Sunday, July 07, 2013

Bad Monkey

By Carl Hiaasen

Andrew Yancy is an ex-cop. Not because he wants to be but because he did something really stupid: he sodomized his girlfriend's husband in public with a vacuum cleaner. That got him kicked out of the sheriff's department. Luckily for Yancy he was able to get a new job as Health Inspector of the local restaurants. Unluckily for Yancy, he discovers conditions in restaurant kitchens are so unwholesome and disturbing that he has totally lost his appetite and has become gaunt and skinny. For his own sake, he needs his old job  back before he wastes away to nothing. Rescue appears in the form of an unattached arm hooked by an angler. Because, despite the appearance that the owner of the arm was the victim of a shark attack, Yancy is certain that the arm's owner was murdered. If he can prove it he just might be able to get his old job with the sheriff's office back. But, since he is a character in a Hiaasen novel, Yancy is going to come up against a lot of weirdness including an ex-girlfriend who will resort to arson to win Yancy back; a sexy but a tad bit perverse new girlfriend who likes to do it on the autopsy table; a voodoo witch; a Medicare scammer and his wife; and the title character, the bad monkey who used to be a movie star but is now bald and addicted to fried foods and tobacco.

I really liked this story. Very readable, frequently funny with strange and unforgettable characters, including Driggs, the bad monkey. There really was nothing I didn't like about it including the ending where justice is served and all the bad guys get what they have coming to them. In fact, I think this is probably one of the most enjoyable of the Hiaasen's novels I have read.

For another review, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/books/carl-hiaasens-bad-monkey-features-a-cast-of-oddballs.html?_r=0.



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