Bad Monkeys

Jane Charlotte is in trouble. She’s been arrested for a murder that she committed as it was authorized by Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons, otherwise known as “Bad Monkeys.” Bad Monkeys are part of a much larger covert organization. As a Bad Monkey, Jane Charlotte had the responsibility to eradicate evil in American society. The Bad Monkeys did what the government couldn’t or wouldn’t. Bad Monkeys tells Jane Charlotte’s story through her discussions with her court appointed psychiatrist. As he questions her in an attempt to determine whether she is fit to stand trial, he gets into her story, which is reminiscent of “The Matrix,” and just as compelling almost all the way through to the end.

This show more novel was much more science fiction than I normally read. There are some neat gadgets and special powers, such as the gun that can give someone a fatal heart attack or brain aneurysm when you shoot them, educational classes that took place during sleep, cameras that were everywhere and recording everything that you were doing for playback at any time, and some wicked mind altering drugs that allow the characters to move and react exceptionally fast. Still, the fact that this novel was science fiction didn’t occur to me until nearly the end because it’s all housed within Jane Charlotte, the most deliciously unreliable narrator I’ve come across in a long time. She is so unreliable that when aspects of her story are called on the carpet by her psychiatrist, she brushes them off using one of the oldest of Biblical stories: Cain and Abel. After killing his brother, Cain was banished from his family to live with those in the land of Nod. Given that his parents were Adam and Eve and were said to be the first people on the earth, what was Nod and who lived there? Those from the Judeo-Christian tradition accept that story on faith, despite the obvious hole in the plot. So, when Jane Charlotte’s story runs into a wall with her story, the wall is simply just another “Nod problem.” She believes it and expects her audience to as well, despite its improbability. To me, this was pure genius.

Bad Monkeys hooked me from the very beginning and, as always, I love going along for the ride with unreliable narrators. I only wish that it ended as her story did in Las Vegas. Instead, what could have been an ending that would have kept me pondering whether Jane Charlotte was insane, a supreme and able liar, or a woman caught between the society and a covert operation that enabled society to run despite itself was resolved in a dirty, messy bow. I suppose one could argue that there are still multiple ways to read the ending, but none of them are nearly as satisfying as what each reader could imagine for themselves.

Although the ending left a bad taste in my mouth, I loved Jane Charlotte and the story of her life. I enjoyed that she secretly could not get enough of straight laced Nancy Drew but turn on anyone when it suited her. Because there was a slight little bit of conscious to her, I was squirming along with her when the least savory scenes from her life with the “Pet Boys” were displayed on the big screen in front of her. She couldn’t leave. She was forced to confront her ugliest self. Those scenese reminded me of how uncomfortable it is to watch Chris Hansen walk out and confront child molestors on Dateline NBC’s “To Catch A Predator.” She got herself into that situation, but I just couldn’t help wanting to rescue her.

While in the Bad Monkeys, Jane Charlotte helped those her organization determined were beyond the hope of redemption by a heart attack or anuerysm delivered from her gun. This novel raises interesting questions about living in a civilized society: Who has the right to judge whether another human being is suitable to remain in society? If the government can’t or won’t, should someone else to up the gun and dole out rogue justice? What do we really know about the motivations groups and individuals like that? What should happen with Jane Charlotte? I guess the answer to all of those questions depends upon whether you are a Nancy Drew, a Bad Monkey or a bad monkey.

http://literatehousewife.wordpress.com/2008/11/02/114-bad-monkeys-review-and-giv... show less

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Book Report: Jane Charlotte has been arrested for murder.

She tells police that she is a member of a secret organization devoted to fighting evil; her division is called the Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons--"Bad Monkeys" for short.

This confession earns Jane a trip to the jail's psychiatric wing, where a doctor attempts to determine whether she is lying, crazy--or playing a different game altogether. What follows is one of the most clever and gripping novels you'll ever read.

My Review: "Clever" is a good word for this book. In fact, maybe "clever-clever" is even better. "Jane Charlotte"? She needs a boyfriend named "Austen Brontë" in that case.

And that is the very last and final show more connection anywhere within the oddly shaped covers of the book to Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë. From here on, we're on a profane and sometimes profoundly blue trip through the Halls of Micturation that form Jane's psyche. Is she addled? Drugged? One helluva fast-thinking sociopath, like in The Usual Suspects?

Dunno. About half-way through, I lost steam. See, this is the issue I perceive in so much bizarro/New Weird fiction. It goes on too long. It takes the joke, beats that sumbitch to death, scoops up the jellified meatiness, and then sets to stompin' on it in hobnailed boots. And after a while, one loses the desire to be on the sidelines looking on.

So, a month went by, and I picked the book up again. (It was stabbing me in the kidney as I got into bed one night.) Idly flipping to the Book Dart (if you don't have these, get some, they're amazing), I resumed reading with a slight smothered yawnlet.

*slog slog pantpant slog*

And I finished the book, unable to toss it aside for one reason: I had to know how the HELL this guy was gonna get off the horse at the end of the ride.

Good, good job, Sir Matt the Ruff. I did not see that ending happening. show less

ACK! I've been M. Night Shamalamadingdonged!

Let me explain. Jane Charlotte is a woman accused of murder. She is telling her life story to a psychiatrist, and the book is made of up the dialog between these two. The chapters alternate between Jane's story, and the psychiatrist examining and questioning the details. It starts out innocently enough, but her story becomes increasingly implausible, and the psychiatrist becomes more dubious with each passing chapter.

I was swept up in the story, and I could never tell if Jane really lived such a miraculous life or if she was just a nutjob who murdered a guy because she lost her mind after all the terrible things that happened when she was a kid. It was such a great reading experience, and 30 show more pages from the end of the novel I was fully prepared to give this book a 5 star rating!

