The Great Gatsby are the same story: “[The] struggle of the individual to put their world to rights in the face of a failure that threatens to define their life.” Our professor then goes on to suggest that the same story for this generation could be called The Great Dick. We then leap ahead to the early 1980s and meet Steve Witowski, a man who has just arrived at a wide spot in the highway a few miles from Santa Lucia, California while running from the failure that could define his life.Steve hitched a ride with a woman named Maria and wakes in the apartment behind her uncle’s house, which used to be a store on the Pacific Coast Highway. Steve has no desire to begin a long-term relationship with Maria, so he attempts to sneak out in the early morning hours, only to discover a man attacking a woman. Summoning all his inner resolve, Steve leaps to the woman’s rescue. After a struggle, the would-be attacker appears to be dead. After Steve rescues the woman, Victoria, he learns that she is a recent widow who owns the abandoned church across the street from the one-time store owned by Maria’s uncle. Grateful for the rescue, Victoria hires Steve to help restore and renovate the church, which in the 1880s, was owned by a self-styled sorcerer named Zandie. Although Steve would like to put some distance between Maria and himself, he doesn’t have any cash, so he accepts. Besides, Victoria is arguably the most attractive woman he has ever met.At first, Steve’s work seems routine enough, albeit the tasks seem centered around the infamous Zandie. Steve sorts books, looking for any that might have been written by Zandie. He’s taken into a steeple room and told to prepare the walls for renovations. Of course, he should keep an eye out for Zandie’s legendary lost treasure. All the while, Victoria seems to be flirting with Steve. Yet when Steve thinks romance may begin to blossom, someone interrupts. It might be the arrival of Victoria’s lawyer, Humbert, or Victoria might suddenly have a date with someone she just met. As Steve’s frustrations over Victoria’s hot and cold treatment grow stronger, his work tasks get progressively stranger until he finally begins to understand the truth behind everything that’s going on. What’s more, we also begin to understand Steve’s past and what he’s running from. Steve’s final confrontation is reminiscent of Captain Ahab’s in that he finds himself facing a truly implacable foe who could very well pull him down into the depths.The Great Dick was a thrilling novel that kept me turning pages. Steve could be a jerk who annoyed me at times. However, his wit disarmed me and his capacity to learn and grow kept me rooting for him. I was glad to see that Maria didn’t just vanish early in the novel, but she stayed around and served as something of a moral compass for Steve even as she struggled with her own elderly uncle and estranged husband.