Bad Monkeys transports with all the complexity of an episode of Kim Possible. Procedural trappings and druggy asides felt forced. It was as if David Icke wrote Men In Black 4.

Totally wild premise, very easy & fast read, and entertaining.

Unreliable Narrator describes her work as an assassin for a Benevolent Vigilante Conspiracy putting down Bad Monkeys (evil doers such as undetected serial killers) and her subsequent involvement with her group’s Nebulous Evil Organisation mirror opposite.

My dead tree copy of the book was a modest 227 pages. It had a 2007 US copyright.

Matt Ruff is an American author of science fiction, thriller and comedic novels. He has written seven (7) novels. This is the second novel of the author's that I have read. The first being, Sewer, Gas and Electric: The Public Works Trilogy.

This book has languished on my hardcopy TBR pile for almost a decade. I found it while I was cleaning. I started reading it in an idle moment, and finished the first half in one sitting.

The best part of the story was within a series of doctor-patient interviews with flashbacks. Ruff did a good job of keeping me teetering back and forth in trying to decide if the protagonist (Jane Charlotte) was a psychopath, delusional, or a pawn in an existential battle between good and evil.

In the second half, the story jumped the shark. Jane’s monologue became a bizarre parody of the Action Girl trope. The nature of reality was now in question. The story was much better when she only could have had paranoid personality disorder and might be an agent of a vigilante organization. The story ended in a series of telegraphed switch, double switch, and switch again that felt rather half-hearted.

Prose as good. In places it was very good. The author had several interesting turns-of-a-phrase that left me chuckling. However, while dialog and descriptive prose were good, action sequences were weak. They felt very abbreviated in comparison to the dialog and descriptive prose.

Jane provided the story’s single POV. She’s a troubled woman whose life story is given through a series of flashbacks from her early teens to late middle age. It was an interesting litany of poor choices, spiced with peculiar rationalizations. Phil, Jane’s younger brother was an important non-character. For a large part of the story, he might have been Jane’s imaginary brother. That was frankly better for him. The folks from both the Existential Organizations borrowed heavily from The Men in Black trope. More interesting were the strange characters of the San Francisco demimonde sketched-out in the extended flashbacks chronicling Jane’s life. I thought the reprobates who were Jane’s victims were particularly well done.

I like stories with an unreliable narrator that’s identifiable up-front. Here it was quickly obvious that Jane was a sociopath, but possibly a psychopath. Then there was the challenge of deciding if she was also delusional, or there really was a vigilante organization for justice. One of Jane’s most compelling rationalizations was that a psychopath could be an ideal agent of Good. With the introduction of a parallel organization for Evil the story became less interesting to me. At that point it became about the existential conflict between good and evil and the nature of reality. I felt this was too heavy for the sometimes-comedic nature of the story's beginning. I’m also more interested in the more mundane mind game of, “was there a benevolent conspiracy employing psychopathic assassins”? The story devolved from there. I suspect Ruff meant to indicate Jane was becoming more delusional as the narrative became more Matrix-like . It ended in a predictable battle between good and evil, with an almost bewildering series of reversals that you could see coming.

Spoiler

There were three (3) reversals and Jane dies in the end.

The story was well written. Its: prose, characters, plot (mostly) and world building (mostly) were good. In places it was funny. However, I’m less interested in the metaphysical than I am in psychosis. The smaller story of psychotic assassin for justice employed by a benevolent conspiracy was as metaphysical as I am willing to get. As the story got further OTT with the exploration of the nature of reality—I lost interest. At that point, I felt that the mind games that were entertaining in the beginning, to not be weighty, but to be dead weight. Thankfully, the story was brief. In summary, this story started out well, but ended badly for me when it became too overtly about the battle of good vs. evil and the nature of reality.

I picked this book up because I was visiting the new library and wanted to check out some books on the first day it was opened. I saw that it was a bright color, that it had an interesting name, and that Christopher Moore liked it; that was enough for me to bring it home. That turned out to be a great decision.

I *really* like how the book was written: conversational chapters separating each new narrative, and the story unfolding with details of the narrative being brought into question. I loved that I spent the whole story trying to decide not only who was lying, but whether any of the events really happened. I was torn between sorting possibilities in my mind to figure it out myself and reading more so I could know for sure.

Also, the main character has some real depth to her... I spent the whole book trying to figure her out.

I'm going to have to see if other Matt Ruff books are as good as this one.

A trippy little book about dueling secret societies.

What a ride, that's almost all I have to say. But not quite. Axe wielding Harelquins, mimes and clowns, ray guns that shoot Myocardial Infarctions or Narcalepsey ?? Organizations to stop evil doers and Anti organizations full of evil doers.Yeah this book was out there. It even had drugs that allow people to stop time and dodge bombs like a ninja. Over all a highly enjoyable book, with page turning action and plot twists that felt like rollercoaster rides. Needless to say, I was left guessing until the very last chapter. I will definately be picking up another of Mr. Ruff's books at some point, and that, at least is no surprise!