A brief search for light-hearted audio books to fill my time at work brought me to Bad Monkey, a story about a drunken maverick detective on the outs with the force, who is looking to make money. You’ve met him before. In fact, you’ve probably read this story before, except with the words and characters rearranged. To put it another way, you wouldn’t need an infinite number of monkeys or typewriters.
The plot of Bad Monkey centres around the discovery of an arm, fished from the ocean waves of the Florida Keys, but with no corpse to accompany it. For fear of revealing too much, all I will say is that this is a detective story, and a genre romp, filled to the brim with the tropes of its ilk. If you like the premise, you will probably enjoy the story. It has action and mystery, goofy characters, and plenty of shenanigans.
Unfortunately for me, many of the tropes I encountered felt dated at best, or downright racist at worst. Most of the characters came across as caricatures rather than people—particularly the non-white characters—or weak and toxic representations of gender (all varieties included). This may have been an intentional choice by the author, but if it was, I feel that it was a poor choice; it did not ruin the story for me, but it did detract from my enjoyment.
With the exception of lacking a wishful cast, Bad Monkey is a solid offering for fans of detective fiction.
