Review: Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen

Bad Monkey
Carl Hiaasen
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: June 11, 2013
Source: Library

Andrew Yancy—late of the Miami Police and soon-to-be-late of the Monroe County sheriff’s office—has a human arm in his freezer. There’s a logical (Hiaasenian) explanation for that, but not for how and why it parted from its shadowy owner. Yancy thinks the boating-accident/shark-luncheon explanation is full of holes, and if he can prove murder, the sheriff might rescue him from his grisly Health Inspector gig (it’s not called the roach patrol for nothing). But first—this being Hiaasen country—Yancy must negotiate an obstacle course of wildly unpredictable events with a crew of even more wildly unpredictable characters, including his just-ex lover, a hot-blooded fugitive from Kansas; the twitchy widow of the frozen arm; two avariciously optimistic real-estate speculators; the Bahamian voodoo witch known as the Dragon Queen, whose suitors are blinded unto death by her peculiar charms; Yancy’s new true love, a kinky coroner; and the eponymous bad monkey, who with hilarious aplomb earns his place among Carl Hiaasen’s greatest characters.

Here is Hiaasen doing what he does better than anyone else: spinning a tale at once fiercely pointed and wickedly funny in which the greedy, the corrupt, and the degraders of what’s left of pristine Florida—now, of the Bahamas as well—get their comeuppance in mordantly ingenious, diabolically entertaining fashion.

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Review

Bad Monkey is hilarious!  It's irreverent, off-the-wall, and entertaining!

 

I didn't know what to expect.  All I knew was I had looked at this audiobook every time I was in the library because the cover was so funny.  I'm glad I finally checked it out because it was such a good book.

 

Andrew Yancey is one of the most well-written, well-developed male characters I've read.  Hiassen did a fantastic job of making Yancey seem absurd and real and honest all at the same time.  I also love that Yancey isn't some perfect do-gooder--that his halo is a little tarnished and bent.  

 

There is a list of characters a mile long in this book.  So many that I would have a hard time recalling them all right now.  Each individual story was woven together into the main plot line.  I was impressed by Hiassen's storytelling. It was to the point with no fluff or filler.  

 

Bad Monkey was like a men's version of the Stephanie Plumb books, but without the foolishness and clumsiness of Plumb.  

 

I highly recommend anyone who is a fan of irreverent and somewhat absurd books, check this one out.

 

5 moons: This Bad Monkey is all good.