Andrew Yancy¡Xlate of the Miami Police and soon-to-be-late of the Monroe County sheriff¡¦s office¡Xhas a human arm in his freezer. There¡¦s a logical (Hiaasenian) explanation for that, but not for how and why it parted from its shadowy owner. Yancy thinks the boating-accident/shark-luncheon explanation is full of holes, and if he can prove murder, the sheriff might rescue him from his grisly Health Inspector gig (it¡¦s not called the roach patrol for nothing). But first¡Xthis being Hiaasen country¡XYancy must negotiate an obstacle course of wildly unpredictable events with a crew of even more wildly unpredictable characters, including his just-ex lover, a hot-blooded fugitive from Kansas; the twitchy widow of the frozen arm; two avariciously optimistic real-estate speculators; the Bahamian voodoo witch known as the Dragon Queen, whose suitors are blinded unto death by her peculiar charms; Yancy¡¦s new true love, a kinky coroner; and the eponymous bad monkey, who with hilarious aplomb earns his place among Carl Hiaasen¡¦s greatest characters.
Here is Hiaasen doing what he does better than anyone else: spinning a tale at once fiercely pointed and wickedly funny in which the greedy, the corrupt, and the degraders of what¡¦s left of pristine Florida¡Xnow, of the Bahamas as well¡Xget their comeuppance in mordantly ingenious, diabolically entertaining fashion.
