Monkey See, Monkey Murder

by James Scott Byrnside

Chicago, 1921—Private Detective Rowan Manory and his assistant Walter Williams specialize in solving impossible crimes, but even they have never seen anything like this.

Ivan Florkowski, a vicious gangster known for his body count, puts a bounty on smelting mogul Steven Rinehardt’s head. During a trip to Malaya, Rinehardt is nearly killed by a crazed macaque. It seems like a coincidence until Rinehardt arrives in Chicago where the macaque attacks continue.

How? How can a monkey be trained to murder someone? And why? Rowan and Walter are on the case.

With the clock ticking, the detectives must race against time to uncover the truth and expose the puppeteer pulling the macaque’s strings. Will they decipher the enigmatic puzzle before the macaque strikes again? Monkey See, Monkey Murder is a masterful murder mystery that propels readers through a maze of clues, false leads, and shocking revelations, leading to a jaw-dropping solution.

210 pages, Paperback

Published September 11, 2023

Reviews

[Jameson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won’t bury the lede. I liked it. I liked this book a hell of a lot. I had to consciously take my time or else I’d have blown through the book in one sitting. And when I’m really enjoying myself I like to take my time with my blowing. Highly recommended to fans of murder mysteries; a must-read for fans of impossible murder mysteries.

You know you’re in for a treat when you’re reading a mystery novel and the first page asks critics to use ROT13 for spoilers. This little touch, akin to Ellery Queen's Challenge to the Reader, embiggens the reading experience and I think it speaks to Byrnside’s showmanship. He’s here to entertain, and I love that. Naq V’z ybbxvat sbejneq gb qrpbqvat gubfr erivrjf yngre. (Fbeel gb unir jnfgrq lbhe gvzr. Avpr fuveg, ol gur jnl. Qvq lbh trg n unvephg?)

One thing I like to occasionally harp on to the people in my life is the fracture of mass media. A large chunk of the country isn’t tuning in to Must See TV every Thursday night and reliving the jokes at the water cooler on Friday. Gone are those Da Vinci Code days when the majority of us all read the same book within a short span of time. Because there is entirely too much content out there today—especially given the fact that it’s still competing with the content of yesterday. Everybody now has their own carefully curated media diet. This has resulted in an ever increasing refining process, if not refinement itself (see: politics.) For the rest of your life you could probably consume nothing but gritty European crime stories with dour leads, if you were so inclined. Or read M4M books written by lesbians, or watch box office flops starring “strong” female leads. I know a guy who literally (well, apart from the backs of cereal boxes) only reads duck comics. But, hell, some really sick bastards out there might watch, day in and day out, nothing but Judge Judy reruns. The point is we’re not on the same page anymore, probably not in the same book. We’re all falling further and further down tunnels of our own digging.

This “particularitis” is inescapable, and it can make you feel like you’re an expert on your drug of choice. Which means it’s a real pleasure when you find something new that ticks all your boxes. Money See, Monkey Murder ticks most of mine. Here, Byrnside delivers an impossible murder mystery cake with a little bit of saucy sex and gruesome violence icing plus humor cherries on top. (I genuinely chuckled out loud on a few occasions.) I’ve enjoyed all of Byrnside’s novels but this one felt like he was firing on all cylinders.

I could go on and on about the things I loved about this book, but ain’t nobody got time for that. Just to prove I’m not a shill, instead I’ll air my minor beefs. 1) For my money, the psychomanteum/witchcraft angle was underused to the point that it was practically wasted. 2) I knew who the killer was, if not most of the ins and outs, but there were one or two minor clues that weren’t hidden well enough. (Gur vqragvgl bs gur oybaqr, sbe bar.) 3) The font on the back cover and the font used for the newspaper articles was too large—though I’m grateful those passages at least weren’t italicized.

Great book, looking forward to re-reading this one after I re-read the others. But not as much as I’m looking forward to reading the next new novel* from Byrnside.

*Why not a short story in the meantime, hm?

