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Bad monkey
512 pages
A sun-baked, laugh-out-loud romp through the weirdest corners of Florida, where the crimes are as bizarre as the locals.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like taking a high-speed boat ride through the sun-drenched, morally murky waters of South Florida with a wildly inappropriate tour guide. The atmosphere is relentlessly breezy and chaotic, soaking the reader in a world where absurdity is the baseline and every character is hiding a bizarre secret. It moves at a brisk, entertaining clip, propelled by sharp, satirical prose that skewers greed, corruption, and the destruction of nature with deadpan precision. Despite the cynical edge and the mounting body count, the underlying feeling is one of immense fun. It is a perfect escape for readers who delight in zany capers, eccentric misfits, and mysteries that prioritize laugh-out-loud weirdness over gritty realism.
- Mood
- sun-drenched
- chaotic
- breezy
- absurdist
- Tone
- satirical
- irreverent
- wry
- zany
- cynical
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- environmental exploitation · bureaucratic absurdity · greed and corruption · finding purpose in chaos
- The writing
- Sharp, snappy, and relentlessly witty, the prose crackles with colorful dialogue and deadpan observations about human stupidity.
- The arc
- The journey moves from cynical detachment to a chaotic, fiercely determined quest for justice, culminating in a satisfyingly messy resolution.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love their crime fiction served with a heavy dose of dark humor, eccentric characters, and tropical sunshine.
Content notes
- mild gore
- comedic violence
- sexual content
- animal mischief
About the book
Andrew Yancy, late of the Miami Police, soon-to-be-late of the Key West Police, has a human arm in his freezer. There is a logical explanation for that, but not for how and why it parted from its owner. Yancy thinks the boating-accident/shark-luncheon explanation is full of holes, and if he can prove murder, his commander might relieve him of Health Inspector duties, aka Roach Patrol. But first Yancy will negotiate an ever-surprising course of events, from the Keys to Miami to a Bahamian out island, with a crew of equally ever-surprising characters, including: the twitchy widow of the frozen arm; an avariciously idiotic real estate developer; a voodoo witch whose lovers are blinded-unto-death by her particularly peculiar charms; Yancy's new love, a kinky medical examiner; and the eponymous Bad Monkey.
Description from Open Library.
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