The Big Thrill, the magazine of the International Thriller Writers, features an interview with me this month about my new book MR. MONK ON THE COUCH. Here's an excerpt:
For the first time in twelve original novels inspired by the hit TV series, Natalie Teeger steps from Adrian Monk’s formidable shadow. She’s usually consigned to handing her boss anti-bacterial wipes, smoothing his awkward interactions with others, and playing second-fiddle to his savant-like brilliance in the detective world. But Teeger’s been paying dues of her own and in Mr. Monk On The Couch she’ll finally have an opportunity to withdraw a little personal capital she’s built up as his sidekick. In fact for this novel, she’s first violin, the cello and the entire string section. In this book, Natalie moves, ever so gently from behind Mr. Monk to find her own self in the world of murder investigations. She does so despite Monk, who usually spins disorder in his quest for order. Life is messy. Monk cleans it up. Or so he believes. He actually creates more messes than he cleans up. It’s really Natalie who does the cleaning and she’s sees her opportunity to do her own mop-up, hopefully without offending the un-affable Mr. Monk.
“She loves him like a brother,” Lee says, who also penned numerous episodes of the popular television series, “plus they have something in common. They both lost a spouse to violence. Natalie knows what that can do to you. They are survivors. Yes, he irritates the crap out of her. Yes, he’s selfish. But she knows what he has accomplished despite his psychological handicaps. She knows he’s brilliant. And she knows the price he has paid for that brilliance.”
For her first stint as a quasi-solo, sort-of detective, Teeger must first elude Monk’s razor sharp sense of observation. Not so easy when this guy’s eyes are like a computer scanner that slices and dices details easier than most dispatch an onion.
The book comes out June 7 in bookstores everywhere…and online, of course.