SLIGHTLY OFF-TOPIC
Also worth noting, this book adds another Locked Room Lecture to the list. I was more interested, though, in another lecture our hero gives, to a film producer. Manory argues the constraints of censorship force an artist to, essentially, reveal deeper truths through metaphor and symbolism. I whole-heartedly agree—with a caveat. I’d much rather have something like North by Northwest’s train-into-tunnel innuendo than any explicit sex scene. Pornos do exist, after all. The explicitness of rap music is cringey to me. There’s something less sexy about a naked body than one in undies. Still, I’d rather the artists conclude all this for themselves rather than it be a fiat the state thrust upon them with all that implies. Censorship is never implemented to force artists to grow; that’s just a happy by-product. Artists need self-discipline, not censorship.

12/27/23
In keeping with my one or two other preemptive reviews, I award this book five stars not because it’s a wonderful story but because it arrived in today’s mail and I’m just that pumped. More at 11, stay tuned.

1/6/24
It’s love, I tell ya. First of all, there’s been a lot of GAD-style fiction written since its heyday but this guy does it extremely well. This ain’t just run-of-the-mill 21st century GAD stuff. Fans of Nero Wolfe will especially appreciate the sparkling dialogue and characters. Second, I didn’t even know Byrnside was coming out with another book so soon after his last one (at least to my memory & to my sense of time.) I would have looked forward to it. Anyway, if the last one, which I loved, was a departure from his other books then this one’s a return and I’m eating it up. For me, both the book itself and the direction were a nice surprise. Third of all, and most of all, as far as pieces of book art go Byrnside’s other novels were typical on-demand fare: (I won’t belabor the point as I’ve done a lot of that about this very thing in other reviews, but…) while I’m grateful on-demand publishing exists since some of the best mystery fiction is published this way, the books themselves are fugly—the pages are stark white, the font’s basic, they look and feel wicked, wicked cheap. And that’s to say nothing of the hit-or-miss artwork. This book is a huge step up in quality. Even the size is right. The cover is awesome (to be fair, so was Byrnside’s last book’s cover*.) Yadda yadda yadda, I’m over the moon that Byrnside has seen fit to care about how the product is delivered. You don’t hand somebody a diamond ring wrapped in a Big Mac wrapper. The ring’s still great but a nice package would have been special.

*And the other three aren’t awful, actually.

1/7/24
Beginning chapter 2 I suddenly worried that Monkey See might just be a very good GAD pastiche and not my favorite kind of book: a locked room murder mystery with supernatural overtones. But then our detective arrived at a notorious character’s mansion and this doubt was quickly assuaged: the house is literally surrounded by Pinkertons and decorated with a witchcraft symbol, and to boot it contains a room designed for seances called a psychomanteum.

1/10/24
I like the Boston references. Especially the Scollay Square one. My grandparents used to have an awesome clock with the Square painted on glazed wood. I’m getting the sinking feeling the psychomanteum and witchcraft won’t play as big a role as I’d like…

1/13/24
In conclusion, see my introduction. I told you I wasn’t burying the lede.

[Ozymandias · Rating 3 out of 5]

