Working our way through our Flora & Fauna alphabet – M was for Carl Hiaasen’s 2013 novel Bad Monkey, recently adapted by Apple TV starring Vince Vaughn – but more of that later. The good thing was that no-one in the group hated it. We thought it went on a bit though, losing around 50 pages in the second half would have made it a much tauter thriller, but it is an easy read.
Hiaasen’s speciality is Florida, crafting slick and hilarious thrillers that skewer corruption and bad goings on in this part of the world. Bad Monkey is certainly full of that, with a sideline in a commentary on paving paradise, to use Joni Mitchell’s metaphor.
It begins with an arm being reeled in by a tourist on a fishing trip of the Keys. It’s assumed it’s from a shark attack, case closed until the rest of the body turns up or not. Disgraced former detective Andrew Yancy is asked to take it to the morgue in Miami. It’s better than being on ‘roach patrol’ – Yancy’s new job is now a restaurant inspector, and it’s putting him off his food. However, there’s something not right about the arm, the wedding ring is still on it, but there’s a lack of tan where the watch should be … Suffice it to say, the morgue can’t take the arm, but the doctor in charge, Rosa, takes rather a liking to Yancy and he to her. So he takes the arm home and hopes he can engineer another reason to see Rosa. Actually he decides to investigate on his own, and with Rosa’s help, he figures he can get his badge back.
His mission will take him to the Bahamas where a Neville, a local, with the help of the Dragon Queen’s ‘woo doo’ and a naughty half-tamed monkey (who was in Pirates of the Caribbean they say), is trying to prevent a developer from desecrating the beach where he lives. Back home in the Keys, Yancy is also trying to prevent a developer from building a monstrosity next door to his home, it spoils the view, steals the light, has scared the deer away and was built against code – Yancy tries everything to prevent it from being finished.
Alongside the investigation there are many comic set pieces – the stomach-churning inspections of ‘Stoney’s Crab Palace’ – they made me glad I don’t like shellfish! Then there’s his antics at foiling potential sales of the house next door, involving bees, rotting raccoons and more.
Hiaasen is clever in the way he comments on these bad Floridians. Yancy may be easy-going, but he’s a good guy. The way he takes his new job so seriously, his predecessor got free meals, is commendable. The act that got him suspended was stupid, but he couldn’t stand by and see someone hurt without doing something (and no, I’m not going to say what that was).
The 10 episodes of the Apple TV series follow the book closely, the only significant difference being that the Dragon Queen is split into two roles – mother and new Queen, her daughter. Vince Vaughn is particularly well cast as the tall and lanky, wise-cracking Yancy. Apparently it has been renewed for another series, but it’s not clear whether that’s going to be based on Hiaasen’s sequel, Razor Girl.
Would we read more by this author? Me – yes. Others – maybe or not bothered. We were all agreed though, Bad Monkey is one crazy story!
Source: Own copy. Sphere paperback, 406 pages.
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