I'm trying to catch up on some threads I missed the last couple of weeks, so apologies in advance, most of you have probably already read and forgotten about this one. I just had a few comments to make.
Warning: It's very long and probably boring and nobody cares.
I like the premise for this one. I posted something here a couple of years ago I believe, about how I would love to see Monk at a sci-fi convention because the situation was full of comedic possibility and it’s really a perfect setting for a Monk story to take place; a place full of people who act, dress and just *are* stranger than Monk, who are obsessive about a show in the way many of us are about “Monk”, not to mention the fact that a lot of people attend these conventions dressed in costume, and it’s really not unusual for several convention goers who don’t even know each other to come dressed as the same character/type of alien/whatever, so a killer could easily hide his/her identity and blend in with the crowd. It would even be funny if in the end, a witness was able to positively id the guy because they noticed some minor flaw in his costume that jumped out at the witness and let him/her know that this person was a poser, not a fan at all because a real fan wouldn’t be caught dead at a convention wearing a costume with such a huge flaw. I’m even more than reasonably sure that this scene at the Burgerville HQ will eventually have something to do with the convention. And for some reason, I love the idea that Ambrose wrote the episode guide for this series, and I think it’s always a good thing to have an excuse for Adrian to visit Ambrose.
I liked Natalie imagining that the HQ would be a complex of buildings all shaped like a fast food meal, because that’s the sort of thing that I think of.
The first line of the fourth paragraph annoyed me slightly because it seems to have a huge blinking sign over it that reads “EXPOSITION!”. I know it’s pretty minor, and like that just in case the person reading it doesn’t already know who Captain Stottlemeyer is, but I would think that it’s kind of unlikely that too many people who have never seen the show would read the book. I’m sure that a few might, but mostly, this book is going to be read by people who are fans of the show and characters. For all I know, giving his rank and first and last name is something the editor insisted on, but it just bugs me a little bit because to me, it reads kind of stiff and weird, especially when just a little further on, she mentions his divorce in a totally offhand and casual manner without further explanation, as if anyone reading this should know about the divorce, but they wouldn‘t know who she is talking about unless she gives his full name, complete with rank. Don’t get me wrong, though; if she had launched into a detailed summary of the captain’s divorce, I would have been really peeved. I liked her thinking it was good to see him smile and the pained expression seemed to be a requirement of the job, and everything after that, but having this part that speaks of familiarity and friendship just really brings even more attention to the ‘Captain Leland Stottlemeyer’ thing.
Then the description of the captain that follows kind of makes it feel like the book goes from addressing people who don’t know the show, to people who are familiar with it, and then back out again to people who don’t know the show. The saving grace for the sixth paragraph is the mustache bushiness in relation to the receding hairline stuff. That is funny to me and something I have noticed about a lot of men as they get older. And regardless of how bushy his mustache or how much his hairline recedes, I’m sure that a lot of posters will agree, Stottlemyer/Ted Levine is very, very attractive. He gets better all the time….
Where was I? Oh, right--
Natalie states that Stottlemeyer is in his late forties, but in Bad Girlfriend, he said he was 51. Yes, I *am* very aware that this is clearly marking me as one of those obsessive, detail driven fans mentioned in that review Alex quoted. I won’t deny that, but I thought I would mention it in the off chance that someone who has something to do with the editing of this book might see it and might feel like it was worth trying to correct. I doubt very much on either count, but still… Eh, whatever.
Well played, Mr. Goldberg.
The seventh paragraph to me seems to need some editing. I’m wondering why she is dwelling so much on this guy’s weight? I never thought of Natalie as an extremely superficial person who sees a heavy person and that’s all she can think about. If this is some clue to solving the mystery, it’s the opposite of subtle, and if it’s not a clue, then, okay, we get it! The guy is heavy! It’s been well established. Theorizing that he uses his employee discount a lot, and describing his weight again and his age here is redundant and only serves to put space between the description of Stottlemeyer’s gesture and Stottlemeyer’s actual words, so that it seems like an oddly long time passes between him pointing his thumb at the guard and addressing Natalie. I think it would probably read better, smoother like-
‘The captain turned to me and jerked a thumb towards the guard.
