| Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii | |
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1st edition 2006 paperback cover |
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| Author(s) | Lee Goldberg |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Monk mystery novel series |
| Genre(s) | Mystery novel |
| Publisher | Signet |
| Publication date | June 30, 2006 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 295 pp |
| ISBN | 0-451-21900-7 |
| OCLC Number | 70175318 |
| LC Classification | CPB Box no. 2468 vol. 16 |
| Preceded by | Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse |
| Followed by | Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu |
Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii is the second novel based on the Monk television series. It was written in 2006 by Lee Goldberg.
Contents |
Candace plans on marrying her fiance Brian Galloway on Kauai, an island in the northwest part of Hawaii. The venue is the fanciest hotel on the island, the Grand Kiahuna Poipu Hotel, in Poipu, Hawaii. Candace invites her friend Natalie Teeger to be her maid of honor at the wedding. The primary reason for Candace's decision is the fact that she was there for Natalie when Julie was born and when Mitch died. All Natalie is to do is give the ring to Candace at the wedding. However, it only so happens that Natalie is Adrian Monk's assistant, and so she hires someone from a temporary staffing agency to look in on Monk.
Natalie continues looking for the right moment to tell Monk that she is going to Hawaii when Captain Stottlemeyer summons Monk to the scene of a bizarre murder. The victim is Dr. Lyle Douglas, a renowned heart surgeon. He was poisoned in the middle of performing a quadruple bypass operation on Stella Picaro, his 44 year old ex-nurse. In the middle of the operation, Douglas had a seizure and dropped dead. Another surgeon, Dr. Troy Clark, rushed in to revive Ms. Picaro. It wasn't until the autopsy the next day that they realized he was poisoned. Monk immediately knows who did it, and how: Picaro herself, despite being operated on at the time.
Stella Picaro realized she needed heart surgery and found she could also commit the perfect murder. She appealed to Dr. Douglas to do the operation in the hospital he worked at. Douglas applied iodine to her skin before making the incision. The iodine was laced with poison. Picaro also applied pinpricks to the gloves Douglas used in the operation. She herself had taken the antidote to the poison, so she wasn't affected, nor were the other doctors, who wore a different brand of gloves that gave Douglas skin rashes.
Monk has singled out the doctors and medical students who were witnessing the operation, since they couldn't poison Douglas without being noticed.
Natalie finds the perfect moment to tell Monk of her travels - right before his session with Dr. Kroger. This leaves Kroger to handle Adrian's dilemma.
Believing that her worries are over and that Dr. Kroger, Captain Stottlemeyer and the temp worker can take care of Monk, Natalie drives to San Francisco International Airport for her flight. While on the tarmac, she dozes off and doesn't wake up until 45 minutes into the flight. Natalie is disgusted by the choice of meal entrees, when suddenly a familiar voice offers to have her meal instead. She hopes that she isn't imagining things, but when she turns around, there is Monk, who apparently decided to go to Hawaii as well. But he isn't acting like Monk, but rather like "the Monk" or "the Monkster". As Natalie watches, Monk offers to take portions of food from other passengers. In an attempt to see if this is a hallucination, Natalie asks a girl if she notices anything about the passenger in row 31. The girl's description proves that Natalie isn't hallucinating. The rest of the flight becomes a "living hell" to Natalie, especially with the fact that Monk is not what he seems, so when the flight lands at Honolulu International Airport, Natalie goes to the bathroom and calls Dr. Kroger. But Kroger isn't horrified at what Natalie describes to him. He tells her that he prescribed a medication called Dioxnyl to Adrian, which is supposed to relieve him of his phobias (but which also limits his ability to solve crimes with drastic consequences, as was demonstrated in the season 3 episode "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine"). It is supposed to last twelve hours depending on dosage. Natalie realizes that Monk couldn't live without her, and so he took one of the pills to give him the nerve to make reservations and go to the airport.
Arriving at the Lihue Airport, Natalie meets Candace and her fiance Brian Galloway, a sales representative who makes special-order furniture (he spent a whole summer furnishing a resort in Australia once).
