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I purchased , by Lee Goldberg, for a couple of reasons. First, I always wanted to watch the show, but never got around to it. Second, I am fast becoming a big fan of Mr. Goldberg’s writing after reading several of his other novels, such as .
Description: Adrian Monk is an Obsessive Compulsive genius who consults with the police to help solve murders.
Overall: 5 Stars
Plot/Storyline: 5 Stars
I watched the pilot episode of when it came out, but life intervened and I never got to watch more of it. I did enjoy the episode I saw, though.
This novelization of the series was laugh-out-loud funny. However, it was also a serious mystery. I loved the way Monk put the clues together so effortlessly. Mr. Goldberg has one of the most diabolical brains I can imagine to have come up with the mysteries and all of the obscure clues.
In this first novel, Monk starts out by investigating the murder of a firehouse dog, but ends up solving multiple crimes, both related and unrelated along the way. This made for a fast moving novel that I did not want to put down.
Having the story told from the point of view of Monk’s assistant, Natalie, was inspired. From the outside of a mental illness looking in, things can be humorous. While Natalie is amused at times, she is also compassionate and symathetic to Monk’s illness.
My favorite scene was the one in the elevator. I was happy to be reading it alone so no one was around to look at me funny for laughing so hard.
Character Development: 5 Stars
Although the book was about Monk solving crimes, Natalie, his assistant, was really the main character. She has a great personality, so I even enjoyed reading about her ‘romantic escapade.’
Adrian Monk is a very well fleshed-out character. He was interesting and grew in the book.
Writing Style: 5 Stars
I loved Mr. Goldberg’s writing style in this novel. It was a fast-paced and smooth read. The descriptions were not only vivid, but quite often funny as hell. The dialogue was snappy. I could hear people saying the words.
Editing/Formatting:
Both were of professional quality.
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I’ve already purchased the second book in the series. As soon as I free up some space on my Kindle, i.e. read more books, I will be digging into that one.
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Here are some comments from the author, Lee Goldberg:
The story behind “Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse” goes back a few years…and starts with the TV show.
I’d written a few episodes of MONK with Bill Rabkin (who writes the PSYCH novels now) and the show spoiled us. They flew us out to Summit, New Jersey for a week, all expenses paid (which is, by itself, a dream come true. Who wouldn’t want to spend a week in Summit?) to sit around laughing with the MONK writing staff. I’d never had so much fun plotting and, best of all, it was hundreds of miles from the nearest studio or network executive.
So when executive producer Andy Breckman asked me if I would like to write some original MONK novels, I jumped at the opportunity. Sadly, the deal didn’t include any free trips to Summit and I had only eight weeks to write the novel. But “Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse” ended up being a lot of fun to write and, much to my delight and relief, Andy really liked the book, too. He liked it so much, that he thought it would make a dandy episode of the show.
“It almost writes itself,” he said, mainly because it was, well, already written.
I immediately called Bill, my screenwriting partner, and told him the good news. He was thrilled. We both were. And why shouldn’t we be? We’d be getting another trip to Summit, we’d have another chance to hang out with the fiendishly clever Monk staff, and it would be the easiest script to write ever—mainly because it was, well, already written. This trip would almost be a paid vacation. In Summit! Does life get any better than that? I think not.
But there was an especially geeky reason for me to be thrilled. There have been plenty of novelizations of TV episodes, but as far as I know, there has never been a TV adaptation of a TV tie-in novel. “Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse” would make TV tie-in history (If there is such a thing as TV tie-in history. If there isn’t then there should be. Maybe even a TV tie-in museum. If it can’t be at the Smithsonian, I say let’s put it in Summit).
A week or so before the trip, Andy called up, very excited. He’d been noodling with some ideas for the “Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse” episode. He wanted to make one tiny change in the story.
“What if Monk is blind?” he said.
It was a very funny idea which, of course, meant throwing out just about everything in book. But I honestly didn’t mind and neither did Bill (even though it meant that writing the script would actually mean doing some work). Every time we write for Monk, our goal is to tell a great mystery that’s funny, touching, entertaining and uniquely, undeniably, unmistakably Monk. And this certainly would be.
So the first thing we did was set aside the sacred text and start from scratch. All we kept from the book were the basic bones of the mystery plot and a couple of clues. Everything else had to arise from the predicament of Monk being blind. We even changed the title to “Mr. Monk Can’t See a Thing” to reflect the new central conflict of the story.
As usual, we had way, way, too much fun plotting the story and were impressed, once again, by Andy’s unerring ability to find the emotional center at the heart of even the broadest comic moments.
When we turned in our script two weeks later, I couldn’t help thinking that it would have made a hell of a good book.



Read more about Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse, by Lee Goldberg