History Literature / MrMonkAndTheBlueFlu

* BoringButPractical: While Randy lacks Monk's ability to solve impossible cases, he is very efficient when it comes to managing ordinary homicides. His gift, according to Stottlemeyer, is getting people to open up to him.

* CowboyCop: Jack Wyatt lives and breaths this trope, with his relish for action and disdain for authority. He was once investigated for throwing a grenade(which he wasn't authorized to have) at a suspect.

** Stottlemeyer keeps the bullet he got in his shoulder during "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine" in a paperweight on his desk.

* DefectiveDetective: The novel takes this up to eleven by having Monk during the titular Blue Flu working with three other detectives who have been involuntarily retired — each bonkers in a different way, and each with his or her minder. Natalie finds that their issues make Monk look normal. It should be noted that the mayor hired these four (Monk and the other three detectives) because of the labor shortage. And Natalie only needs to see one look at Monk to realize that the reason the mayor wants him to lead them is because even if he doesn't know them, he probably understands their troubles better than anyone else (besides their shrinks).

* EntertaininglyWrong: After Monk busts Bertram Gruber (who the Mayor had publicly praised) the mayor accuses Monk of engineering the whole thing.

* PillowPregnancy: When Monk and Natalie go clothes shopping for Julie, Monk, being Monk, can't go five minutes without stumbling on a crime or a mystery. In this case, he inadvertently busts a shoplifting ring. One of the participants is a woman faking a pregnancy by wearing a tummy pack around her chest, which bursts open when Natalie tackles her to the ground, revealing that said pack is used to sneak stolen merchandise out of the store, including a blouse Natalie wanted to buy for Julie. Monk tells Natalie that he figured it out because the woman walked like a normal person instead of waddling, and she bent over at the waist to pick up her purse — which she could not have done if she actually was pregnant. ([[ShownTheirWork A number of shoplifters have actually been busted smuggling stuff out of stores in similar methods.]])

** When Milner is killed, most of the striking cops return to catch the killer. When Monk and Natalie show up at the station after clearing their cases, the detectives who had been on strike are shown being somewhat hostile to Monk's detectives, seeing them as scabs. Even Randy shows disgust with Monk and Natalie for taking up the mayor's offer.

** Frank Porter, an ex-detective helped by his granddaughter Sparrow, who has senility issues. Aside from that, however, he does his job well because of how tirelessly he hunts down answers.

* HiddenDepths: Wyatt of all people gets Monk out of his disappointment at being received by pointing out how he hates change, and that being reinstated would have been a big change for him to handle.

** Bertrum Gruber, the informant in Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu who gives up the Golden Gate Strangler serial killer. He then turns out to have double-crossed and killed Kent Milner, a police officer who was the real hero (as he had pulled over their suspect Charlie Herrin a day before and saw women's left shoes in the backseat of the car, proving Herrin was the killer, but he didn't arrest him because he wanted to split the reward money with Gruber). Monk is suspicious of Gruber's story from the start given that his story includes some details the police never released to the public. He proves that Gruber wasn't the real informant when Charlie Herrin recognizes Milner from a photo as the cop who pulled him over and who, although noticing the evidence sitting in plain sight, decided not to handcuff him.

** Jack Wyatt, a very Dirty Harry like detective with anger management problems who was fired after the city lost a number of lawsuits caused by his tactics. His anger management counselor Arnie is his helper. Wyatt uses these effectively in that we see him lead a SWAT team raid to capture a serial killer without any difficulty.

* DirtyCop: Kent Milner is a well-intentioned dirty cop. He's a rookie patrol officer that Monk and Natalie first meet at the scene of one of the Golden Gate Strangler's victims, and later encounter at the scene of another homicide. He stays on patrol work even after a majority of the force goes on strike, because he's working hard at his job to support his own family. But then, one day, he pulls over a guy named Charlie Herrin for a traffic violation. He sees some women's running shoes in the backseat and realizes that Herrin is the Golden Gate Strangler. Milner knows that the mayor is offering a $250,000 reward to anyone who supplies information leading to the capture of the Strangler, but he's not eligible for the reward as a city servant. So he lets Herrin go, then has a small-time petty crook he arrested for a drug purchase report the tip to the police, and then split the reward money with him. But his accomplice gets greedy, and instead shoots Milner in the head when they make the money exchange.