Getting to the Grand Kiahuna Poipu hotel, Monk and Natalie see that this is where TV psychic Dylan Swift tapes his show Whispers from the Other Side, on which he supposedly passes messages from dead ones back to their living loved ones.
Monk buys a swimsuit and spends a short time in the pool, which Natalie misses since she has to go to her best friend's rehearsal dinner, although she wishes to have a photo of Monk in a swimming pool to show to Stottlemeyer.
Natalie awakens the next morning to find Monk returned to his normal self. At Candace's wedding, Monk is the only one to have any reason for Candace and Galloway not to marry. He remembers several things that Galloway mentioned, plus some things he has now observed:
The wedding is aborted, and Natalie comforts her friend as Candace heads back to the airport. Irritated, she also scolds Monk for exposing Galloway as a fraud during the wedding, not before.
As they walk, they see a few police cars and the medical examiner's van parked in a cul-de-sac by the bungalows, and Monk decides to check it out.
A dead woman has been found in the hot tub of her bungalow. The one-piece swimsuit she wears reminds Natalie of the elephant ballerinas from Fantasia. As Monk and Natalie observe through the bushes, someone asks them what they are doing. This man introduces himself as Lieutenant Ben Kealoha.
According to Kealoha, the woman, Helen Gruber, was hit on the head with a coconut while in the hot tub, knocking her out and drowning her. But when Monk says that it wasn't an accident, Natalie realizes the horrifying fact that any opportunity for her to relax in Hawaii is basically gone, as she knows what Monk is going to say: this woman was murdered.
Monk finds several unusual clues in the bungalow that the local police might have missed:
Examining the counter, Monk finds that the victim was killed by the counter, which matches up with the bruise on her shoulder. Kealoha immediately declares that the crime scene is now a homicide investigation. While riding with Kealoha to lunch, he fills Monk in with more information: Helen Gruber came from Cleveland and her late first husband worked in the paving business. At the place where he eventually takes them, Monk cannot stand the presence of geckos on the walls, the sound of the bug zapper, or the fact that their table only has three chairs at it. After a rather horrible experience for Monk, they talk to Lance Vaughan, Helen's widow.
Vaughan is a primary suspect, since almost always when the wife dies the husband is usually responsible. But he swears innocence and the fact that Helen should have died in some other way than be clobbered on the head with a coconut. He also mentions how he married Helen not for money but because she had all the qualities of a wife. Besides, at the time of the murder, his alibi places him snorkeling on the Na Pali coast, which is confirmed later by video tape.
Later, Natalie finds Monk arguing with Tetsuo Kapaka, one of the assistant managers, about the replacement of a simple Toblerone candy bar in the minibar in his room. When Monk accidentally asks what Helen Gruber complained about, Tetsuo says that she complained of hearing voices in her head.
Natalie then goes out to the beach for a short swim. When she goes to a bar for a drink, Dylan Swift sits down next to her with a message. When Swift starts mentioning Natalie's late husband, Natalie becomes angered at the invasion of her privacy, wondering how Swift gets this classified information. Swift claims to have a message "from the other side" that comes from Mitch. Afterwards, Natalie believes that Swift is a fraud, and wishes for Monk to find a way to nail him.
When Monk encounters Vaughan in the hotel lobby, he tells him that they never mentioned her hearing voices. Monk becomes convinced that he's the guy, even for the alibi, when they receive a message from Kealoha, asking them to come by the station. On the way out, they see Brian Galloway standing outside his car. Someone shattered the windshield and left a big rip in the car. Brian suspects Candace, his otherwise wife-to-be, responsible. When Monk and Natalie reach the rental car facility, they get a Mustang with 38 miles on the odometer. While they are there, a couple arrives at the facility, saying that someone sideswiped their car.
At the police station, Kealoha tells them how Helen Gruber was killed between 8:00 AM and 11:00 AM while Lance was snorkeling, so automatically he has been ruled out as a suspect. While they are at the station, Monk happens to look at the files for some unsolved burglaries. Someone has been breaking into residential homes in Poipu, homes that are unoccupied for long periods of time. No one has seen any broken windows or jimmied doors. Three of them took place in broad daylight.