2023 has been full of murder.
Mead's The Murder Wheel
Blackhurst's Three Card Murder
Now, Byrnside's Monkey See, Monkey Murder stands alongside the other great Locked Room mysteries that came out this year. Awesome title, fun premise, enjoyable dialogue. Laughed out loud at some of Williams' jokes. It's a self-published work, so I think the very minor mistakes (i.e. in the Kindle version, CHAPTER 7 is CHAPTEr 7) are easily forgivable and don't get in the way of the story. When I finished the final page I was disappointed because I wanted to keep reading, which is the best kind of disappointment you can have coming away from a book.
In the cover, Byrnside requests to discuss spoilers using ROT13, so use a translator if you'd like to read the rest.
N uhtr cneg bs gur zlfgrel eryvrf ba bar punenpgre nffhzvat nabgure'f vqragvgl naq nabgure punenpgre xrrcvat hc gur punenqr. Gur shapgvbany pbzcbarag bs ubj gung frperg erznvaf uvqqra jnf qbar cerggl jryy, nygubhtu V nz fyvtugyl fxrcgvpny Orawv jnf fb rnfvyl sbbyrq.
V qvqa'g frr nal tynevat vffhr jvgu gur pbafgehpgvba bs gur ybpxrq ebbz, nygubhtu V qvq trg pbashfrq cerpvfryl ubj gur sver jnf fgnegrq. Gur aneengvir vzcyvrf n punenpgre jrag gb gur ebbs, ohg V gubhtug gurer jrer thneqf jngpuvat gur nern.
Gurer jrer n srj guvatf gung sryg yvxr ybbfr-raqf. Ng bar cbvag vg jnf zragvbarq n cbby gnoyr jnf orvat qryvirerq gur zbeavat bs gur zheqre, nf jryy nf fbzr gvzr orvat tvira gb qrfpevor cbffvoyr cbvfbavat bs ivpgvzf va pbapergr naq gur jbex bs n pbebare Nlnxb Gnanxn.
V guvax gur guvat gung qvfnccbvagrq zr gur zbfg vf ubj Tenql senzrf rirelguvat ng gur raq - "Pbatenghyngvbaf. Lbh fgbccrq n qlvat zna sebz eboovat n pevzvany." Gurer'f abg ernyyl n frafr bs whfgvpr cerinvyvat va guvf fgbel, naq va gung erfcrpg vg zvffrf bhg ba srryvat jbegu univat orra ernq. Vg frrzrq irel fgenatr gb unir gur fbpvbcnguvp Sybexbjfxv pbzr guebhtu pbzcyrgryl hafpngurq. Znlor gur zheqre bs Irany pbhyq unir orra nggevohgrq gb uvz va fbzr jnl, naq gung pbhyq unir yrq gb na vzcyvrq neerfg be fbzrguvat. Nethnoyl gung'f xvaqn gur cbvag, Puvpntb pevzvanyf trggvat njnl jvgu vg naq jerfgyvat jvgu gur jubyr pbeehcgrq cbyvpr flfgrz, ohg ng gur fnzr gvzr V srry yvxr vg'f cnegvnyyl gur qhgl bs gur qrgrpgvir abiry gb frg guvatf evtug. Znlor zl ivrjf ner gbb Purfgregbavna.

[Gabriele Crescenzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine yourself having to prepare a good "literary" mystery cocktail: put in a shaker a bit of Carr (with with his well-designed locked room riddles), a part of Pronzini (for his raw urban realism and its strict logic), a pinch of Roscoe and Fearn (with their pulp mood). Garnish with a frenetic and unnerving rhythm, a style characterized by black, bitter and degrading humour. The cocktail's name? "Monkey See, Monkey Murder" (2023) by James Scott Byrnside.

The investigative duo formed by Rowan Manory and Walter Williams return with this romance after their absence in the standalone mystery-thriller "The Five False Suicides" (2021).
The author, whose previous production gave a nod to Brand's alienating atmospheres and repeated deductive reversals, creating nightmarish and disturbing enigmas, in this latest effort veers decisively towards the pulp genre, with its agitated pace and its flowing, linear lightness, while retaining the intent and form typical of the classic detective story and that harsh, at times cynical and violent, sub-text of the hard-boiled that has distinguished him so far.
"Monkey See, Monkey Murder" is therefore the result of an experiment, which reveals the extreme versatility of Byrnside, who opens up to a simpler, less bizarre and confusing approach, abandoning the "imitatio" of the great models of the Golden Age and trying to give a more personal and spontaneous contribution. Only the primary objective remains the same: to amaze and entertain readers with a good puzzle. The kaleidoscope of suspicions and alienating hypotheses, the seductive and deceptive narrative of the past is now replaced by a more concise and direct plot, in which it's the actions, and not the characters and their multiple facets, that prevail and hold the plot up.

