SERENDIPITOUS TUESDAYS: INTROS/TEASERS — MR. MONK HELPS HIMSELF — 8/13/13

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by Should Be Reading.

My featured book today is one I’m reading and reviewing for a blog tour stop on September 10:  Mr. Monk Helps Himself, by Hy Conrad. (My Blog Tour Stop:  Rainy Days and Mondays).

 

 

 

Intro:  My boss has gotten easier to handle since I realized he’s a magpie.

I don’t mean that literally.  Literally, he’s a consulting detective for the San Francisco PD, a man who has solved hundreds of impossible cases, usually with me at his side keeping him calm and handing him antiseptic wipes.

I mean that he’s distracted by shiny objects—only in his case the objects are odd numbers and germs and dirt and a hundred major phobias.  Exactly one hundred.  There’s a list in a binder, centered on the coffee table.  Whenever a new phobia pops up, he has to either eliminate one of the old ones, or, more often, combine a couple.

By the way, in case you’re thinking that’s not bad, he keeps an addendum in the back listing over three hundred secondary phobias that didn’t make the cut.

***

Teaser:  The captain wriggled his mustache.  When he had weird news to deliver, this was his tell.  Not good news or bad news, just weird news, which in our world happened quite often.  (p. 42)

***

Blurb:  An all-new original mystery starring Adrian Monk, the brilliant investigator who always knows when something’s out of place….

Now that Monk and Natalie are both in San Francisco again, life is almost back to normal for the duo, with one exception: Natalie is studying for her PI license, the last step to becoming Monk’s full partner.

Before taking the plunge, Natalie sneaks off to Half Moon Bay for a retreat run by Miranda Bigley, charismatic leader of the Best Possible Me self-help program, whose philosophy has helped Natalie deal with her recent life changes. But her plans for a relaxing weekend away are disrupted when Monk tracks her down, determined to rescue her from the “cult.” Their argument is cut short when Miranda, in full view of everyone, calmly walks to the edge of a cliff and jumps off.

Even though Miranda’s death looks like suicide—especially when it’s discovered that she was on the brink of financial disaster—Natalie is sure it is murder. But Monk brushes her off to help the SFPD solve the murder of a clown, despite his coulrophobia, or fear of clowns—number ninety-nine on his list of one hundred phobias.

As Natalie and Monk begin their separate investigations, they are quickly caught up in many precarious situations, but if they want to figure out whodunit, they will have to find a way to become true partners…

***

What do you think?  Does it grab you?  Now I’m off to check out your excerpts.