Monk makes the decision to go to the Grand Kiahuna Poipu golf course to catch the burglar. But Natalie sees things differently, thinking that Kealoha is using Monk. When she comes back from the bathroom, Natalie happens to run into the woman that Vaughan was admiring. This woman pays a check and then travels to her car. Monk and Natalie follow her and are soon on the road. When they eventually do get out of the car, they find themselves at Whaler's Hideaway, a place where one of Dylan Swift's images must have come from.
Returning to the hotel, Natalie tells Monk about her encounter with Dylan Swift. Monk agrees that he is a real fraud, so they start trying to uncode how it really is done. Most likely, when Helen was murdered, Swift found a way to use that information so that it seemed like he was trying to communicate that message from beyond the dead. Then the uncoding happens to come back to Mitch, and Natalie explains that somehow Swift managed to get that information without her feeding him it.
The next morning, Natalie goes on a walk up the beach, encountering some beached monk seals. Back at Whaler's Hideaway, she finds the important clue: the inhabitants are Curtis Potter and Roxanne Shaw, from Cleveland. Returning to the hotel, she finds Monk teaching the hotel staff to fold the towels and not roll them. When Natalie tells Monk about the information she just found, Monk simply says that he knows all of the same details, but he has found them in other ways, such as the towel Roxanne was wearing in the car. Monk has also learned that there was no pie in Helen Gruber's refrigerator on the morning she was murdered, and yet she also loved the pies. Liliko'i pie was one of the things that Swift mentioned in the message to Natalie from "the other side".
Determined to capture the burglar, Monk, Natalie and Kealoha go to the golf course. While on the course, Kealoha mentions that Vaughan had two wives prior to Helen Gruber - Elizabeth Dahl from Philadelphia and Beatrice Woodman from Seattle, both of whom died old; Helen was the youngest wife. After a rather bad time on the hole, they drive over on the cart to the neighborhood nearby. Monk nails the local mailman as the burglar, because the times of the robberies coincide with those of his schedule, and he knows when the houses are vacant.
After a short chase, they stop the mail truck (while the cart drives on by itself and sinks in the water). When they return to the hotel after lunch, Martin Kamakele, the hotel manager, informs them that the folding towel routine that Monk had them do made them fall behind two hours. When Monk can't stand the idea that so many towels will be rolled, Kamakele offers him and Natalie the bungalow where Mrs. Gruber lived.
As they are settling in to the bungalow, Dylan Swift stops by asking to see Monk. But Monk still doesn't believe him to be a person who can see to the great beyond. The next morning, Kealoha stops by with some new leads - Roxanne Shaw is a hairdresser at a beauty salon called the Rose in Cleveland. Helen Gruber went there every few weeks.
That evening, they stop by Roxanne and Lance's place, and Monk sees that they have matching barbed wire tattoos. Monk explains his theory: Roxanne and Vance were a perfect couple, but greed took the better of them. So somehow Roxanne found Elizabeth Dahl while they were in Philadelphia, and managed to live off of her money. The same process went when they moved to Seattle for Beatrice Woodman. Then they went to Cleveland, and the cycle started all over again for Helen Gruber.
After a long night, Natalie awakens to find Monk transfixed by the fact that the ceiling fans are unsynchronized. To get his mind off the fans, they go out sightseeing, but as they are heading out, they find that someone has stolen their car, so they first go to a rental car agency to get another car. At a small pub that they stop at afterwards, Monk notices the pies and has Natalie buy one, as he has solved the case.
After bringing Vaughan and Roxanne to the bungalow, Monk explains that Vaughan killed his wife the night before, stuffed her in the refrigerator (explaining why one shelf went in backwards, as Monk earlier observed) and then put her body in the hot tub, helping easily firm an alibi that he was out on the water when she "died". But he still says that someone planted that evidence to frame him. Regardless, he is arrested.
