Bad Monkey

Written by Carl Hiassen

Narrated by Arte Johnson

A wickedly funny novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Squeeze Me 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.

“[A] comedic marvel … [Hiaasen] hasn’t written a novel this funny since Skinny Dip.”—The New York Times

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9780739385159

Carl Hiassen

Carl Hiaasen (b. 1953) is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of more than twenty adult and young adult novels and nonfiction titles, including the novels Strip Tease (1993) and Skinny Dip (2004), as well as the mystery-thrillers Powder Burn (1981), Trap Line (1982), and A Death in China (1984), which were cowritten with fellow Miami Herald journalist Bill Montalbano (1941–1998). Hiaasen is best known for his satirical writing and dark humor, much of which is directed at various social and political issues in his home state of Florida. He is an award-winning columnist for the Miami Herald, and lives in Vero Beach.

Reviews for Bad Monkey

[diana.hauser · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Bad Monkey is written by Carl Hiaasen. It was published in 2013.
Bad Monkey is part of my treasured Carl Hiaasen collection beginning with Tourist Season, published in 1986.
I recently reread Bad Monkey, as I heard the book was being made into a tv production.
I could not put the book down, it was so hysterically funny!
Don’t ask me about the plot, it would take forever to write out all the plot points. The plot does include private planes, the Bahamas, fishing boats, severed limbs, murder, voodoo, restaurant inspections and seafood.
All of Mr. Hiaasen’s books are laugh-out-loud hilarious and include stand-out topics such as crime, satire, Florida, environmentalism, bass fishing, tourists, alligators, boa constrictors, bizarre characters, situations and locations.
*****

[zot79-720973 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was kind of funny. Not laugh out loud (LOL!) funny. More like occasional amused smirk (lol) funny. The mystery was engaging, if a bit drawn out by the side adventures and extraneous activity. The characters were well drawn, if a bit over-the-top and all-over-the-map. This ain't Elmore Leonard, but who is?

[starknits_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

So 3.5 really.

Crazy story. very entertaining.

[kwskultety · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

NO one can make up stories like Hiaasen, and even though no regular characters are in this story, it was a joy to read.Not as gory as some of his earlier ones, but great dialogue.

[brumby18 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Excellent floridian usa silliness
Great characters, interesting plot, light.

[judygibson-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Nice light quickie.

[catherine_dilts · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another wild ride with Carl Hiaasen, this time in the Bahamas as well as the Florida Keys. There were so many plot complications that it took quite a bit to wrap them all up, but it all worked out in the end. Ha ha. If you're a Hiaasen fan, you know what to expect. I fell in love with Driggs.

[stephanie_m-868484 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Carl Hiaasen doesn’t balance carefully between satire and black humor in the opening paragraphs of this book, he jumps feet first into a situational comedy. This guy is admirable; he's a true-blue environmentalist, lover of the land and of justice. Even his children's books teach the right message: don't be greedy, don't be cruel, don't hurt animals, don't develop land that shouldn't be changed from the way Mother Earth made it. He writes funny characters and hilarious dialogue. Bad Monkey has his take on Bahamian vernacular, pulled off with inventive spelling which is challenging reading but worth every extra second it takes to absorb.

The writing is first rate; I liked that the protagonist, Andrew Yancy isn’t perfect, in fact far from it. For me that makes the character more believable, and I found him colorful besides.

Hiaasen has no decency. He garners stories from the actual news. Thus you are left wondering if a woman who has fallen in love (or in lust) with an ex-police officer will actually testify against him when he tries to sodomize her husband with a Hoover? At any rate, whatever the opposite of James Elroy is, Hiaasen represents it. I have been very sick lately, and to distract myself from the boring-ness of recuperating, I started Bad Monkey; named for a Capuchin so vile and ungovernable that he cannot work on Pirates of the Caribbean. The attacks of the monkey are funny enough to read the book. I recommend it to anyone, but don't let anyone else know that you are reading it. It will lower their estimation of you. I'm too old to care.

The appeal of Hiaasen to me is how he mixes the perverse and the moral, the high brow and the low brow, and other opposites to such great effect. His protagonist have their flaws, but they're never anything on the villains. And those greedy, violent schemers always get what's coming to them in the craziest ways. The path to the comeuppance is labyrinthine, but easy to follow because the humor and subject matter lighten it up and keep the story moving. Hiaasen makes me think of a Chuck Palahniuk who is less in love with his shock value and ever so slightly more optimistic about the human condition.

