Literature / Mr Monk Is Miserable

After following Dr. Kroger to Germany and solving a murder there, it's time for a vacation in Gay Paree! What could be better? For Adrian Monk, almost anything — but much to his pleasure and Natalie's dismay, every locale Monk visits somehow gets involved in murder. Shortly after arriving, Monk finds a recent skull in the Paris catacombs, and soon afterwards, a woman sitting at the same table with him dies a violent death. To add further distractions, the case drags Monk into meeting the Freegans — a scavenging society whose lifestyle disgusts the obsessive detective to his core. Can Monk win past his discomfort to crack the case, and will any part of his and Natalie's Parisian vacation prove successful?

This book contains examples of the following tropes:

• Alliterative Name: Inspector Guy Gadois.
• Boring, but Practical: Monk surprises Natalie by saying he wants to see the Paris Sewer Museum, since the Paris sewers were the first modern system in Europe and helped pave the way for the rest of the world. Natalie argues that Paris is famous for much more exciting things - architecture, fine art, literature, and cuisine - and he asks her if any of those things could have been possible if Paris's streets were awash with effluent, and its architects, artists, authors and chefs were too busy dying of cholera. She admits he has a point.
• Busman's Holiday: Natalie uses emotional blackmail to get Monk to come along with her to Paris. There is a murder on the plane, which causes a grumpy lampshade hanging from Natalie. Then, he finds a skull in the catacombs that was not dumped there a few hundred years ago, but less than twelve months ago. Later, Monk and Natalie are at a blind restaurant (where you eat in pitch-black darkness). Another woman sits down, and is about to talk to them about the skull when a shadowy assailant stabs and kills her with a steak knife, then escapes in a matter of a few seconds.
• Character Outlives Actor: This novel, like Mr. Monk Goes to Germany, were written before but published after the death of Stanley Kamel, who played Dr. Kroger in the show. However, it was set prior to "Mr. Monk Is On the Run", filmed when Kamel was still alive.
• Continuity Nod:
  • A number of events that happened in the last book are mentioned again, such as Natalie recapping the events that led her to decide to blackmail her boss or mentioning punching Dr. Kroger.
  • Inspector Le Roux mentions the murder in France that Monk solved by reading a newspaper article about the case in "Mr. Monk and the Paperboy."
  • When Monk and Natalie visit a blind restaurant where you eat in complete darkness, Natalie brings up the time Monk got blinded (in "Mr. Monk Can't See A Thing") to think about the positives of eating in such a place, reminding him how he suddenly no longer cared if things were clean or orderly.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Lucien Barlier began his scavenging, non-consumerist lifestyle after his girlfriend was hit by a truck while talking to him about the image driving a particular car would project on him.
• Death by Woman Scorned: Flight attendant Marise Lambert kills her boyfriend, businessman Heinrich Wilke, when she discovers he is actually married.
• Death in the Clouds: Monk and Natalie stumble upon a murder before they even get into France when a German businessman is killed on their flight.
• Groupie Brigade: Randy's music turns out to have a cult following in France, and when Randy does a performance in a fan club, the stage gets surrounded by squealing fan girls, complete with underwear throwing, which naturally discombobulates Monk, humiliates Stottlemeyer and disgusts Natalie.
• Gay Paree: Played with. Natalie expects to eat croissants and whatnot while enjoying the rustic splendor of the city. As soon as she sees the lights on the Eiffel Tower, and the Roue de Paris, and the Arc de Triomphe merely because L'Arche de le Defense is visible from the top of it, she launches into a long Character Filibuster (with which Lee Goldberg may or may not have agreed) about how commercialism and "doing things bigger" has ruined her beautiful city from being the way it was twenty years ago on her honeymoon with Mitch. Then she finds an enormous parisian flat with a personal cafe and a waterfall being run by a sewer mutant vagrant (It Makes Sense in Context) and repeatedly waxes poetically throughout the book about how Paris even has better garbage than San Francisco ^note  despite only ever seeing garbage from the 7th arrondissiment. Triple-subverted (or was it?) with a lampshade by Randy when the police are completely blasé about a criminal plummeting to his death directly in front of them:
  Randy Disher: Now I understand why every French movie I've ever seen ends with a suicide.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Apparently In-Universe, the song Randy wrote about Stottlemeyer, I Don't Need a Badge, has a cult following in France. Randy performs it with Inspector Guy Gadois, who adds in European substitutions such as "goatee" instead of "mustache".
• Hazmat Suit: Monk special-orders one for his and Natalie's trip into the Paris Sewer Museum. When she invites him to pose for a cell-phone photo with one of the exhibits, he agrees, but refuses to take off the mask and hood so she can see his face.
  Natalie: How will people know it's you in the photo?
  Monk: Who else would it be?
  He had a point.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Upon seeing her businessman boyfriend with his wife, stewardess Marise Lambert decides to kill him. To deflect suspicion from herself, she uses his allergy to nuts, handling his food after handling peanuts for the other passengers. No one suspects murder until Monk speaks up.
• Mythology Gag: In "Mr. Monk Goes to the Dentist," we were introduced to Randy's single, "I Don't Need a Badge," a condescending rock song (with a very terrible music video) directed at Stottlemeyer following Randy's temporary resignation from the force. Here, when Randy is introduced at the Paris police prefecture, Inspector Guy Gadois identifies him right away, and apparently has heard the song a lot. Gadois's only changes to the lyrics have been replacing some American terminologies with European ones - "captain" with "Inspector" and "mustache" with "goatee". Natalie is somewhat disturbed, as is Stottlemeyer.
• Parting-Words Regret: Barlier confides to Natalie that his girlfriend was killed in a car accident while they were on the telephone with each other, discussing whether buying a certain model of car would be good for his image. It made him realize what an empty, materialistic lifestyle they had both been living and moved him to embrace Freeganism.
• Shout-Out: Inspector Guy Gadois is named after an alias that was used in one Inspector Clouseau story.
• Super-Senses: Monk goes into a blind restaurant (e.g. you sit and eat in total darkness) and is able to hear someone stealthily approaching their table. Then he senses from a thumping noise that the woman sitting with him and Natalie at that table has been fatally stabbed, even before someone turns the lights on to reveal the body.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Chief Inspector Philippe Le Roux and Inspector Guy Gadois are remarkably similar to Stottlemeyer and Disher.
• Weaponized Allergy: A flight attendant on Monk and Natalie's plane uses her boyfriend's peanut allergy to kill him upon finding out he is actually married. It backfires on her because she uses her bare hands covered in peanut dust to personally deliver his sandwich when she used tongs for the other food. That alongside her fingerprints on the peanut wrapper are the proof needed to arrest her.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Dr. Kroger has some choice words for Natalie for her refusal to help Monk out with his murder investigation.
• Woodchipper Of Doom: Nathan Chalmers supposedly committed suicide by jumping into one of these. Since his skull turns up in France, the team figures he chucked a homeless man into it instead, chopping off one of his own fingers to make the police believe it was Chalmers in there.
• You Should Have Died Instead: Monk ultimately figures out that Antoine Bisson, the artist whose graphic novel got Aimee Dupon interested in the Freegan movement, murdered Nathan Chalmers and Aimee herself, once she started to figure out his plot. Bisson says that he loved Aimee deeply, and Barlier retorts that he should have killed himself rather than killing her. Bisson agrees, and takes a dive out the window before anyone can stop him.