We're in 1921, in Chicago. The brilliant investigator Rowan Manory, despite not having a case in his hands for a fortnight, regularly goes to his office, hoping for some new and complicated mystery. Fortunately, gods are on his side: someone knocks on his door, it's the sleazy and rude Delbert Grady. After having served for years in the ranks of organized criminality, now endemic in the city, the man had managed to become a sergeant in the police force. Grady's scrumble for power is stained with blood, lawlessness and corruption. In a nutshell, he's everything that a policeman should never be, but nothing seems impossible in corrupt Chicago, where the law protects and rewards only criminals. Grady therefore represents what Manory has always rejected and from which he has constantly tried to escape. Nonetheless there he is, in his office, with a tight smile and an unctuously courteous manner, even offering him a box of new filled chocolates as a gift. Manory, who knows well the man's violent and abject past, understands that this facade of kindness has to hide much more: it's the grin of the hyena ready to seize and tear apart its new prey.
Grady, after beating around the bush for a while, propose to him a rather delicate case: a breaking and entering episode. It's a day of surprises for Manory: not only does Grady come to reach out to him by pretending to be respectable, virtue that he could never have had, but he even turns to the most skilled detective in the country for such a minor crime!
Grady explains to him that Steven Reinhardt, a wealthy industrialist who owns the Reinhardt Smelting Company, has recently moved to Chicago, where he has had a new villa built, because he intends to open new factories in the area. The man has just moved into the home, although many workers are still completing works on the ground floor. On Sunday evening, a man wearing a hazmat suit and a gas mask was caught by the butler Terrence Scott in the act of going upstairs, forbidden to workers, where the owner of the house was taking a rest. The stranger, caught red-handed, pulled out a gun, fired into the air and vanished into thin air in front of the bodyguards hired to ensure Rinehardt's personal safety.
The story seems rather trivial and Manory, by putting pressure on the sergeant and using biting sarcasm, finally manages to reveal the reason why Grady is asking for his help: apparently last January Rinehardt, whilst travelling in Malaya with his new partner, the singer Lulu Raspin, was suddenly attacked by a macaque which horribly disfigured his face. The man, who has been recovering for months, is still convinced that the mastermind behind the attack was the city gangster Ivan Florkowski, who would thus have taken revenge on him for having stolen one of his singers without her having honored his contract. So Rinehardt, persuaded that this last event in his villa was also an attempted murder by Ivan, insisted on the police to arrest the dangerous criminal. Manory understands the difficult but ironic situation which the sergeant finds himself in, crushed on the one hand by his new responsibilities as a defender of the law and on the other by his murky past, which sees him as the first name on Ivan's payroll. And if on one side Rinehardt's importance is such that the mayor presses the sergeant to satisfy the tycoon's requests and resolve the matter as soon as possible, on the other side going against the psychopathic boss would be like signing his own death warrant. Because everyone knows what to expect if you dare to stand in Florkowski's way: a nice one-way trip across the river bottoms in a comfortable barrel full of concrete. All inclusive.
The only option left to him is therefore to request the help of an outsider and place any responsibility for the outcome of the case on him.
Manory, disgusted by the sergeant's ethics but extremely happy to have a mystery in his hands, agrees to take the case, but does not promise any cover-ups of the truth if Florkowski's complicity in the break-in at Rinehardt's villa is discovered.
So Manory, supported by the friendly and naive Williams, gets to work and soon discovers, through deductions, experience and a bit of luck, the identity of the intruder: it's Arturo Venal, a photographer of dubious reputation, who entered the villa to steal something on behalf of Lulu Raspin, Rinehardt's ex-girlfriend. The case is closed. Or at least, that's what Manory believes.
In fact this is only the first of a series of crazy events that will take place in the villa and which will predict how a cunning and diabolical mind is plotting in the shadows: first there will be another attack towards Rinehardt and the only possible culprit appears to be a macaque.
In his study, sealed from the inside and guarded by dozens of men from the Pinkerton agency, Rinehardt will be found, or rather, the dismembered parts of the man, immersed in three barrels full of concrete. Inside the room there is just a monkey. Is he the culprit? What does this madness of monkeys, vengeful gangsters and strange thefts mean?
Rowan Manory will have to use all his ingenuity to discover a machiavellian and cruel plan, but not before having come to terms with the sad, harsh reality of degradation and silence that permeates the unhealthy, turbulent Chicago.

