Book Report: Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen (2013)

After reading The Downhill Lie, Hiaasen’s nonfiction golf book, I gave myself permission to read this book, a recent acquisition. I have read many, many fine Hiaasen books in the past (see also Skinny Dip, Strip Tease, Nature Girl, Lucky You, Stormy Weather, Basket Case, and even the YA novel Hoot). Still, this is a 21st century book, so I was looking for a sucker punch, but the book came during the holy interregnum of the Obama administration, so none was forthcoming (spoiler alert!).

At any rate, the story focuses on Andrew Yancy, a former police detective in the Florida Keys who has been busted from the force for publicly sodomizing with a cordless handheld vacuim the husband of a woman with whom Yancy was having an affair. His allies on the force help to get him a food inspector gig which he talks reluctantly. A tourist on a fishing charter catches the arm of a swindler about to be taken down for a Medicare scam, and Yancy is given the job of pawning it and the case off on the Miami police. He does not succeed and pursues a murder investigation on his own time. Was it the wife and her mystery man? Meanwhile, Yancy is trying to scare off a real estate speculator who has bought the lot next to his and wants to build a large home which will block Yancy’s view. Also, he is trying to woo the medical examiner in Miami while trying to determine what to do with the woman with whom he is having an affair, whom he learns is a fugitive teacher who seduced a student fifteen years ago. Oh, and someone is building a resort on a Bahaman island, the homestead of a simple fisherman who won the titular bad monkey and who commissions the local woodoo woman to curse the resort builder.

All these threads come together, of course. The book makes the Big Reveal about half way through the book, and then we get another half where the characters deal with the ramifications of the big reveal and a gradual denouement that probably goes on a little too long.

But you’re not reading the book for the plot, per se. Instead, you’re reading the book for the characters and the zany situations and…. Well, I was kinda meh. Yancy’s a bit of a slacker, and he smokes a lot of pot, and one wonders how it is he gets these attractive women to throw themselves at him. And it might have a couple too many situations and characters to be truly compelling. Or maybe I’ve outgrown Hiaasen and Dave Barry (maybe not–my review for The History of the Millennium (So Far) last year doesn’t indicate meh, but perhaps it was the nostalgia for a simpler time–2008–talking).

Two things:

• Does Trump make an appearance? You betcha! This is a pre-presidency book, though, so it’s not hateful. A character says:
  

  “Showin’ off is all. He said he come into serious money, but that could mean he won eighty-five bucks on the Lotto scratch-off. Now all of a sudden he is Donald fucking Trump.”

• The baddest word appears. This came out in the first year of the second Obamanency, which is far later than you find it in other writers. In the dark age of the 20th century, as in this book, it appears to show how backward the person using it is, but that petered out somewhere around 2005 in most books, or at least most books I’ve read after that (which is not that many, I admit). But it was noticeable mostly for the copyright date of the book.

Just things you can comment on and notice about books and how just the asides can date them. Or not.

So the book was all right. It didn’t drive me away from Hiaasen, but it looks as though I’ve read most of his ouevre already anyway.

Oh, and the titular monkey? I’m really not sure why he got the title slot, honestly. Perhaps Hiaasen had bigger plans for him.