Bad Monkey (novel)

Bad Monkey is a 2013 novel by Carl Hiaasen.

In mid-July, a sportfisherman off the Florida Keys reels in a severed human arm. The Monroe County Sheriff, who is hyper-sensitive to any publicity threat to the Keys' tourist trade, details one of his detectives, Andrew Yancy, to transport the arm to Miami immediately and ensure that any investigation is handled by the Dade County authorities. In Miami, Yancy meets the attractive Dr. Rosa Campesino, the Assistant Dade County coroner. As he predicted, she tells him there is not enough evidence to connect the severed arm with any unsolved crimes in Dade County. Yancy's colleague advises him to drop the arm on the roadside on his way home, but Yancy rebelliously decides to keep it preserved in his home's freezer.

Yancy is currently on suspension, having assaulted the husband of his lover, Bonnie Witt, and is forced to work as a Health Inspector for the department of Hotels and Restaurants. During their last night together, before she and her husband move to Sarasota, Bonnie confesses that her real name is Plover Chase, and she is a fugitive from Oklahoma, a former high school teacher indicted for extorting sex from one of her underage students.

A woman, Eve Stripling, returns from a vacation in Europe and reports her husband, Nicholas, missing. A DNA test quickly matches the severed arm with Nicholas, who Eve says likely died in a boating accident. Yancy, however, is suspicious at Eve's lack of grief, and more suspicious when Stripling's daughter (Eve's step-daughter), Caitlin, angrily insists that Eve killed her husband for his money.