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"Charm, mystery, and fun." - Janet Evanovich
"Sly humor, endearing characters, tricky plots." - Jerrilyn Farmer
"Can books be better than television? You bet they can - when Lee Goldberg's writing them." - Lee Child

Klappentext

Some people think Hawaii is paradise. But Monk knows that danger-like dirt-lurks everywhere. Look at Helen Gruber, the rich tourist who took a fatal blow from a coconut. The police say it fell from a tree, but Monk suspects otherwise. His assistant, Natalie, isn't exactly thrilled about Monk's latest investigation. It was bad enough that Monk followed her on vacation, and now it looks as though the vacation is over....
Smooth-talking TV psychic Dylan Swift is on the island and claims to have a message from beyond-from Helen Gruber. Monk has his doubts about Swift's credibility. But finding the killer and proving Swift a fraud-all while coping with geckos and the horror of unsynchronized ceiling fans-may prove a tough coconut to crack....

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CHAPTER ONE
Here's the thing about brilliant detectives. They're all nuts. Take Nero Wolfe, for instance.
He was this incredibly fat detective who wouldn't leave his New York brownstone. He stayed inside the house tending his orchids, drinking five quarts of beer a day, and devouring gourmet meals prepared by his live-in chef. So he hired Archie Goodwin to screen clients, run investigative errands, chase down clues, and drag people back to the brownstone to be rudely interrogated. Archie was an ex-cop or an ex-soldier or something like that, so he was well suited for the job.
Then there's Sherlock Holmes, an eccentric, wound-up, cocaine addict who played his violin all night and conducted chemical experiments in his living room. He probably would have been committed if it weren't for Dr. Watson. The doctor retired from the army with a war injury, rented a room from Holmes, and ended up being the detective's assistant and official chronicler. His medical degree and experience serving in the war gave Watson the skills and temperament he needed to deal with Holmes.
At least I didn't live with Adrian Monk, another brilliant detective, the way Archie and Dr. Watson did with their employers, but I'd still argue that the job was a lot harder for me than it was for them. For one thing, I didn't have any of their qualifications.
My name is Natalie Teeger. I've had a lot of odd jobs, but I'm not an ex-FBI agent or a promising criminology student or an aspiring paramedic, one of which I'd be if this were a book or a TV series instead of my life. I was bartending before I met Monk, so I suppose I could have mixed myself a nice, strong drink after work if I wanted to. But I didn't, because I was also a widowed single mother trying to raise a twelve-year-old daughter, and it's a good idea to do that sober.
If I'd done my research into brilliant detectives before working for Adrian Monk instead of after , I might not have taken the job.
I know what you're thinking. Nero Wolfe and Sherlock Holmes are fictional characters, so what could I possibly learn from their assistants? The thing is, I couldn't find any real detectives who were anything like Monk, and I was desperate for guidance. They were the only sources of information I could turn to.
Here's what I learned from them: When it comes to assisting a great detective, you can be an ex-cop or a doctor or have other qualifications and it's not going to make a difference. Because whatever makes your boss a genius at solving murders is going to make life impossible for everybody around him, especially you. And no matter how hard you try, that's never going to change.
That's especially true with Adrian Monk, who has a smorgasbord of obsessive compulsive disorders. You can't truly grasp the magnitude of his anxieties and phobias unless you experience them every single day like, God help me, I did.
Everything in his life has to be in order, following some arcane rules that make sense only to Monk. For instance, I've seen him at breakfast remove every bran flake and raisin from a bowl of Kellogg's Raisin Bran and count them to be sure there's a four-flake-to-one-raisin ratio in his bowl before he starts eating. How did he come up with that ratio? How did he determine that anything else "violated the natural laws of the universe"? I don't know. I don't want to know.
He's also got a thing about germs, though not to the extent that he won't go outside or interact with people, but he doesn't make it easy.
Monk brings his own silverware and dishes to restaurants. He takes a folding lawn chair with him to the movies because he can't bear the thought of sitting in a seat