Book review: Mr. Monk Is Open for Business by Hy Conrad

The forty-fourth book I read in 2015 was Mr. Monk Is Open for Business by Hy Conrad, the eighteenth in a series of novels based on the successful USA network detective series.  We were big fans of the show during its run, and I've enjoyed the book series.  (Tommy felt the idiosyncrasies of the main character diverged too much from the baseline established in the TV series.)

To be fair, he's not wrong.  The Mr. Monk of the novels is even more crippled by his phobias than his depiction on the show, largely because the author has more time and space to demonstrate, say, that Monk is afraid of elevators due to claustrophobia and acrophobia by having him go to great lengths to avoid riding in one whereas, in an hour-long show, the writers are more concerned with covering all the necessary bases of the murder investigation and are happy to put Monk in an elevator just to get to the money scene.  The most egregious discrepancy that comes to mind is that novel-Monk has a positively crippling case of coulrophobia while TV-Monk has interacted with clowns at carnivals and circuses while demonstrating only minor annoyance.

(And, to be fair to the novels, it's not like the TV writers were unswervingly consistent with his quirks from week to week, either.)

Despite the fact, the great thing about the novel line is that it was written by two men -- first Lee Goldberg, then Hy Conrad -- who were both writers on the show.  As a result, all of the dialogue is just right for the characters: you can actually hear the actors from the show saying the lines as you read.  Since the novel line began during the show's original run but continued after it ended, the books not only gave the characters further development but introduced new ones that (mostly) feel organic.

One of the new characters that didn't work, from my perspective, was a new love interest for Adrian Monk.  This novel opens having gotten rid of her, which is always a good thing.  The premise is that Natalie has gotten her P.I. license and is opening their own business rather then depending on consults with the Police Department.  The show flirted with the idea in the 5th-season episode "Mr. Monk, Private Eye," and it's somewhat surprising that the book doesn't acknowledge the fact, though less surprising that Natalie doesn't bring it up, since neither of them considered the endeavor a great success.  The cases in the book are brought to them by two recurring characters new to the novels, Natalie's AA sponsor and Randy Disher's replacement as Stottlemeyer's lieutenant.