Bad Monkey
A wicked Florida Keys comedy-thriller from Carl Hiaasen — disgraced detective Andrew Yancy has a severed arm in his freezer and a theory about how it got there that takes him from Key West to the Bahamas. Now an Apple TV+ series starring Vince Vaughn.
Andrew Yancy was a Monroe County detective — until he assaulted his lover’s husband with a portable vacuum cleaner. Now he’s a health inspector, nicknamed “Roach Patrol,” inspecting restaurant kitchens in the Florida Keys. It’s not exactly the career he had in mind.
Then a tourist reels in a severed human arm off the Keys, and Yancy’s instincts kick in. The official explanation — boating accident, sharks, tragic — doesn’t sit right. If he can prove it was murder, the sheriff might give him his badge back. What follows pulls Yancy from Key West to Miami to Andros Island in the Bahamas, tangling him up with a twitchy widow, a Medicare fraudster who faked his own death, a voodoo practitioner known as the Dragon Queen, and one very troublesome capuchin monkey named Driggs.
Carl Hiaasen has been writing about Florida’s greed, corruption, and ecological destruction for decades, and Bad Monkey is considered one of his funniest. The New York Times called it “a comedic marvel.” The Guardian praised it for capturing Florida with the authority of someone who has truly lived it — which Hiaasen has, as a Miami Herald columnist for 45 years.
Adapted in 2024 as an Apple TV+ series starring Vince Vaughn, renewed for a second season. The book stands completely on its own — and is arguably the better experience.
Thoughts from a Looper:
This one is set squarely in Looper territory — the Florida Keys and the Bahamas, specifically Andros Island, which some Loopers visit on their way to or from Nassau. If you’re making the Bahamas crossing or anchoring in the Keys waiting for your weather window, Bad Monkey is an ideal companion. The landscape Hiaasen writes about is exactly what’s outside your porthole.
Hiaasen started visiting Key West in the 1980s while covering crime for the Miami Herald, and his feel for the place runs deep — the marina culture, the real estate developers chewing up the last beautiful corners of the state, the specific brand of eccentric that washes up on the southernmost end of the continental United States. As he told NPR: Key West “has been a pirate outpost since the 1800s” and “has laws all its own.” You’ll recognize that immediately if you’ve spent time there.
If you watched the Apple TV+ series with Vince Vaughn first, the book is worth picking up anyway — it’s faster, funnier, and the internal monologue Hiaasen gives Yancy is harder to translate to screen. A sequel, Razor Girl, was published in 2016 and brings Yancy back for another round.
Adult content note: This is Hiaasen’s adult fiction, not his middle grade work. It’s funny rather than graphic, but does include some crude humor and situations not suited for younger readers. Fine for mature teens and up.
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