Review - Mr. Monk Gets on Board

Mr. Monk Gets on Board by Hy Conrad

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Conrad really needs to step up his game if he wants to maintain the creativity and humor the previous books in this series.  This book was good, but it could have been so much better.  Reading the preface helps me understand that this was supposed to be a script for a episode, so he has presented us with recycled material.  Novelists need to be so much better than script writers and he fails in this effort.

The plot (from Goodreads.com): Of all the things that make Adrian Monk uneasy, change ranks high on the list. So when Natalie completes her P.I. license—and technically becomes Monk’s boss—it’s not easy for him to accept. Nor can he accept Natalie attending a business seminar at sea without him, even if it means spending a week with her on a cruise ship.

Between choppy waters and obnoxious kids, Monk finds himself in a perfect storm of anxiety. Luckily, Mariah, the cruise director, is always able to smooth things over…until someone pulls the man overboard alarm, the ship drops anchor—and the crew fishes Mariah’s dead body out of the water.

Finding alcohol in Mariah’s system, the ship’s doctor declares her death an accident, but Monk isn’t convinced. He knows that Mariah and the captain were having an affair. Could someone have pushed her overboard?

When the captain hires Monk and Natalie to look into a mysterious rash of vandalism onboard, Monk steers the investigation toward murder….

Now I am reading  Flora & Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo, the 2014 Newbery Award winner.