And then it fell apart, literally in the last 10-15 pages or so. I won't give anything away, but as I hinted about above, the author pulled an M. Night Shyamalan, with tremendous success, in the sense that it was ridiculous and ruined my thoughts about the first 220 pages. It sucks that all the psychological tension built up in the book is destroyed at the very end just so the author could "get you" with a big twist. Ugh. Disappointing. show less

Jane Charlotte has been arrested for murder. She explains to the police that the reason she's there is not because she killed a man, but because she killed the wrong man. One not slated to be killed. You see, Jane is a member of a secret organisation and she is a member of the group Bad Monkeys. This is her story: why she's there, how she came to be a member and her life.

This is a compelling novel - short and very punchy. The tone is light and the description is just enough to make you fill in your own blanks. The paranoia levels in this book are extremely high; the organisation is watching everyone - the money, paintings, television, everything is bugged and they are watching everyone. They kill evil people, but only those whose death show more will make the world a better place. One of the chapters offers up the question: if you had to kill just one person, a 90 year old ex-concentration camp commander or a 25 year old man who has just killed his first person and likes doing it, which one of them would get the bullet? And why?

The world is well plotted and realised and the characters feel real. This won't take more than a couple of hours to read and is well worth it. If you liked the Matrix, Men in Black, Equilibrium, The Raw Shark Texts you will enjoy this book. If you didn't, try it anyway and see if you can be swayed.

See also: http://rayb.wordpress.com/2008/08/23/bad-monkeys-matt-ruff/ show less

Jane Charlotte has been arrested for murder; she claims to be operating for an organization that fights evil, in its Bad Monkeys division. She reviews her history with a prison psychiatrist.

Jane is an interesting character, the only real person in the book. Everyone else, except possibly her little brother, exists just to interact with her and set her problems to solve. The depiction of the organization for which she claims to work is both hilarious and fascinating; they have means of observing all of us, and of fighting, that are kinda scary and kinda neat.

The style of the book is breezy, if occasionally a bit clunky, and doesn't detract much from the quick progression of the story. The book promises us a lot of uncertainty but instead show more end up telling us more than this reader wanted to be told.

Overall, a quick, quirky, mostly fun read that left me thinking of cool things that the author could have done to make it wonderful. show less

The bright yellow cover and different style presentation of the physical book were what brought it to my attention on the shelf at Goodwill. The title made me smile. Bad Monkeys, indeed.

Fast-paced, intertwined back-story and present day, and a strong sense of the absurd kept it interesting. The central character, Jane Charlotte, has been arrested for murder. She tells the interviewing officer she works for an secret organization that fights evil, in the Department of Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons (aka Bad Monkeys.) This gets her a trip to the psychiatric wing. The book is in part her interview with a psychiatrist there and the back story to how she got involved in the whole shebang.

Jane tells her life story, which has more show more twists than a pretzel. It's not such a particularly great one; suffice it to say she has plenty of opportunities to see evil and snuff it. At one point, with all the high-tech gizmos and action, I thought this would make a pretty good movie, along the lines of Men in Black or The Matrix. I can see it now, "
Synopsis: A female protagonist struggles with her alter ego and, after being arrested for murder, claims to belong to a secret society that fights evil." Yup. It would work. show less

Having just (re-)read Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country (in preparation for the HBO series) I decided to dip into his back catalog and read another one. Unfortunately, this one isn't as good. On the plus side, I will say it's an interesting story. Bad girl gets recruited into a super secret organization dedicated to ferreting out "evil" in the world. Basically she is given an opportunity to turn her life around and do good for a change. The organization is cleverly designed. Ruff clearly put a lot of thought into it. I think it, by itself, could warrant a completely separate novel. I mean, there's just a ton of detail in there that could almost effortlessly be fleshed out into something much larger and grander than this. And the girl, our show more protagonist, Jane Charlotte (the loneliest Brontë), certainly had an interesting life. So the story was off to a good start.

But I had two big problems. One was the way in which it was told. Every other chapter took place in a "white room" and was told in the third person where a man is interrogating Jane. In response, Jane starts to tell her life story. Between those, the odd chapters are Jane's story, told in the first person, but interspersed in those chapters are questions the interrogator asks her, mid-story, mid-stream, only indicated as such by italics. As a literary device, I found this to be cheating. Not only is he breaking the first person structure by including a third person in there (which might actually be clever by itself, if not for...) he also breaks the "show don't tell" rule many times by conveniently having this italicized interloper ask leading questions. Ultimately, I thought it was a literary experiment that should have been removed from the final version of the book. Kudos for trying. But points lost for not realizing it cheapened the writing overall.

Second big problem, and here we get into some serious "this will ruin the ending" spoilers, so I'll hide this one. The double twist at the end annoyed me. The first twist was clever enough. Okay, so the interrogator turns out to be her presumed dead brother. Cool. I mean I kind of saw it coming, couldn't have been 100% sure, but it meshed with the vibe I was getting, so that was fun. But to have that last twist reveal that Jane was actually working for the evil enemy, a double agent, was just dumb. It invalidated everything I'd just read. If you're going to have me root for a protagonist the entire novel only to reveal she was the antagonist all along, at least do it for a better reason than: "double twist at the end!" Some people might have liked it, but this didn't work for me at all.

Ultimately, there was enough I liked about this book to give it 3/5 stars, and this combined with Lovecraft Country will certainly get me to seek out more of Ruff's writing in the future. But if you're looking for one of his books to try, don't start with this one. That's my advice. show less