Bad restaurants. Bad weather. Bad amputees

Bad Monkey.

Horrible ending.

For years, Carl Hiaasen has made a living turning south Florida into a lecherous carnival show starring depravity and lust. His writing skills are beyond reproach. The man can turn a magical phrase on a dime, load it with salaciousness, spray paint it with sarcasm, and deliver it with a sparkling coat of evil. He gets better with each turn of the page.

Bad Monkey is home to some of Hiaasen’s best. The story itself is solid and familiar. Bad people try to do bad things that involve attempts to rob Hiaasen’s south Florida of it’s former pristine beauty. The characters are morally flawed and fantastically self-absorbed. As he’s done in other books, Hiaasen employs a protagonist with squirrelly acquaintances and questionable judgement.

This time, our anti-hero is Andrew Yancy, a former detective whose fall from grace comes when he attacks his lover’s husband with a mini-vac. He descends to the role of restaurant inspector. Naturally, the discovery of a severed arm sends him off to a Bahamian island in search of a murder suspect, a bungling attempt to redeem himself. Cue the rib splitting antics.

What Bad Monkey lacks are the over-the-top characters of Hiaasen’s previous work. I miss Skink, the one-eyed, roadkill eating ex-Governor we met in Double Whammy. In Skin Tight, we’re introduced to an Amish hitman who loses his arm to a barracuda, only to replace it with a weed whacker. The best we get in Hiaasen’s latest work is a tiny primate with a tobacco addiction and a taste for…well, let’s just say no man wants a monkey’s teeth down there.

Bad Monkey sails along in typical Hiaasen fashion until…it doesn’t. We’re led to what appears to be a climax involving a hurricane, a shotgun, a broken fly rod, and a nubby surprise. But the climax kind of…wilts. We’re guided through another thirty pages of filler until an unsatisfying end. I was surprised and, at times, downright bored.

Hiaasen remains my favorite comedic author. Bad Monkey flung a little poo in my direction, but it’s not going to keep me from returning to the zoo.