The only issue I had with this novel is, I also found the Caribbean accents hard going as a reader. They'll work in a movie - but reading them is too much hard work from an author whose writing style I find is normally easy on the brain. I understand the Jamaican/Bahamian/Caribbean accents with no problems. Other authors have tried to write in these accents, from around the Florida Keys, and had no problems making them both understandable, and accented. But Hiaasen failed in this area. There were passages in the novel where I had no idea what the character was trying to say, and had to take a few minutes to puzzle it out. I think this could have been done better, but as to how, I would have NO idea.

[kendallone · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I couldn't finish it. Don't know why, I just didn't find it particularly interesting or compelling. I'm past the point in my life where I need to finish every book I start. It just wasn't worth the time to me.

[carlathelibrarian · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was fun to read. It could be confusing at times and sometimes scary to think that I like to eat out. The concept is a bit far fetched, but amusing. A murder or two, some really bad restaurants, a nasty monkey, a voodoo queen, a body guard, severed limbs and who knows what might happen next.

[mojomomma_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Good detective story. Man tries to take his own death by cutting off his arm so that he can live on the milllions that he has dwindled from Medicare selling motorized wheelchairs to Florida’s elderly.

[carl_alves_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Bad Monkey was the first novel that I’ve ever read from Carl Hiassan, and it will probably be my last. It was a meandering humor/crime novel that starts off with the discovery of an arm. Detective Andrew Yancy, who just lost his job as a detective, winds up with the arm and begins investigating the case, taking him from the Florida Keys to Miami to the Bahamas.

I’m not the biggest fan of humor writing other than the brilliant Jeff Strand. Occasionally, the humor worked, but more often than not it fell flat. There were many side characters that I had little to no interest in. Even when they tied into the overall story arc, I still had little interest in them. I thought the novel went too long, and I would have been perfectly fine if they cut all of the side characters. Finally, there were some things that so deeply stretched the boundaries of reality. I would have been fine if they were unrealistic and funny at the same time, but that wasn’t the case here. It had a complete lack of realism with no pay off.

So, although there were some elements of this novel that I liked, they were outweighed by everything that I didn’t like.

Carl Alves – author of Blood Street

[jbarringer-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Setting: Florida
I found the monkey creepy and distracting from the overall story, but otherwise this was a fun murder mystery with some funny bits and a fairly interesting cast of characters, all of them a bit caricatured, but good enough for light entertainment.

[mirrani_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fans of this author say this book is not the one you should start with and I started with it. If this isn't supposed to be the best, I will certainly pick up more, because I found it rather entertaining. Here's a disclaimer though, I listened to the audiobook, which was performed wonderfully and fit very well within the genre, so that may have influenced my enjoyment of the written work.

The quirkiness of the setting and characters settled well with me even though I am not a fan of pure ridiculousness for the sake of it. I'm also not a fan of impossible happenings in crime books, where things seem over the top or far too grand in their scheme, but this time was different, almost refreshing. I can't explain why other than to put it down again to the audio telling.

I expect I'll like the other books in this series. I certainly intend to give them a try, audio or not.

[pamela_sc-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hilarious.....and dark.

[ozzie65-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

So my Hiassen hook up (thank you Randi!!!!) said I could borrow her new book and even read it before her. Now that is what I call a good friend! I returned to the lovable rogue, Andrew Yancy who is soon to be kicked out of the Monroe County Sheriff’s office for shoving a car vacuum …..well, you’ll have to read about that.

A very suspicious boating accident has resulted in a lone arm, middle finger extended, washing up in Key West. The sheriff wants Miami to handle it and dispatches Yancy, arm in tow, to take it to the ME up there.

Meanwhile, Yancy is trying to deal with development gone crazy in his quiet little corner of the world. All he wants is his miniature deer to graze peacefully and watch the sunset. But Andrew Yancy is a creative man and he does his best to foil said development.

His love life is complicated. He has a fugitive sex offender from Oklahoma with her hot pants and his burgeoning interest in the medical examiner from Miami. He is also investigating the arm on his own (off the clock) and getting mixed up in a complex plot that has a lot of moving pieces.

Over the course of the book, he will work with corrupt cops, the Russian mafia and Bahamian crims to get this mystery solved. He will survive a hurricane, dog bites, fires, bees and voodoo.

The best character so far though is the bad monkey aka Driggs. He pops up repeatedly in the book and has his own complicated relationships with his Bahamian brethren as well as visitors to his home in the Caribbean. Driggs’ was famous for acting with Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean but he was also famous for getting kicked off the movie for bad behavior.

