Literature / Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse

Julie hires Monk to look into a very personal case — the death of Sparky, the firehouse dalmatian that would always come to her school for fire safety lessons. Simultaneously, Stottlemeyer begins investigating an apparent accidental death that turns out to be arson. It doesn't take long for Monk to connect the two crimes or to figure out the person responsible — Lucas Breen, a CEO who also happens to be on the police commission. Can Monk find the evidence to convict Breen before his chances of bringing justice to this case go up in smoke?

This book includes examples of the following tropes:

• Accidental Aiming Skills: Randy shoots Breen's gun out of his hand, then admits he was aiming for his chest.
• Affably Evil: Played with. Mrs. Throphamner, Julie's babysitter, is revealed in the ending to have murdered her husband for infidelity. But one wouldn't know, as she acts rather mild-mannered and sweet, and even expresses guilt over the murder. Monk even points out that she's a rather dependable babysitter. Natalie, on the other hand, is horrified that Monk allowed a murderer to babysit Julie, even if she didn't harm a hair on her head.
• Asshole Victim: Esther Stoval isn't really all that missed by any of her neighbors. She was a miserable woman who spied on her neighbors and snitched on them for things that were none of her business. This snitching is what ultimately got her killed, as she tried to blackmail Breen about an extramarital affair he was having, prompting him to murder her and burn down her house, in the process also eliminating the last obstacle to his planned redevelopment of her block.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Sparky, the murdered firehouse Dalmatian, was an absolute sweetheart to almost everyone who knew him but could be quite ferocious toward trespassers.
• Bittersweet Ending: Lucas Breen has been arrested, Sparky has been avenged, and Julie is grateful to Monk for solving the case. But Natalie breaks up with Joe, as she recognizes that despite his amazing personality, she doesn't want to risk going through the heartache of watching a man she loves endanger himself on a regular basis.
• Chekhov's Gun: Monk claims to be allergic to cats. Then he makes the discovery that Lucas Breen is also allergic to them, nailing him for murdering Esther Stoval.
• Crime After Crime: Breen suffocates Esther Stoval with a pillow and then burns down her house. However, he leaves behind the overcoat he wore because of the rain, and he fears that the police will find the monogrammed buttons with his initials. He goes to the nearest firehouse, where he is surprised and forced to kill a Dalmatian to steal a firefighter's protected gear. Though this allows Breen to get his overcoat back, he gets mugged shortly after returning the stolen gear to the firehouse. The coat is too burned to be usable, so he tosses it in a dumpster to dispose of it. However, a homeless man happens to grab it that same night. When Monk, Natalie and Stottlemeyer are confronting Breen and accusing him of Esther's murder, Breen happens to see the homeless man wearing the overcoat that used to be his own. So a few days later, Breen tracks the man down, beats him to death with a brick, and then takes the overcoat back, and burns it in his fireplace.
  Stottlemeyer: C'mon, Monk, are you sure about this? You've got him killing old ladies, dogs, and bums. What is he, some kind of a Serial Killer?
  Monk: He's just a man who wants to get away with murder. The sad thing is, he has to keep killing to do it.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: Monk suspects Lucas Breen, rich CEO of a development company, and who also sits on the police commission, of killing an old woman and setting her house on fire, then walking to a nearby firehouse, killing a Dalmatian there, and stealing a coat and helmet. Even though Monk convinces Stottlemeyer and Disher, they are unable to capture Breen because of a lack of solid evidence, and because Stottlemeyer gets orders from his superiors to quit harassing Breen. Secretly, he does order some tests on firefighting gear from the firehouse Breen visited to get the equipment. After they accuse him of the death of a homeless man, Stottlemeyer risks being demoted. Monk only connects Breen to the killings because Monk and Breen are both allergic to cats - which the fire victim kept a large litter of, and the overcoat Breen wore collected a lot of cat dander.
• Disability Alibi: Downplayed, but Monk dismisses Gregorio Dumas as a suspect due to how he's too fat and out-of-shape to have outrun Sparky long enough to have reached the murder weapon.
• Everybody Has Standards: Lucas Breen's secretary is every bit as smug and smarmy as her boss, and even takes sadistic pleasure at the idea of Stottelmeyer and Natalie groveling at her boss's feet to apologize. She even deliberately impedes them when they try to catch him. But when Breen takes out a gun and threatens to shoot Monk, she's mortified at the spectacle.
• Friend to All Living Things: Joe Cochran, the fireman who worked with Sparky, took him home when he wasn't working, and Natalie gets her first chance to interview him while he's surrounded by and petting Esther Stoval's cats.
• Hidden Disdain Reveal: Inverted. Gregorio Dumas is a sleazy man who is filing a Frivolous Lawsuit against the fire department and insults Sparky because it turns out that he impregnated Dumas's show dog. However, when Monk confronts him on this, Dumas admits that he actually liked Sparky a lot, didn't mind Sparky knocking up his dog, and only pretended to hate Sparky to make his lawsuit more convincing.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Natalie's take on Esther Stoval and her neighbors is initially a hit-and-a-miss. She thinks that regardless of Esther's reasons for not selling her house, she's just a lonely old woman who kept the house out of sentimental reasons, while her neighbors are heartless for celebrating her death (and the money they're being paid to move out). But as she and Monk interview more and more of the neighbors, she steadily realizes she may have judged them too harshly, and Esther's death wasn't entirely undeserved.
• Impersonating an Officer: Breen steals a firefighter's gear to reenter the active fire scene and retrieve his overcoat.
• Improvised Weapon: Monk uses a pair of sourdough bowls filled with clam chowder to splatter Breen's windshield as he tries to escape, causing him to crash. Stottlemeyer admits he can't wait to put the method in the report.