While Monk still believes it's time to arrest Swift for the fraud he is, Natalie convinces him not to. The next day, they go out to Waimea Canyon, the canyon that Mark Twain called the "Grand Canyon of the Pacific". Natalie only is able to enjoy the view for a few moments because Monk, in the car, starts hyperventilating like he will suffocate. So they drive down to Waimea again and stop at a gift shop, where Natalie buys some merchandise for Julie and also receives a call from Captain Stottlemeyer. She tells him about how Monk believes Swift is a fraud, since the news of Swift's visions has quickly gotten out to Stottlemeyer. Swift returns to San Francisco on Monday night. As they are leaving the gift shop, a truck clips their new car. Overviewing the scene, Monk realizes that the truck driver did see them, but he never slowed down. When Kealoha suggests that they go to the hospital, Monk is reminded of Dylan Swift the psychic.
They go back to Swift later and see that he got a blister on his hand after he burned himself making breakfast, and Swift tries getting information about Trudy from Adrian. That night, after Natalie makes some reservations, the two find themselves at the luau garden. As the staff prepare to salt a pig, a red human hand comes up out of the ground, sending everybody except Monk and Natalie running in terror. Monk is convinced that it means the Hawaiians are cannibals. When the police arrive, Keoloha isn't offended when Monk suggests this idea, and he states that if indeed the man were going to be served they would have undressed him. The body is excavated and identified as Martin Kamakele, the manager of operations. Someone hit him over the head with a shovel and buried him. Monk realizes that there's one thing in common between the murder of Kamakele and the murder of Helen Gruber - both took place in broad daylight and both were hit over the head with an object, only the person who murdered Kamakele did it in anger.
On their last full day in Hawaii, Monk sends a letter to Stottlemeyer, which is not to be opened until Monk says so. After breakfast, Natalie walks back to Roxanne Shaw's place. Roxanne swears that her boyfriend is quite innocent and Monk has been fooled - Lance never killed his wife and he indeed was on that boat. Someone framed him. Natalie brings Roxanne's new statement to Monk. Monk says he is now waiting for the right moment to say that he has solved the case. He happens to remove one of the paintings from the wall and put it back up as though he is straightening it. Then Kealoha calls to say that their first car has been found abandoned in a parking lot. Examining it, Monk notices that the seats are stained - the same as Brian Galloway's seats before his car went to the repair shop.
As they go to the last rental car facility, Monk becomes suspicious of the fact that someone has been stealing brand-new cars like theirs and Galloway's for something. It's no wonder why the first car got stolen and then hours later the new one got totaled in the accident. The one thing in common between the couple that was sideswiped, Galloway's vandalized car, and the two cars Monk and Natalie have been in: they were all brand-new. Monk uses a knife to cut open the seat fabric and finds cocaine hidden in the seat. The repair shop is run by drug dealers, who are tracking the new cars and damaging them deliberately so that they will come to the repair shop. At the shop, the seats are being emptied of cocaine before being put back into the next drug-laden car that comes in.
On Tuesday morning, the day after Swift returns to San Francisco, Monk takes another Dioxnyl pill to handle himself through the flight. Keoloha happens to arrive and tell them that a drug bust on the repair shop found millions of dollars worth of cocaine. Arriving back in San Francisco, the news of the aborted wedding has reached Peggy Davenport, Natalie's mother. Peggy seems ashamed that her daughter brought someone like Monk to Candace's wedding, to which Natalie argues that Monk should be thanked for saving Candace from marrying a possible bigamist.
The morning after his return, Monk returns to his normal self and calls Natalie over the phone. He explains that he has proof that Dylan Swift is a fraud and he has really solved the case. Natalie asks Monk why he can't wait for another day, and Monk explains that Swift is taping his show that day at the Belmont Hotel. He figures that it would be better to expose Swift in front of millions of people.
Arriving at the Belmont, Monk speaks to one of the security guards, saying that if he was turned away Swift might not be happy. It guarantees him and Natalie entry to the ballroom. Scanning the ballroom for seats, they go to the front row and find a pair of empty seats right next to Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher. When Natalie asks Stottlemeyer why he and Disher are there, he explains that Monk dragged them down there. After the show starts, the four make their move. Swift says he is sensing something that begins with the letter M. Disher claims that M is for his Uncle Morty, whom Swift says is not fat. But he also says that Morty is not thin either.
