Just Finished Reading Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen

Carl Hiaasen is a south Floridian journalist and novelist, having written several stories set in that area in which I grew up. Although I'd heard his name before, I never did get around to reading anything of his until, once again, I was randomly scanning the shelves of my local public library where I found a copy of one of his recent works, the 2013 crime novel Bad Monkey...

Andrew Yancy is a former Miami area police detective who has been suspended for assaulting the husband of a woman he was having an affair with...not exactly the model of a virtuous hero.  While suspended, he has been assigned as a health inspector in the Florida Keys where he resides, performing routine inspections of the local eateries.  Meanwhile, a tourist out fishing hooks a severed arm, and, before his suspension, Yancy is entrusted with taking it to Miami forensics to attempt an identification.  Ultimately, it turns out that the arm belongs to a Nicholas Stripling, a man who was under investigation for defrauding medicare.  The plot develops and before you know it, the setting shifts to the Bahamas...specifically Andros Island, where new characters, including that "bad monkey", are introduced...

Bad Monkey, with all of its serious issues and violence, was nevertheless a pretty funny novel. Hiaasen, like my favorite author Stephen King, apparently has quite a sense of humor and he infected this work (and I presume his others as well) with it.  Yancy lives on Big Pine Key and is horrified that his next door neighbor is building a high-rise structure that blocks his view of the sunset...so throughout the story he schemes to sabotage the project, with very humorous results.  No, I did not at all like Andrew Yancy, but he filled his role perfectly...Bad Monkey is good escapist literature, and I recommend it with that in mind...