Monk Books

Mr. Monk and the Nice Reviews

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My week is off to a great start with two nice reviews for MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIREHOUSE.  The current issue of MYSTERY SCENE notes:

The first in a new series is always an occasion to celebrate, but Lee Goldberg’s TV adaptations double your pleasure. No longer restricted by time, budget and pace of TV production, this terrific TV writer’s latest, MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIREHOUSE brings everyone’s favorite OCD detective to print. Hooray!

And Cynthia Lea Clarke at FUTURES MYSTERY MAGAZINE says, in part:

If you are a fan of the television show MONK, you’ll love this book. If you never had the pleasure of watching a MONK episode, then you should read this book… (Goldberg’s) words are witty, charming and so Monk. Superb! It’s a fast, easy, delightful escape. An excellent read!

My thanks to both Mystery Scene and Futures for their flattering comments.

I’m Done!

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I just this minute finished writing the final draft of MR. MONK AND THE BLUE FLU, my third book in the series, and had to tell somebody (everybody in my house is asleep already). I’m a week ahead of my deadline, so I will probably set the manuscript aside for a day or two and then read it again to make sure everything tracks. Or I may simply turn it in and be done with it.  Regardless, I won’t do anything with it until Monday.

The timing is perfect, because Bill Rabkin and I are about to start writing a freelance script for a hot new TV series (more on that later) and I won’t have to worry about finishing the book, too. I do have to start thinking about my eighth DIAGNOSIS MURDER book, though, which is due in three-and-a-half months…

So tomorrow I’ll do my little book-completion ritual. I’ll put my Murder Book (my binder of notes, outlines, photos, etc. related to the book) in a box in the closet and clean up my office, which tends to go to hell while I’m writing.

My Multiple Bookgasm

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The friendly folks at Bookgasm, fans of my most recent DIAGNOSIS MURDER novel, like MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIREHOUSE, too. Among their comments:

Based on a character by Andy Breckman, Shalhoub plays Monk perfectly.
But there’s a little something missing in an hour-long show devoted to
both an intricate mystery and the character’s oddness. There usually
isn’t enough time to explore Monk and why he’s doing what he’s doing.
So enter Lee Goldberg and another excellent TV tie-in book, the first in the series, entitled MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIREHOUSE.
A book-length exploration of Monk is just so much more satisfying
because we get to see more of the detective’s odd little world.

Monk’s house is being fumigated so he must temporarily move in with
his long-suffering assistant, Natalie Teeger. The book is written from
her point of view, a clever shift that allows us to be a voyeur on
Monk’s behavior without the constraints that would come from having
Monk explain his own obsessions. Teeger has an adolescent child and
surprisingly, Monk and the child get along well, even though he notes
to the mother that children are “walking cesspools” of disease. The
child is upset because a local firehouse dog has been killed by some
ax-wielding maniac. Monk takes the case.

And from there, the
case gets progressively weirder, as do Monk’s habits. First, another
body is found, then Teeger becomes romantically involved with one of
the firemen, and all the while, Monk is slowly driving his assistant
crazy with incessant demands and whacked-out behavior. But there is
always a method to Monk’s peculiar madness, and the way he solves
crimes and deduces facts throughout the plot is thoroughly
entertaining. He sees more than we do, because he sees things that are
out of place. We might see a mess, but Monk sees a catastrophe, and
because of that vision, he is able to know when things are not only not
right, but downright sinister.

There’s nothing quite like a strong Bookgasm to start your day.

Mr. Monk and the New Deal

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I’m pleased to announce that I’ve accepted a deal to write three more original MONK novels, which will assure new books about the obsessive-compulsive detective through July 2008.  And my third MONK episode "Mr. Monk Can’t See a Thing," co-written with William Rabkin and very loosely based on my novel "Mr. Monk Goes to The Firehouse," started shooting this week for airing this summer.

Mr. Monk Goes to Traffic School

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My latest Natalie Blog is now up on the USA Network’s MONK site.

There are some things in life that I’m pretty sure that everybody hates
to do, regardless of their sex, race, religion or nationality — like
flossing your teeth, cleaning your bathroom and attending traffic
school. You could pick anybody off the street and they’d agree that
those tasks suck.

Everybody, that is, except Adrian Monk, the famous detective and my employer.

He flosses his teeth hourly. He cleans his bathroom several
times a day. And even though he doesn’t drive, he still recently
insisted on going with me to traffic school…

Monk and More Monk

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Monkency2
My friends Terry Erdman & Paula Block have written MONK: THE OFFICIAL EPISODE GUIDE, which comes out on June 27th, the same day as my book, MR. MONK GOES TO HAWAII. Their book is packed with interviews and inside info on the making of the first four seasons of MONK…and features an introduction by Andy Breckman and an afterward by Tony Shalhoub.

I’ve known Terry for over 20 years , going back to when he was a unit publicist on movie sets and I was a freelancer covering the entertainment industry for Starlog, Newsweek, American Film, and the Los Angeles Times Syndicate (to name a few). And his lovely wife Paula happens to be the licensing exec for Paramount’s publishing division…so she’s the studio person in charge of my DIAGNOSIS MURDER novels. Small world, huh?

Anyway, we’re going to be doing a bunch of signings together in July and August for our MONK books. Watch this space for more info.

Monk vs. Monk

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A reader of my book MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIREHOUSE posted a comment on a discussion board that the Monk in the book differs to some degree from the Monk on television. She’s right.


I don’t think there is any way the "book" MONK and the "TV" MONK can
ever be exactly the same. We are seeing them through two very different
mediums (TV vs books) and points-of-view (the camera’s vs Natalie’s).

A
typical MONK episode doesn’t have enough story to fill book…so I have
to come up with much, much more for Monk to think, say and do for a
novel. And, of course, in the books we don’t have Tony Shalhoub’s
magnificent performance to convey the humor, the vulnerability,
sadness, etc. So much of MONK’s humor, drama and character is expressed
visually and I have to make up for that narratively in other ways.

The
differences between the "book" MONK and the "TV" MONK became very clear
to me recently, when I was writing the third book and my third MONK
episode at the same time. They are both MONK…but different. And
that’s okay. By the way, MONK creator/exec producer Andy Breckman is
fine with that, too. He’s been incredibly supportive and has encouraged
me to create my own version of Monk for the books. After I wrotethe first book, he paid me a wonderful compliment. He said  that he felt like a songwriter and that someone else had covered his song. It was still his song, but at the same time it was different, and he enjoyed the differences.

I also got a complaint from a reader who was upset that there are continuity gaffs between the recent episodes of the show and my first book. That’s inevitable, given the long lead time of the books vs. the speed of TV series production. So, the books and
the TV show don’t exist in the exact same universe…more like parallel
universes.

For
example, someone sent me a nasty email because I didn’t acknowledge
Stottlemeyer’s marital problems in the first book. Well, when I wrote
both MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIREHOUSE and MR. MONK GOES TO HAWAII,
Stottlemeyer’s wife hadn’t left him yet. I managed to mention it in the
third book, but I am sure things will come up in Season Five that will
clash with stuff in the third Monk book, which I am turning in next
month for publication in January 2007.

Speaking of which, I better get back to writing!

Monk Envy

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My latest Natalie Blog is now up at the USA Network’s Monk site:

In some ways, I envy Mr. Monk. He has direction in his life. He
knows who he is, what his talents are, what he was put on this earth to do. He’s
known since he was a kid.

Monk was born to be a detective. And he’s brilliant at it.

I’m not sure what I was born to do, what I’m good at, or where my life is
going. I’m sure there are other people like me, but I still feel like the only
one who didn’t arrive with pre-installed software.