This book is hilarious and another great beach read. I have found these Hiassen books are just the ticket to cleanse my palate after reading heavy books or books I just wasn’t that into. These are so well written that I get involved, finish them smiling and am ready to delve back into weightier tomes.

Bad Monkey is fun and funny. Highly recommend. You’ll love it!

[whybehave2002 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I'm so disappointed. I rated this on the half of the book I finished. This was not the easy flowing story that I am used to from Carl. It didn't even get me to laugh out loud so it got stale for me. Too many people that I had a hard time fitting together. The monkey was a monkey...so? Maybe I should stick to books that only have Skink as he always has me in hysterics. I hate giving up on a book but there is so little time and I want to enjoy it instead of feeling like I must slog through because of an obligation I created in my mind when I turned the first page. ?

[annbury_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a prequel to Razor Girl, Hiaasen's most recent book. It is pretty good, actually better than Razor Girl, and has lots of crazy Florida stuff.
Who knew that Miami was the home of Medicare fraud? The book is well done and a fast read,

[kerns222 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

fast cheap-shot satire. Feels like a party I went to once where we drank to much and made up plotlines. Fun enough to keep you happy for a tight airplane seat

[ewyatt_16 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A typical Carl Hiaasen romp. In the Florida Keys, Yancey has been recently relieved of his duties as a police detective as a result of an impulsive attack on his girl friend's husband. After a severed arm is fished up by a charter group, the arm figures in a medicare scam and possible murder. Engaging with a sense of bawdy humor, the book was a fun vacation read, especially with the Bahamian subplot.

[sleahey_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hiaasen's usual irreverence makes for an entertaining mystery. When a severed arm is found by some tourists on a fishing jaunt, no one wants to figure it out except for Yancy, who has been suspended from the police force for his antics.

[grandpahobo_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Funny and well crafted mystery.

[scot2-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A quirky, entertaining book. There was a vein of humour running throughout the story. Nothing could be taken too seriously, least of all the characters who all seemed a bit 'off the wall.' I was beginning to get a little bored near the end. A fun, relaxing read.

[joeydag · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Fun to read. Classic Hiaasen. If you've read one of his other novels you will enjoy this.

[etxgardener · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A mediocre Carl Hiaasen book is better than no Carl Hiaasen book in the summertime, and, unfortunately, this latest effort is decidedly mediocre.

Andrew YAncy - late of the Miami PD and more recently the Key West PD due to an unfortunate incident with a carvac and the husband of his mistress - has been given the dubious distinction of taking care of the severed arm of the victim of an assumed boating accident. His boss, the publicity adverse Sheriff, assigns him to palm the case off onto the Miami PD before Yancy assumes his new assignment on "roach patrol" (i.e. Restaurant inspector). Of course, Yancy suspects that there has been no accident and, instead, the victim has been murdered and decides to go freelance.

The usual cast of bizarre characters is in evidence: a jealous former girlfriend who also happens to be a fugitive from Oklahoma justice, a Medicare scammer, a dishonest real estate scammer, a Bahamian Voodoo queen and, of course, the bad monkey.

Unfortunately, the story just never jells and after the denouement in a Category 3 Hurricane in the Bahamas, pretty much limps to the last page. Let's hope for a better effort next time.

[dham340 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A crazy funny detective story set in the Florida keys.

Really well done.

Highly recommended.

[kaipakartik_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A fast and enjoyable read. It was funny as well. Not the best I have ever read but an entertainer.

[jarratt_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Since I typically read CIA/terrorist thrillers, Carl Hiaasen's "Bad Monkey" was a different read for me. One I'm glad I tried.

Key West Detective Andrew Yancy gets knocked down to restaurant health inspector after assaulting his former lover's husband. Meanwhile, tourists who are out fishing pull up a shark-gnawed left arm. Since it seems pretty clear the victim died in a boating accident, there appears to be no crime. But things aren't adding up for Yancy, so he sees this as an opportunity to get his job back. Many quirky characters and situations later... Well, I'll stop there.

I thought the writing was good and quite frequently humorous. The sub-plots were well fleshed out and didn't seem to be used as filler. And I loved how effectively he wrote the Bahamian dialect. It sometimes took a second read to get the phonetics, but it was very well done.

[starkravingmad_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Fast paced murder mystery through Florida and the Bahamas

[midwestms · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I love this author! His imagination never fails to amaze me. He gives us the ability to imagine that the bad guys (swindlers, defrauders, betrayers, and adulterers) get operatic comeuppances.