“Natalie, I’d like you to meet Archie Applebaum,” Stottlemeyer said. “He’s a security guard here, but back in the day he used to walk a beat in the Tenderloin.”’
When the guard mentions that he and the captain went through the academy together, it sort of tells us that they are roughly the same age, so Natalie didn‘t have to say, “…who looked to be about his age and easily twice his weight.”
The exchange that follows with the captain and the guard going back and forth about ‘once a cop, always a cop’ and the plastic badge seems a little odd to me, kind of not really sounding right for a conversation the captain would normally have, I think, because it seems to me that he’s almost a little embarrassed to praise people or say things like that to most people, and only seems to be able to do it when talking to Monk or in certain cases to someone who is seriously lacking confidence, and even then, sometimes he seems to experience some small pangs of embarrassment. It’s like he doesn’t want to give the impression to people that he ever thought they weren’t capable of doing what they were supposed to, or like he feels that doing what is expected of you shouldn’t be something most people would need to be praised for, or really, I think it's because it contradicts the image of a hardass he works so hard to project
. But then, I think that I may have occasionally seen him say things similar to this to other people and Ted Levine pulled it off and made it look natural, so that may be a matter of not actually seeing Ted deliver the lines. And again, all of this may very well have something to do with the solving of the actual case later on, though I’m not sure why, if that was the case, Monk isn’t there to hear it and maybe glean the clues from the exchange. It might read more naturally, too, if there was more description of how they were speaking, maybe they are bantering, or Archie is speaking with mild bitterness, or the captain might chuckle to let on that they are joking or something. This could be read so many different ways.
The next paragraph is also a kind of mixed bag. I like the commiseration between Natalie and Stottlemeyer, and I kind of like the acknowledgment of Sharona, but again, by giving the whole name it feels overly expository. Leaving off Sharona’s name or even just her last name, I think would sound better. Natalie’s words, ‘my daily misery’ seem out of character for her and kind of tick me off. We know that Natalie has quit many jobs before this one, and if it’s making her so miserable, I don’t know what would be holding her there. And Natalie doesn’t seem so unsympathetic to me. It seems to me that she would recognize that as miserable as it made her sometimes, it had to be worse for him because she can at least walk away from it and find another job, but there’s no escape for him. The way she is written here seems far too pessimistic and uncharitable.
Also, the parallel parking thing feels too recycled, because there was a mention of parallel parking in TV Star (I think it was the episode) and it was very well done with just the right amount of subtlety, the whole joke was carried out in just four lines, and Monk’s “All I’m saying is that parallel *means* parallel…” was just so wonderfully understated and the whole thing so perfectly carried out that it would be pretty impossible to match or top it, so it just sort of feels flat here.
Then it just kind of snowballs for a bit- Adrian becomes cartoonish, exaggerated and over the top, way too much time is spent on the parallel parking stuff, and the fact that the guard’s name is Archie combined with Stottlemeyer’s line, “Shoot him or shoot myself,” it seems like a retread from Billionaire Mugger where the killer’s name was Archie Modine, who was a former policemen, and Stottlemeyer told Randy to shoot Fraidy Cop, and when Randy said he couldn’t, Stottlemeyer asked him to shoot him instead.
I did think the many first steps toward anarchy, beginning with mixed nuts was very funny, but it seems wasted, buried as it is in all this stuff about parking that as far as I can tell, only serves to ruthlessly hammer home how abnormal Monk is, and maybe convince readers he’s really just a cartoon character, then continue on like this till it’s painful. The length of all of this just reminds me even more of how much funnier and better the parallel parking joke was in TV Star because of it’s brevity and subtlety.
