Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen, Alfred A. Knopf, 317 pages, $26.95.
Andrew Yancy's police career is circling the toilet bowl. An angry assault involving a vacuum cleaner and a girlfriend's exhusband has found him demoted from detective to restaurant inspector, known as the roach patrol.
When an unwanted body part turns up on the end of a tourist's fishing line, Yancy's former boss asks for a favour. Ready to do anything to get on the good side of the Monroe County Sheriff, Yancy finds himself with a severed arm in his freezer and a drive to the Miami crime lab in his future.
The sheriff wants to have the Miami police deal with the arm but Yancy manages to keep coming up with links to it that don't make sense and finds his detective skills aren't all forgotten.
Murder, real estate scams, voodoo and a slightly deranged monkey go tumbling together as Hiaasen guides us through an unpredictable series of crimes committed by an unlikely roster of criminals. Moving from southern Florida over to Andros Island the story stays connected to the unattached appendage while Yancy finds himself a target.
Hiaasen manages to touch on his favourite themes of greed, corruption, environmental damage and murder all carried out with incompetent aggression by an odd collection of characters. He wraps it all up with his own version of justice, even for the monkey.