"Monkey See, Monkey Murder" is the result of the mix of multiple genres, from classic detective stories to American pulp, up to pure hard-boiled, with which Byrnside tries to reinvent himself in style, tone and narrative structure after his clear adherence to the canonical mystery patterns of his early works ("Goodnight Irene", "The Opening Night Murders" and "The Strange Case of the Barrington Hills Vampire"). This trend was already evident in "The Five False Suicides", with the use of registers and dynamics more similar to thrillers, despite the strict adherence to the main cornerstones of the mystery genre.
In "Monkey See, Monkey Murder", the plot becomes more linear, more direct, more focused on the dense succession of events than on the slow construction of a nebulous sub-text, with fragmented characters and atmospheres imbued with a blind horror, an oppressive sense of wickedness.
If previously a disturbing aura of suspicion hovered in his novels, in a changing and alienating kaleidoscope of unsaid secrets, of reticence, of ambiguous behaviours and personalities, in a sort of convulsive and tormenting whirlwind of hypotheses that immersed the reader in a nightmare of doubt and confusion, here the narrative becomes simpler and more incisive, less crossed by undercurrents or misleading subplots. The pace becomes frenetic, the events unfold one after the other in a crescendo of speed and complexity, without frills or deep and detailed descriptions. Byrnside almost puts himself in the shoes of a film director, creating a highly visual cinematic plot, in which the progression and concatenation of events are the end and means of the entire work: the rapid chain of facts, without significant pauses and particular roundness, aims to entertain and at the same time destabilize, confuse the reader with its instantaneous and changing nature.
In this context, we can see the influence of pulp, a light, escapist genre, based on adrenaline-filled trends, which captures the interest of those who read with adventurous and often bizarre stories.
Even the essential development composed of an element of mystery/rigorous investigation/revealing solution, devoid of irregularities and narrative contortions, is perfectly linked to this literary category and, in particular, to names such as Theodore Roscoe and John Russell Fearn, to whom Byrnside resumes the bizarre themes bordering on the grotesque (the killer monkey, the locked room with the victim immersed in concrete).
In short, with this work Byrnside wants to entertain both the readers and himself, using more direct, concise and sensationalistic stylistic features to emphasize these intention and enrich the enigma with a good dose of adrenaline and with a more instinctive and less reflective emotionality.

"Monkey See, Monkey Murder" is therefore a quick, snappy, essential but captivating and engaging novel.
Byrnside raises the stakes as the plot unfolds, adding new events that alternate themselves frenetically, convulsively. We feel like we're suddenly catapulted onto a roller-coaster from which we can't get off and which gradually picks up speed.
The reader, dragged both against and with his will in a crazy race made of curiosity and tension, of absurdity and extreme realism, finds himself forced to continue, to leaf through the pages almost as if he were hypnotized. There isn't even a moment to take a breath. Byrnside holds the reader hostage with a style tinged with black humour, bizarre but logical murders, paroxysmal doses of tension. In other words, he knows how to write and he knows how to bewitch readers. It is not Byrnside who must pursue the reader's interest, but rather the opposite.