* PregnancyMakesYouCrazy: Lampshaded then subverted. Natalie goes clothes shopping with her boss and a heavily pregnant woman rudely snatches a blouse Natalie wanted for Julie away from her. Natalie tries to take it in stride, telling herself that hormones can affect people nastily and the other woman might be very friendly otherwise. However, then Monk deduces that the woman is part of a shoplifting ring and her "baby bump" actually contains a bunch of stolen merchandise, including the blouse, which Natalie triumphantly reclaims.

* DefectiveDetective: The novel takes this UpToEleven by having Monk during the titular Blue Flu working with three other detectives who have been involuntarily retired — each bonkers in a different way, and each with his or her minder. Natalie finds that their issues make Monk look normal. It should be noted that the mayor hired these four (Monk and the other three detectives) because of the labor shortage. And Natalie only needs to see one look at Monk to realize that the reason the mayor wants him to lead them is because even if he doesn't know them, he probably understands their troubles better than anyone else (besides their shrinks).

* RealityEnsues:
** When murders come up, Monk wants to work each one of them. Natalie has to remind him that he can't work each case because too much multitasking could lead to him making mistakes. Thus, Monk has to pick one homicide for himself and Natalie to work, while delegating the other homicides to his other detectives.
** When Milner is killed, most of the striking cops return to catch the killer. When Monk and Natalie show up at the station after clearing their cases, the detectives who had been on strike are shown being somewhat hostile to Monk's detectives, seeing them as scabs. Even Randy shows disgust with Monk and Natalie for taking up the mayor's offer.
** Despite having closed three murders in a short time and caught a cop killer, Monk and his team of detectives are still discharged from the force again once the crisis ends and the other cops come back.

* StrangerInAFamiliarLand: Due to a police strike taking most of the force out of commission, the mayor deputizes Monk and Natalie to run the Robbery-Homicide division for the length of the strike, in charge of three eccentric ex-detectives thrown off the force for many of the same reasons Monk had his own discharge. While Monk and Natalie are still investigating the same types of homicides they normally investigate, they don't have the liberty to pick and choose their cases. They have to answer every single homicide case that gets called in. And Monk finds himself swamped, having to find a way to delegate his cases out to his other detectives.

--> '''Natalie:''' The mayor was even more paranoid than Cindy Chow, and just as adept at weaving complex conspiracy theories. I couldn't decide which of their paranoid conspiracies was the most insane: he beef tat extraterrestrials and the CIA were conducting mind-control experiments on unsuspecting people, or his notion that Monk was a political mastermind who had intentionally tricked the mayor into giving a murderer a $250,000 reward.

* MissionControl: Officer Curtis, one of the few named uniformed officers not to go on strike serves this role, notifying the detectives (whether in the field or at the precinct) when there's been another murder and doing things like running license plates.
* AnOfferYouCantRefuse: The police allow the mayor to claim that he gave Gruber the reward as an intentional sting operation, but in exchange for them not contradicting his lie, the mayor has to give into their union demands.

* PillowPregnancy: A variation; when Monk and Natalie go shopping at a department store, Monk, being Monk, can't go five minutes without stumbling on a crime or a mystery. In this case, he inadvertently busts a shoplifting ring. One of the participants is a woman faking a pregnancy by wearing a tummy pack around her chest, which bursts open when Natalie tackles her to the ground, revealing that said pack is used to sneak stolen merchandise out of the store, including a blouse Natalie wanted to buy for Julie. Monk tells Natalie that he figured it out because the woman walked like a normal person instead of waddling, and she bent over at the waist to pick up her purse — which she could not have done if she actually was pregnant. ([[ShownTheirWork A number of shoplifters have actually been busted smuggling stuff out of stores in similar methods.]])

** When a cop is killed, most of the striking cops return to catch the killer. When Monk and Natalie show up at the station after clearing their cases, the detectives who had been on strike are shown being somewhat hostile to Monk's detectives, seeing them as scabs. Even Randy shows disgust with Monk and Natalie for taking up the mayor's offer.