A serial killer on the loose coincides with a case of "blue flu" after negotiations between the city and the police break down. Desperate, the mayor offers Monk a position as acting captain of the San Francisco Police Department, the head of a team of detectives who had all likewise been cut from the force. Can Monk deal with baffling cases, the difficulties of delegation, and the resentment of the police force to save the day once again?
Tropes:
- Boring, but Practical: While Randy lacks Monk's knack for impossible cases, he's very efficient when it comes to managing ordinary murders. His gift, according to Stottlemeyer, is getting people to open up; Randy is personable and non-threatening (especially compared to Stottlemeyer himself) and people often tell him things they shouldn't.
- Chekhov's Gunman:
- Madame Frost, the fortune teller Monk and Natalie meet after investigating Allegra Doucet's murder, turns out to have killed her and three other people.
- Bertrum Gruber, the informant 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.
- Continuity Nod:
- The book references Stottlemeyer's divorce from "Mr. Monk and the Captain's Marriage".
- Stottlemeyer keeps the bullet from when Lester Highsmith shot him in "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine" in a paperweight on his desk.
- Cowboy Cop: Jack Wyatt lives and breathes 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.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: As Stottlemeyer notes, Cynthia "Cindy" Chow sees conspiracies everywhere, and very often spots a real one where no one else can.
- Defective Detective: The novel takes this up to eleven by having Monk work murder cases during the Blue Flu 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).
- "Mad Jack" Wyatt is a hotheaded 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.
- Cynthia Chow, a paranoid schizophrenic who sees conspiracy theories everywhere, who was relieved of her badge due to her condition getting pretty severe. Her "curse" becomes a "gift" in that it allows her to tie together seemingly unrelated cases. Jasper Perry, her shrink, is her helper.
- Frank Porter, an ex-detective with senility issues. Aside from that, however, he does his job well because of how tirelessly he hunts down answers. He gets help from his granddaughter, Sparrow.
- Dirty Cop: Kent Milner is a well-intentioned dirty cop. Monk and Natalie first meet him 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 dead when they make the money exchange.
- Disability Alibi: One of the members of the shoplifting ring that Monk points out is an elderly gentleman with an oxygen tank. As soon as Monk fingers him, he tries to run - pretty darn fast for a guy with a breathing problem - but trips over his own tank and tries faking a heart attack. The mall security guard is getting worried, but the old guy's performance eventually gets so hammy that even the guard stops buying it.
- Entertainingly Wrong: After Monk busts Bertram Gruber (who the Mayor had publicly praised) for being a cop killer, the mayor accuses Monk of engineering the whole thing.
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: her belief that 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.
- Failed a Spot Check: Natalie chides herself for not noticing that the "pregnant" woman at the shopping mall didn't walk or move like one, which she of all people should have recognized.
- Hidden Depths: Wyatt of all people gets Monk out of his disappointment at discharged by pointing out how he hates change, and that being reinstated would have been a big change for him to handle.
Mad Jack Wyatt, messenger of happiness and enlightenment, and without firing a shot. Who would have believed it?
- Joggers Find Death: The Golden Gate Strangler targets women who are jogging alone, and steals shoes from them as trophies.
- Mistaken for Exhibit: Monk mistakes a Windex container for an art exhibit and waxes poetic about it. When the curator shows scorn, Natalie gives a long speech questioning what exactly makes something a work of art that leaves them speechless. At the end of the interview, Monk is gifted the Windex.
- Mission Control: Officer Susan 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.
- An Offer You Can't Refuse: The police allow the mayor to save face by claiming that he gave Bertram 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.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted here as this novel has both Dr. Charles Kroger and Charlie Herrin.
- Perpetual Frowner: Sparrow, the granddaughter and assistant of Frank Porter, is described as "working really hard to radiate boredom and discontent."
- Pillow Pregnancy: 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 figures out her involvement because the woman walks like a normal person instead of waddling, and she bends over at the waist to pick up her purse — which she could not have done if she actually was pregnant. (A number of shoplifters have actually been busted smuggling stuff out of stores in similar methods.)
- Pregnancy Makes You Crazy: Lampshaded then subverted. Natalie goes clothes shopping with Monk, 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.
- Red Baron: Jack Wyatt is known by the nickname "Mad Jack".
- Shout-Out: Monk spots a fake nun masquerading the habit of the Sisters of St. Martha of Bethany — the order Anthony Boucher's Sister Ursula belongs to. (Naturally, Monk's detailed knowledge of Catholic ecclesiology lets him spot the fake, something which would have pleased both Boucher and Sister Ursula.)
- Status Quo Is God: At the end of the book Monk's reinstatement is ended and he's back to being a consultant.
- Stranger in a Familiar Land: 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.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- 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 serial killer case, 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.