Within this pulp core, however, there's a clear influence of the hard-boiled genre, especially visible in the decadent, rotting atmosphere that emanates from the backdrop of a corrupt Chicago, managed by an amoral and opportunist system. The evident collusion between politics and crime, the justice bent to the interests of the strongest and the awareness of the impossibility of changement make these pages quite bitter and crude.
The plot itself must deal with the sinister illicit maneuvers that plague the city: Grady, personification and emblem of the city's misery, would not have turned to Manory if he had not been worried about the repercussions of his intervention against the gangster Florkowski. In this, a clear contrast is established between the characters of the story, often at the service of crime, and Manory himself. It's the struggle between ideal justice and actual justice, which proves to be fallacious and illusory.
Manory is thus configured within the novel as a heroic-tragic character: a person aimed at the service of an ideal but with the awareness of the moral degradation of the Chicago of the time, corrupted and rotten at its core. Like Sisyphus, he seems to carry the burden of factually useless value and profession, which, however, despite everything, he continues to pursue. Every gesture, every action of his reveals this underlying bitterness, this irritation towards the placid, explicit and indifferent manifestation of human evil, in which crimes seem just a pastime like so many others. Disgust and anger on the detective's part permeate the story, in which it becomes increasingly clear that money, power and personal interests are worth much more than the ideals of truth and law.
Rowan Manory can therefore be compared to Pronzini's Nameless (of which, among other things, Byrnside shares the style, halfway between deductive and hard-boiled mystery, which moves between classic high-level puzzles and stories full of corruption and violent crimes), but with an even more pessimistic tone.

Pulp elements (frantic pace, bizarre and adventurous situations) and the hard-boiled ones (realistic and bitter tone) are however well dosed in the story so much so that one never overpowers the other. Byrnside manages to perfectly balance the two aspects, often alternating register depending on the situation: in scenes that are too gloomy, such as the discovery of Rinehardt's dismembered corpse, he tones it down with ironic interludes, in a similar way to what happens in Carr's works with H.M.; in moments of narrative pause, he introduces crude, almost gore elements. In one line he manages to make you shiver and in the next laugh. It is a crazy journey into a labyrinth of contradicting sensations, which leaves the reader with an alienating and exciting feeling, which also works as an element of confusion and misdirection.

These obvious influences, however, do not affect the purely mystery essence of the work in the slightest.
The enigma presented, although it appears rather direct in its development compared to that of his previous novels, is nevertheless well structured and adhering to the rules of fair play, with well-hidden and solid clues.
Byrnside manoeuvres himself here between clichés and common mystery patterns, taking them up to almost mock them and to build a subtle and cunning misdirection.
The theme of the killer animal refers directly to the dawn of detective fiction, to Poe and Doyle in particular, and is used in a subtle way, making the reader doubt its actual weight in the discovery of the truth (is it used as in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" or does it have a completely different purpose?). Furthermore, the absurdity, the extravagance of the entire basic situation only brings to mind that mystery vein of the bizarre so explored by Carr ("The Arabian Nights Murders", "The Mad Hatter Mystery") and by Brown ("The Night of the Jabberwock").
The solution to the mystery is both innovative and traditional: if the locked room is solved in a simple but ingenious way, referring to a well-known dynamic mentioned in Manory's mini-conference modeled on that present in Carr's "The Three Coffins", the rest of the truth is surprising and logical. Byrnside manages to sensationally break one of the cornerstones of detective fiction without betraying the rational nature of the genre itself. It is a bold epilogue, honest because it is perfectly supported by unambiguous clues and paradoxically classic as it refers to a notorious recurring motif that is cleverly hidden.
In the end we notice how that linearity of the plot actually concealed an enigma that was much more complex than appearances suggested and played alternately on continuous and misleading takes and rigid adhesions to the elements that have characterized the history of classic crime fiction for over a century.

"Monkey See, Monkey Murder" is therefore a detective novel with pulp and hard-boiled tones, which projects the reader into a frenetic race made up of murderous animals, vengeful gangsters, bizarre locked-room crimes and a good dose of black humour.

[Stephen Pierce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Monkey murder?????

I love monkeys. They're so silly and goofy. However, they often don't mix well with murders. Watch Jonathan Creek for the evidence...

