Mr Monk Goes to Germany (2008) by Lee Goldberg

The Mr Monk series is definitely a go-to for me when I am in need of a comfort read. Happily, I am at a good point in the series where I have read quite a few but I also still have many more to come. I have bought the remaining three titles that I needed to complete the series written by Lee Goldberg (there were four more written by Hy Conrad). My husband was pleased to hear about this purchase, as he has read all of the Mr Monk books we currently own.

Synopsis

‘Adrian Monk is on a roll solving murders as fast as they come, and not counting his Wheat Chex until they’re in the bowl. But when his therapist, Dr. Kroger, leaves for Germany, Monk can’t tie his shoes, forgets how to swallow, and loses track of his blinking. Desperate, he follows Dr. Kroger to Germany where he sees a man with six fingers. The man responsible for his wife’s death or was it just his imagination? Now Monk has to deal with his phobias and the unfriendly polizei to find his man.’

Overall Thoughts

In keeping with the rest of the series Natalie Teeger is the story’s narrator and having read a few of these books, I have a good idea of what to expect from the opening pages, such as Natalie’s usual spiel about how difficult, but brilliant, Adrian Monk is to work with. I found this section more generic than usual, perhaps a bit too samey/repetitive. Nevertheless, there were still some new amusing details about Monk:

‘But it’s not easy dealing with a man who regularly disinfects his box of disinfectant wipes with a disinfectant wipe, who measures his ice cubes to ensure they are perfect cubes, and who once demanded at a crime scene that the police rearrange the cars in an adjacent car parking lot alphabetically by their license plates, and then in groups by their make, model, and year of manufacture, so that he could concentrate.’

It is easy to come up with annoying requests, but I think Goldberg does a good job of creating ones which just make the request that little bit more annoying. In the passage above for example, it is the cars in an ‘adjacent’ car park Monk wants re-arranging, and that extra distance makes it even more of a hassle to comply with, in my opinion.

When Natalie arrives at Mr Monk’s building there is police tape around it and a police car, so naturally she fears the worst, but as we might expect, Adrian is not in too much peril – at least not from our point of view. It was he who put up the crime tape and he has reported the burglary of a sock, refusing to believe that it is more likely he has just lost it when doing his laundry. Unsurprisingly Monk magnifies the loss of the sock:

“I will pursue my sock to the ends of the earth,” Monk said. “I won’t rest until the balance of nature has been restored.”

“One sock is all that it takes to knock nature off balance?”

“Can’t you feel it?”

I love the way the high tension is undercut by the absurd situation and knowing that it is coming does not diminish your enjoyment, as instead you try to anticipate what Monk has been up to.

An episodic structure is not unique to this book in the series, but it is one of the stories in which it is more pronounced, as there are at two “mini cases” Monk solves before encountering the six-fingered man in Germany and a more “main” case to solve. Of these two mini cases I would say the first one is there to demonstrate Monk working at his best, whilst the second one shows him struggling to concentrate as he has lost count of his blinks. I think the second case is much more achievable for the reader to solve. What also adds to the episodic nature of the novel is the time devoted to Monk’s dilemmas getting to Germany and finding Dr Kroner. This section is a lot of fun, as it is enjoyable watching Monk cause chaos in Germany.

I like how both the TV series and the book series show Adrian as a flawed individual. He has a sad backstory, which is easy to sympathise with, but I don’t think the reader necessarily wants to be sympathising with Monk all the time, that would become more akin to pity. So it is helpful to have veins within each narrative which make Mr Monk more of a challenging person to be around a.k.a. a pain in the rear end. In this story one of Monk’s less likable qualities is his prejudice and intolerance towards those with missing limbs. He is offended by their lack of symmetry and he is unable to see the person. He wants to be able to “re-balance” them like he would an object. There are other characters in the book who challenge Monk’s position, so it is not a viewpoint which is condoned. A consistent way Adrian can annoy those around him is his tendency to ignore information he doesn’t want to hear. However, I think Mr Monk Goes to Germany describes this in an interesting way:

‘“You didn’t listen to a word I said.”

“Yes, I did,” Monk said. “But just the words that made sense, which was roughly one out of ten.”

“You mean you only listened to what you wanted to hear.”

“Of course. Why would I do otherwise? That would be like intentionally eating something that makes you sick.”

I couldn’t argue with that analogy. It was totally accurate and unintentionally revealing. He couldn’t listen to anything that conflicted with his extraordinary rigid worldviews.’

Goldberg is adept at coming up with memorable imagery, as shown above, but also at the end of the following section (which is a particular favourite):

‘Wherever Mr Monk goes, you can always count on a dead body showing up sooner or later. Maybe that’s why he never received invitations to weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, parties, movie screenings, time-share presentations, or anything else. Nothing kills a good time faster than a killing. He attracts more death than Jessica Fletcher and she’s practically the Grim Reaper in a housedress.’

I think it is imagery like this refreshes more familiar ideas and tropes.

The more developed case Monk falls into, in Germany, becomes something of an inverted mystery (which occurs in other Monk books) and due to being in a new location and not having friendly police contacts, Adrian has some new challenges to proving the killer’s guilt. I don’t think this is a case you are meant to be able to solve, but it is fun watching Mr Monk do so. And in a comfort read, reading more for the characters than the puzzle, might be more important. Do you agree? Does it depend on the comfort read occasion or book? It is not a fixed idea of mine, but I do wonder if characters have a greater effect on our emotions in comfort reads.

Rating: 4/5