Monkey Man

There's fantasy Bubblegum and then there's mystery Bubblegum. Monkey Man by Steve Brewer fits the mystery bubblegum category nicely. I'd consider Evanovich and Tim Cockey at the top of this category. Both have won the Lefty Award (Best Humorous Mystery). Turns out that Monkey Man was a 2007 nominee for the award. This book is the seventh in the Bubba Mabry PI series (my first) and is full of wise-guy humor that almost always works. There are zany side trips that in hard-core mysteries would be red herrings, but in this book are comedic diversions.

The book started with a bang--showing great promise. I like a dead body early in my mysteries (morbid, I know.) It paced itself after that, focusing on an unusual setting to carry the story along for a bit. There aren't too many mysteries out there that focus on an Albuquerque zoo setting. I must admit I was a little concerned at first that I couldn't like Bubba Mabry, the main character, because despite being a PI, frankly, he's a wimp. He's afraid of everything--snakes, monkeys, funerals and quite possibly hard work. He'd much rather take pictures of cracked sidewalks for ambulance-chasing-lawyers than investigate a murder, but lucky for us, he feels obligated. Unlike your typical hardcore, heavy-drinking PI, Bubba is actually happily married without the obligatory ghosts forcing him to the bottle. He's more like your middle-aged, slightly overweight neighbor; a somewhat charming couch-potato with his heart in the right place.

Despite Bubba's self-declared clumsiness, lack of motivation, and the almost-too-often realization that he might not be the best PI, Bubba does his job. His supporting cast is generally strong, although there's a character in there that will make you want to take his gun and shoot her. There are enough suspects and likeable side characters to keep things interesting and most important of all--there's a real plot and a real mystery to be solved. Not only does Bubba figure out who killed the dead body in the first chapter, he manages to sniff out and solve the mysterious deaths of zoo animals.

Yes, it's a beach read--a nice diversion--and how can you not like a book that starts with the line, "Nothing interrupts a nice chat like the arrival of a gorilla."?

I think this book compares quite favorably to the other Lefty Nominee that Brian reviewed a bit ago "47 Rules of Highly Effective Bank Robbers." I enjoyed this one more, mainly because there was only one POV--that of Bubba.

As a side note, the author, Steve Brewer, seems to know Albuquerque well--and I'm almost positive he makes some liberal puns with real places there. For example, he mentions the "Flying Squirrel" coffee houses multiple times. Just so happens there is a "Flying Star" chain in Albuquerque that resembles his description of the "Squirrel"--minus the dead body, of course. If you're ever in Albuquerque, NM, the Flying Star is well worth a stop--their desserts are out of this world and not the least bit squirrelly.