• In Harm's Way: Joe Cochran, Natalie's Love Interest, gets injured in a fire midway through the book and considers it just part of the job. Natalie can tell from the way he describes his work that he loves it and doesn't intend to quit any time soon. Ultimately, that's why their romance doesn't work out — Natalie has already lost her husband and doesn't want to put herself or her daughter in that position again.
• Phone-In Detective: Monk solves almost a dozen open cases just by glancing at the files on Randy's desk.
  Monk: (pointing from file to file) Definitely the mother-in-law. It's a no-brainer. The twin brother. The shoe-shine man. The bike messenger. The beekeeper, the long-lost aunt, and the podiatrist. You dropped a file. The nearsighted jogger. He couldn't possibly have seen the woman in the window. He wasn't wearing his glasses.
• Pose of Supplication: Natalie and Stottlemeyer pretend to do this to make Breen let his guard down after he sics his high-profile friends on them. According to his secretary, Breen loves it when people beg him for mercy in relation to business dealings.
• Railroad Plot: Breen wants to redevelop the block on which Esther's house is located. While her neighbors are willing to sell their houses to his company, Esther refused, and while Breen was willing to get creative to work around her, she tries to scare him into backing off by threatening to expose his affair with Lizzie Draper.
• Red Herring: After she and Monk interview a local dog owner who reputedly hated Sparky, Natalie thinks they've got their culprit. It turns out he is guilty, but of something completely unrelated to Sparky's death.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Monk and Natalie suspect that Breen, who sits on the San Francisco Police Commission, is responsible for a string of crimes including murder and arson. While Stottlemeyer is convinced of Breen's guilt as well, Monk's investigative tactics lead Breen to accuse them of harassment, making their effort to build a case against him that much harder. Questioning Breen again, this time for killing a homeless man, causes Stottlemeyer to get officially reprimanded by the chief, with the notice to appear at an IAB hearing and explain himself, thus risking a demotion.
• Sexy Shirt Switch: When Monk and Natalie are questioning Lizzie Draper, she's wearing a shirt with monogrammed buttons. Monk realizes later it's one of Breen's, left behind from one of his trysts with her, and is what helps him establish Breen's motive for murder.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Joe Cochran finds Monk staying at Natalie's house (due to Monk's apartment being fumigated) and initially gets the wrong idea.
• Shooting It Out Of Their Hands: Randy shoots Breen's hand as he takes aim at Monk. He mentions afterwards it was an accident; he actually intended to hit Breen center-mass.
• Shout-Out: Natalie and an unusually snarky Monk intentionally model the questioning of a suspect after a round of Jeopardy! to make him sweat (although it turns out he only did some of the stuff they suspect him of).
  Monk: Here's another answer. To wipe your footprints off the firehouse floor. Can you tell me the question? You aren't even trying, Mr. Dumas.
  Dumas: I am, I just don't know the question. The answer makes no sense.
  Natalie: I know, I know.
  Monk: Yes, Natalie, what's your guess?
  Natalie: Why did Mr. Dumas steal the towels?
  Monk: Correct ...Natalie is winning this round, Mr. Dumas. Your going to have to guess the right question to this answer to say in the game. Here it it: Fifteen years in prison.
  Dumas: What the hell are you talking about?
  Monk: No, I'm sorry, the correct answer is: "What's the combined jail term for filing a fraudulent lawsuit and committing an extreme act of animal cruelty?"
• Spanner in the Works: Randy ends up being the key player in Breen's arrest. In the climax, Breen narrowly escapes, if not for Monk obscuring his car's windshield with clam chowder bread bowls. Even then, he comes out of the car armed with a gun and ready to shoot Monk, despite his protests. It's only because Randy arrived on the scene of his own volition that he came in time to shoot the gun out of Breen's hand, saving Monk from being another victim of Breen's body count.
• Sudden Downer Ending: Played for laughs. As Monk prepares to move back home, he casually informs Stottlemeyer that Mrs. Throphamner, Julie's babysitter, is actually a murderer and he'd known about it for some time but chose to sit on the information because the evidence wasn't going anywhere and he was busy with the main plot of the book. Natalie is understandably infuriated that Monk was willing to leave her daughter in the care of someone so dangerous and storms off.
• Terrified of Germs: After Natalie looks into a dumpster where Breen's overcoat may or may not have been dumped, it takes her a while to talk Monk out of calling a Hazmat team to decontaminate her, but still she has to do some extensive cleaning to convince Monk that she isn't infected.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Breen is best pals with the Mayor and with the Governor, who were at the fundraiser that acted as his alibi. This complicates matters as Monk and the others try to find enough evidence to convict him.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: After Monk realizes Gregorio Dumas is innocent of killing Sparky, it's never mentioned whether Dumas faces charges for filing a false lawsuit or trespassing on firehouse property to dig up the gold a long-dead outlaw stashed there.
• Working the Same Case: Monk and Natalie stop by a North Beach firehouse to investigate the death of Sparky, a beloved firehouse dalmatian bludgeoned with a pick-axe during an apparent break-in. They also stop by a nearby house fire in which a 64 year old woman named Esther Stoval was killed. Monk deduces that Esther's death was actually a Fiery Cover-Up. Her house, we learn, was one of several scheduled for demolition for a new condo complex. When Monk, Natalie and Stottlemeyer question Lucas Breen, the developer, Monk immediately pegs him as Esther's killer. After Monk and Natalie re-question a dog-loving witness who saw a man dressed as a firefighter leaving the firehouse after Sparky was killed, Monk realizes that Breen killed Sparky in the course of stealing firefighting gear so he could re-enter the burning house to recover evidence that could've incriminated him without emergency crews noticing him.