It doesn’t stop with the parallel parking, though. Monk has to suggest that they move the body to the fourth or sixth floor, I guess because they are even numbers? It doesn’t work for me because it’s very rare for Monk to debate a point as trivial as this when he’s on a job; he’s commented on how close it was that the guy only broke nine bones in Warren Kemp’s hand, but didn’t suggest they break another to make it an even ten. In Makes a Friend, he asked if the toilet seat could be closed, but when the captain said no, the forensics guys hadn’t been there yet, he at least tried to accept it and move forward rather than stand there and argue the point. This feels like the whole debate is there just to give an opening for the ‘disturb the crime scene/crime scene disturbing Monk’ joke, which was mildly funny, but not enough to me to warrant the debate that lead up to it. I could practically hear the rim shot indicating that that was supposed to be funny.
The captain saying that Monk wouldn’t be human if the crime scene didn’t disturb him was pretty good, and then his order to the uniformed police office was pretty funny, but again, not good enough to justify the long, unfunny shtick leading up to it.
The revolving door part is a little better, but still, there is an awful lot of Cartoon Monk to it. I suspect that he’s having a problem going through the revolving door because the revolving door has something to do with the solution to the crime, but having it come so close on the heels of the parallel parking and the extended Natalie and Stottlemeyer gripe/exposition session with Archie the really, really overweight, insecure security guard, it’s really just tiresome and boring. The fact that the regular door is right next to the revolving door and the killer came in through the regular door are kind of red flags. It makes me wonder why the killer would have come through the regular door that required the key card rather than use the revolving door. I assume that the revolving door was locked which would explain how they knew the killer went through the regular door, except that the killer might have come through the revolving door earlier in the day and hidden somewhere in the building. But Monk’s reason for not wanting to come through the door was strange even for him. Even after he came out and Archie the Immense entered at the same time, there were still going to be a few seconds when the door would be partially empty. And Monk saying, “But when I come out, you three will be in a revolving door with one unoccupied quarter. I couldn’t leave you like that,” not only doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it’s sort of out of character. Remember the lack of the seatbelt in the FBI van? It was okay for Natalie, as far as Adrian was concerned. He was also okay with letting her be arrested for taking three pennies from the fountain for him.
I don’t like revolving doors because I find them a little disorienting and they make me kind of dizzy. I would think that would be a perfectly good reason for Monk to not want to go into it. Or the fear that the door would somehow stick with him trapped inside it, thus necessitating having the others to go through at the same time to better the odds in his mind that one of them would be stuck instead of him, or that the combined force of them all pushing would make sure it didn’t get stick.
I think a digression is in order.
The use of the word ‘waddled’ is really getting into overkill for reminding us that Archie is overweight to the point that it’s long past anything resembling a close cousin of funny. Is there a reason we must not forget that Archie is rotund? Will it be on the quiz later? Is there a reason we had to see that Enormous Archie could fit his very considerable posterior into the revolving door? Hmmm… Did Archie the Corpulent sit on the victim? What was his motive? Did the victim steal the Portly One’s lunch? Perhaps he just made one too many fat jokes. Maybe I should stop it, too. Archie might find out where I live and trundle his way down here. I suspect I would hear him coming, like Godzilla, what with all the emphasis on his weight. He must be HUGE.
He proves that he is capable of fitting into the revolving door, however, but if anyone else is in there with him, it’s a tight fit. I have to wonder, if the revolving door was open when the murder occurred and which would be why it was so important to have Monk freak over the revolving door so that Archie the Massive had to go through it with him, why would the killer mess with the locked door? Why would the other door be there but locked in the first place? There must be a lot of stuff explained in other parts of the book.
But the idea of a revolving door in hell is really funny for some reason I can’t exactly explain. I supposed if you believe in reincarnation that you could say that hell or at least the afterlife does have a revolving door. I have a friend who I think believes that hell has an escalator because she’s afraid of them, but I think that an escalator in hell would defeat the purpose, unless, I suppose, there was only one and it went down only.
Right, digression time again.
I laughed so much that...I just couldn't stop...