There haven't been too many books that I wanted to throw in a corner from frustration never to be picked up again. But Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff managed to reach this (in)tolerance level of mine all right, and it did so on its 70-something page, at about the third (!) of the novel.

The whole reading experience started out quite well and hopeful though, with an intriguing (although not too original) story.

White room: white walls, white floor, white table, white clothes, white white. We are supposedly in a psychiatric ward of a prison with the protagonist and her doctor, Richard Vale, who is conducting an interrogation of Jane Charlotte. She has been arrested for killing a certain Mr. Dixon. We learn right away that Charlotte is a member of a department (called Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons, in other words: Bad Monkeys) of a quasi secret organization that fights evil. Dixon's murder - according to Jane - was a mistake as he was actually not a bad guy.

And so starts this unbelievably fast, unbelievably insane journey into the... nowhere.

As I mentioned, at around the 70th page I started to feel uneasy about the novel - started to be afraid that all these gimmicks of Ruff's writing are just cover-ups for the unbearable nothingness of its existence. And boy was I right. A lot of critiques pointed out the evident "borrowings" from a huge amount of great writers of the genre, but sadly enough the protagonist also bears similarities with Evanovich's primitive Stephanie Plum (to whom I was introduced a couple of weeks ago so that I should not pick up another of her books again in my whole life). Consequently, I can't even tell that Ruff's resources were at least first-class literary persons.

One of the main (and extremely frustrating) gimmicks of Ruff is that he tries to sell the stuff as a smart novel with deep, hidden philosophical meaning(s). Which, let me tell you honestly, could have been there: not the neverending "what is good, what is evil" problem (let's face it: it is a bit too big and a bit too general bite for even a much more knowledgeable person), but there is a dialogue-crumb towards the end between the bad Jane and the good Jane about the perception of reality - and this could have been a great concept for the novel indeed (starting somewhere around Berkely - esse est percipi - and Hume).

What we left with though, is a totally pointless, pretentious... nothing. Not worth a minute of our precious reading time. ( )

Once I picked this book up, I couldn't put it back down. The story revolves around Jane Charlotte, who has just been charged with murder and is being interviewed in prison by a psychiatrist. She claims to work for a secret society that is erradicating evil from the world by killing "bad monkeys"--people who are considered evil to the point of being irredeemable. But is she telling the truth? The choice of such a questionably reliable narrator sets this novel apart from other science fiction thrillers on the market and keeps the reader guessing throughout the book. In addition, the sometimes quite likable "bad monkeys" raise the question of what defines evil and when is someone truly beyond the point of redemption. A page turner that encourages deep thought is a rare thing and I can't wait to read more from Matt Ruff. ( )

This one reminded me a lot of Christopher Moore books. A fact I guess other people must have noticed since they have a quote from Moore on the cover. Slightly less crazy characters but still over the top plot. I like this style of book but it just does not capture me the way some inferior books do just because I happen to like characters I can relate to better. In a way the writing style of both Moore and Ruff reminds me of the short stories I read for a Latin American literature class. The descriptions are amazing, the stories interesting, but I just can't actually feel anything for the characters because they are too removed from me. Of course these books were way funnier than that class. ( )

first line: "It's a room an uninspired playwright might conjure while staring at a blank page: White walls. White ceiling. White floor."

This is a not-quite-dystopian novel of psychological suspense, requiring readers to parse out truth from lies and good from evil. It's a quick, gripping read, and I can easily imagine a movie adaptation. ( )

A really fun and engrossing read! Plan to read the whole book in one sitting. The Organization is the most bad-ass super-secret organization ever conceived.

By the end, there might have been a few too many plot twists...