By Carl Hiaasen
Alfred A. Knopf, 317 pages, $26.95
South Florida, Voodoo, Roach coach, Medicare fraud. These are just a few phrases that describe, Carl Hiaasen’s new book. Bad Monkey and the actions and locations that the characters we meet inhabit and work in; both legally and illegally. We meet, Andrew Yancy, a former and disgraced sheriff’s detective, who after an unfortunate incident has been demoted to restaurant inspector of Monroe County (unofficially), where the owners will bribe him to keep their establishments open, but becomes a great weight loss plan for him. Yancy is pulled into a murder when he unexpectedly is given a full left arm to keep in his freezer. It will sit next to his purple popsicles, which will become the only thing that Yancy will touch after finding cockroaches next to the shrimp. This is the beginning of Yancy and how he tries to wedge his way back into the good graces of the Monroe County Sheriff’s office.
Hiaasen takes us on a great and unusual adventure that only he can tell; we are island-hopping to the sunny Bahamas and back to Key West and get attacked by a ‘voodoo-crazed-might-have-been-in-a-movie-with-Johnny Depp-monkey’. By the end, the reader has met a cast of characters that would have been out of place elsewhere, but fit in a classic Hiaasen adventure perfectly. If you need a lighter fare for your next book and are ready to meet a cast of characters that will make you laugh and never forget, then I highly recommend this book or any Carl Hiaasen book.
Reviewed by Annie Hicks
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