When it's Monk's turn, Swift calls him by his first name like they've known each other for a long time. This is unnerving to Natalie, who knows that Stottlemeyer is Monk's oldest friend, but Stottlemeyer doesn't call Monk by his first name, the same of which can be said for Disher. Swift says that he is sensing something with two N's in it, which Monk identifies as Trudy's security blanket or "night-night". But this happens to be a trap. As soon as Swift finishes picturing the security blanket, Monk immediately breaks into a victory smile and says that he has solved the murder of Martin Kamakele.
Monk gestures for Stottlemeyer and Disher to come up to the stage. The handwritten letter Monk sent to Stottlemeyer states how Monk told a story to Natalie and Natalie only about Trudy's security blanket or "night-night". But in a twist, Monk's letter states that it's a white lie he made up that night. The fact that Swift knew about Trudy's security blanket (even though Monk only told this information to Natalie) is proof that Swift killed Helen Gruber and framed her husband.
Monk has learned that Swift uses a type of grifter's trick called "cold reading", where he tricks people into thinking that he is communicating with the spirits, when in reality the person he is talking to is giving him all of the necessary information. It's the trick that Disher was just proving by using his Uncle Morty. Cold reading isn't Swift's only trick: his shows are taped at hotels. He knows that many people, including his fans and audience, will stay there - important to him, because their rooms are bugged with listening devices.
Martin Kamakele was the Belmont Hotel's manager of operations. In a deal with Swift, he bugged the rooms at the Belmont. When he supervised the remodeling of the Grand Kiahuna Poipu's rooms, he also bugged them thoroughly. Not a single person knew about the perfect scheme. Except for one person: Helen Gruber. She complained to the staff about hearing voices in her hearing aid, but Swift knew that her hearing aids picked up the transmissions from the listening devices. Swift realized he couldn't take the chance of Mrs. Gruber finding out. He was already planning to kill her when Monk showed up.
Swift realized that he could kill Helen Gruber and then capitalize on it by helping Monk solve it. But first, he needed to frame somebody else for the murder. Swift already had heard everything Lance Vaughan and Roxanne Shaw had said about their affair over the listening devices. Vaughan was the perfect fall guy. After Vaughan went out snorkeling with his girlfriend, Swift crept into the bungalow, hit Helen over the head with the coconut, and stuffed her body into the refrigerator for a few minutes so that the police would think her body was in there all night. Then Swift dumped her body into the hot tub, and rather carefully staged a scene that Monk would recognize as being faked.
Kamakele, however, realized what was going on after the news broke. He confronted Swift at the luau garden after Monk claimed to have "solved" the murder. Swift hit him over the head with a shovel, and buried him above the salted pig to be dug up later. Swift burned himself doing so, explaining his blister.
Natalie is stunned by Monk's find. She realizes that the listening devices explain how Swift knew about her trip with Mitch to Mexico and his death in Kosovo while she mentioned it to Monk in her hotel room. They also explain what Monk was doing - he pretended to be cleaning up while in reality looking for the listening devices.
Swift says that they can't prove any of this, but Monk says that the police are already searching his bungalow for the listening devices. Swift is arrested and the show officially is cancelled. Later, Monk confides to Natalie that the story about Trudy's security blanket was semi-real: in reality, it was his mother's.
Lee Goldberg has also written several episodes ("Mr. Monk Goes to Mexico", "Mr. Monk Meets the Godfather", and "Mr. Monk Can't See a Thing") and the novel Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse and ten other Monk novels (as of September 2011). At least two more–Mr. Monk on Patrol and Mr. Monk is a Mess–are scheduled for publication in 2012.
Goldberg is also the author of the Diagnosis: Murder novels, which are based on the TV series on which he served as executive producer and principal writer. His other books include Watch Me Die, Unsold Television Pilots, Successful Television Writing, and The Walk. His TV writing and/or producing credits include Martial Law, Diagnosis: Murder, Hunter, Baywatch, 1-800-Missing and Monk.
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