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Bad Monkeys

A Novel

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

"Bad Monkeys has wit and imagination by the bucketload. . . . Buy it, read it, memorize then destroy it. There are eyes everywhere."—Chris Moore, bestselling author of A Dirty Job and Lamb

Jane Charlotte has been arrested for murder. She tells police that she is a member of a secret organization devoted to fighting evil; her division is called the Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons—"Bad Monkeys" for short. This confession earns Jane a trip to the jail's psychiatric wing, where a doctor attempts to determine whether she is lying, crazy, or playing a different game altogether.

Clever and gripping, full of unexpected twists and turns, teasing existential musings, and captivating prose, Bad Monkeys unfolds at lightning speed, taking readers to another realm of imagination.

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  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 11, 2007
      In this clever SF thriller from Ruff (Fool on the Hill
      ), almost everyone is a bad monkey of some kind, but only Jane Charlotte is a self-confessed member of “The Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons.” Or is she? In a series of sessions with a psychotherapist in the Las Vegas County Jail “nut wing,” Jane tells the story of her early life in San Francisco and her assimilation into the “Bad Monkeys,” an organization devoted to fighting evil. Crazy or sane, Jane is still a murderer, whether she used a weapon like the NC gun, which kills someone using Natural Causes, or more prosaic weaponry. Still, nothing is quite what it seems as Jane's initial story of tracking a serial killer janitor comes under scrutiny and the initial facts about her brother, Phil, get turned on their head. At times the twists are enough to give the reader whiplash. Ruff's expert characterization of Jane and agile manipulation of layers of reality ground the novel and make it more than just a Philip K. Dick rip-off.

    • Library Journal

      July 1, 2007
      Imprisoned in a nearly featureless room, Jane Charlotte is being interrogated by a man in a white lab coat. It seems she's killed somebody. How? And why? Her answer is a convoluted tale of a vast secret organization whose agents fight evil by keeping humanity under "ubiquitous surveillance" and selectively assassinating the "bad monkeys," people deemed irredeemably evil. Of course, such vast and secret organizations tend to have equally vast and secret nemeses. They also have to keep careful tabs on their own agents. Jane's not quite certain which side her captors are on, and it's an open question whether she's crazy or not. There are echoes here of the pervasive paranoia of Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49" and Walker Percy's unreliable jailhouse narrator in "Lancelot", as well as the sardonic black humor of Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Adams, not to mention Max Barry's sly satires of the absurdities of bureaucratic organizations. Cult favorite Ruff's ("Gas & Electric: The Public Works Trilogy") scenario inevitably raises questions about the morality of secret and summary "justice," but the story moves along in a fast-paced, satirical style that never slows down or turns preachy. Jane's tangled tale, from her confused, youthful introduction to this complicated secret world to the final, catastrophic mission, will keep most readers guessing until the last page. Recommended for all public libraries.Bradley A. Scott, Brighton Dist. Lib., MI

      Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • ATOS Level:5.5
  • Interest Level:9-12(UG)
  • Text Difficulty:4

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