However, Byrnside managed to pull it off, with a clever locked room solution, along with another impossibility relating to monkey psychology. The solution took me by complete surprise, as Byrnside gives countless hints but still hides the truth in front of your face. Great for fans of noir thrillers and traditional mysteries, as Byrnside mixes elements of both effortlessly. Not to mention, the book is very funny!

I only wish there were MORE monkeys...

EDIT: Full review at https://stephenmpierce.wordpress.com/...

[Thea | (unapologetic_bibliosmia) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 'macaque attack' might be my new favourite saying? And this is essentially the meat and bones of this locked room mystery.

“What does a monkey attack in Malaya have to do with a Chicago gangster?” Private inspector Manory is invited to work with Sergeant Grady on the strange case of a maquaue which attacks and rips off the nose off businessman Rinehardt, whilst holidaying in Malaya. Was the maqaque trained especially to do this by his sworn enemy?

James Scott Byrnside writes 'impossible murder mysteries', and this is the fourth by him I've read. His writing skills are excellent, and his command of language is impeccable. He writes in a humorous, colloquial, almost paradoxical manner which seems to be his unique style. Full of irony and 'meta' jokes, laughing at the very characters they're representing, the satiracal humour is strong. I did find some of the more longer tangents of speech/conversation in the book detracted me away from the story slightly and made it a bit difficult to keep up with what was going on which is why I've knocked just one star off. The ending was good, an unexpected twist, and I really was baffled by the locked room element the whole way through. Byrnside really is quite the master of locked room mysteries.

Im grateful to the author for the ARC, and leave this review voluntarily.

[Eero · Rating 3 out of 5]

The murder mystery was really cleverly done, as usual, and I was completely fooled, but I am getting tired of these characters. The author seems to want to make the reader to really and truly dislike the pedantic, chainsmoking fat slob Manory and the smartass Williams with his lame jokes. I happen to believe that the reader should find at least something to like or even admire in a protagonist. To illustrate, a quote from Manory:

"Miss Davenport! I am the most famous detective in the country and I am the most brilliant deductive mind in the English-speaking world. I am not going to withhold a meager payment to a cheap tart. Now, tell me!

At least he is not hampered by modesty.

I couldn't help noticing that one of the character names (Delbert Grady) is snatched from The Shining. Other names include Lulu Raspin (a nightclub singer), Arturo Venal (shady private detective), and H.U. Maverick (a Texan, and a producer of movies like Turkish Trollops in Toyland, and The Flapper Follies of Frisco.). I mean, these names seem to belong to characters in a board game - or a straight up farce.

There was a detail that nagged at me when I was reading, and I just remembered to check it: the abbreviation "hazmat" would not have been used at that time, at least according to Merriam-Webster.

[Tiffany Townsend · Rating 4 out of 5]

It wasn’t until end of chapter 3 that Rowan, the investigator for the disfiguring macaque, fully believed Mr. Rinehardt. The animals appearance was a frightful scene, enlisting anticipation and intensity in readers.
The jargon took a bit of getting used to.
Mr. Rinehardt was brutally attacked in foreign lands by a monkey, a macaque. Rhinehardt is convinced that the monkey had been trained to kill him.
Upon the end of chapter 3, Inspector Rowan Grady is convinced as well.
Read this entertaining fiction story about the folleys of investigators in London as they uncover a game of cat and mouse.

[E.B. Roshan]

Normally I enjoy mysteries. However, unfortunately (since I received a free ARC for review purposes) I did not like this one. It wasn’t poorly-written, but the characters ran the gamut from unlikable to scum, the murder mystery felt far too contrived, and the setting (1920s Chicago) was unconvincing.

I appreciate the author being willing to share his work, but Monkey See, Monkey Murder was not for me.

[Shirley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fairly quick read. Will keep you guessing. A locked room murder mystery with a twist when revealed how it was done. Received an ARC and this is my voluntary honest review.

[Les · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good story. The writing is tight and the plot has plenty of surprises, including the ending.