I am indebted to Hermann Joha, Elke Schubert, Jasmin Steigler, the staff of the Franziskushohe, and the kind people of Lohr for their advice, guidance, and good humor on all things German. I also owe thanks to Justin Brenneman, Dr. D. P. Lyle, Kristen Weber, Kerry Donovan, and Gina Maccoby. And, finally, this book would not be possible without the creativity and enthusiasm of my friend Andy Breckman and the entire Monk writing staff.
While much of what I have written about Lohr and the surrounding area is true, a lot of it isn’t. I am entirely to blame for any errors of fact, geography, logic, or good taste, intentional or otherwise.
The story in this book takes place prior to the events in the episode “Mr. Monk Is On the Run.” While I try very hard to stay true to the continuity of the Monk TV series, it is not always possible, given the long lead time between when my books are written and when they are published. During that period new episodes may air that contradict details or situations referred to in my books. If you come across any such continuity mismatches, your understanding is appreciated.
I look forward to hearing from you at www.leegoldberg.com.
CHAPTER ONE
Mr. Monk and the Assistant
It’s a tough job being somebody’s personal assistant. You have to answer their phone, manage their correspondence, run their errands, pay their bills, arrange their schedule, and basically do whatever tasks, menial to major, they are too busy or self-absorbed or distracted or pampered or disinterested to do themselves.
I know that there are plenty of other occupations that require a lot more education, talent, courage, patience, skill, and endurance. And there are many jobs considerably more demanding, degrading, disgusting, or dangerous than being a mere personal assistant.
Sure, it might not be as deadly and unpleasant as crab fishing in the Arctic, or as risky as defusing land mines in Afghanistan, or as disgusting as trudging through the human waste in the New York sewer system. But, believe me, being a personal assistant is a lot harder than you think it is.
It involves more than fetching coffee, making restaurant reservations, and picking up dry cleaning. You have to be equal parts shrink, social worker, and mercenary to not only second-guess and satisfy the ever-changing professional, personal, physical, and emotional needs of your employer, but to also predict and manage the impact that he will have on people around him and that they will have on him.
Your intellect, your integrity, your ethics, and your physical endurance are put to the test every single day in ways you never could have imagined.
And you can forget about working only nine to five. Being a personal assistant is a full-time job that never ends. It’s 24/7. You’re on call more than any doctor, firefighter, or cop but for a lot less pay, negligible respect, and no benefits.
Your life and whatever needs you may have are trumped by the whims of your employer. You exist on this earth to serve him.
Now take all of that and multiply it by a thousand. That’s what it’s like when you’re the personal assistant to a brilliant detective, like I am to Adrian Monk.
Brilliant detectives are able to see things we can’t, amid the insignificant details and white noise that normal people like us simply tune out.
They can find connections between objects, events, and behaviors that anybody else would consider random, coincidental, or just fate because, well, most things are.
They can spot inconsistencies that would go unnoticed by anyone else because we have other priorities and simply aren’t paying close enough attention.
They interact with the world in an entirely different way than you and I do. They observe the way we live instead of living the way we do.
That’s what makes the detectives brilliant. And that’s what makes them completely incapable of dealing with everyday life and the basics of simple human interaction. It’s the reasonwhy so many brilliant detectives are considered “difficult” and “eccentric” by most people who meet them.
Adrian Monk’s brilliance comes from an obsessive-compulsive disorder and myriad phobias, all of which finally overwhelmed him when his wife, Trudy, was killed in a car bombing that has remained unsolved, and has haunted him to this day. He was fired from the San Francisco police force after her death and now makes his living consulting on homicide cases with Captain Leland Stottlemeyer.
Monk goes through life making sure that everything is in its place, following detailed rules of order that exist only in his mind and nowhere else. So he’s sensitive to anything that’s out of place and he has an uncontrollable need to put things back where they belong. Or, at least, where he thinks they belong.
To him, an unsolved murder is a story missing an ending, a puzzle missing a piece, an extreme and fatal example of disorder in an orderly world.
He has to set it right.
To do that, he needs someone to manage his life, get him where he needs to go, and keep away all the things that can distract him or provoke his phobias so that he can get through the day without a nervous breakdown. And, if things go really well, maybe he can solve a murder, too.
But it’s not easy dealing with a man who regularly disinfects his box of disinfectant wipes with a disinfectant wipe, who measures his ice cubes to ensure they are perfect cubes, and who once demanded at a crime scene that the police rearrange the cars in an adjacent parking lot alphabetically by their license plates, and then in groups by their make, model, and year of manufacture, so that he could concentrate.
I know I’ve complained to
