Mr. Monk Helps Himself: Review and Giveaway

Have you met Monk yet?  This was my first meeting with detective Adrian Monk, "a brilliant San Francisco detective whose obsessive compulsive disorder just happens to get in the way". Published in the summer of 2013, Mr. Monk Helps Himself by Hy Conrad is a cozy mystery, the first novel in the series to be written by this author, who spent eight years writing for the Monk television series.  The book is set in San Francisco (one of my favorite cities), and is narrated by Monk's assistant, Natalie Teeger, who's studying for her PI license.

"Monk himself isn't a licensed PI.  For one thing, he's horrible at tests.  Not because of the questions, but because he has to sharpen and resharpen the pencil and then fill in every circle so that it's completely black and within the borders. So it's up to me to get the license and incorporate and make our business legit.  Monk and Tegger, Consulting Detectives."
~ Mr. Monk Helps Himself, Hy Conrad    

Natalie is at a Best Possible Me retreat when the leader, Miranda Bigley, suddenly jumps off a cliff.   Her death looks like suicide, but Natalie supects it's murder.  Adrian Monk is also at the self-help retreat at Half Moon Bay, to rescue Natalie from this apparent cult.  But Detective Monk, who suffers from OCD and has numerous issues with cleanliness, aardvarks, and other things, is mostly concerned about helping the SFPD solve the case of a murder of a clown, even though he suffers from intense coulrophobia, the fear of clowns.

My first impression of the Monk series is quite a favorable one.  The title of this book is perfect, Hy Conrad's writing seems effortless, and the book is funny and riveting.  I loved the humor that runs through the book, which brings us Monk's obsession with cleaning light bulbs, and a shop named Poop on Union Street, although the book has an affecting, underlying sadness as well, because Monk's wife, Trudy, was killed by a car bomb, which remains a devastating, unsolved murder.  We have empathy for Monk, who was fired from the SFPD when his fears grew disabling, and hired back four years later as a consulting detective because of his keen ability to solve perplexing cases.

Although I like to figure things out myself whenever I read a mystery, perhaps most importantly, I've rediscovered something else--cozy mysteries are fun and entertaining!  At least, good ones are.  Additionally, Mr. Monk Helps Himself sparked my interest in watching the TV series, which I'd heard of but have never seen.  (Naturally, I turned to Wikipedia for help in this area.)  Monk (2002 - 2009; eight seasons) is an American detective television series created by Andy Breckman, starring Tony Shalhoub as Adrian Monk.  Having read this one book, I'm pretty sure I'd enjoy watching the TV series as well, largely because the characters, especially Natalie, Monk, Ellen, and Devlin, are great.  By this I mean that they're quirky and caring and likable; I'm eager to see these mysteries enacted (and I love another TV mystery series, The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency series).  I truly enjoyed reading this comedic yet heatrending mystery novel.  More Monk, please!

Wonderful news!  Author Hy Conrad is generously offering a copy of Mr. Monk Helps Himself as a giveaway to one randomly chosen reader.  This giveaway is international (U.S./Canada, choice of print or ebook; ebook elsewhere)!

• To enter this giveaway, simply leave a comment. 
• For another chance at winning, become a follower of this blog, or let me know that you're already a follower.
• For an additional chance, post about this giveaway on your blog, Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter. 
• Have you read other Monk books, or watched the TV show?  If so, leave a comment about this for an additional entry.

Enter by 5 PM PDT on Thursday, October 10.  One winner will be selected randomly and announced on Friday, October 11.  Good luck!

Thanks to Teddy from Premier Virtual Author Book Tours for sending me a complimentary copy of this mystery novel.  I am the last stop on this book tour.  For more reviews and giveaways, please visit the other stops on the Mr. Monk Helps Himself book tour.

Really Random Tuesday #73: Book Winners, Blogger Layout Issues, and a Few Fall Quotes

Uno, dos, tres!  I have three lucky winners to announce today.  Stacie, Carol M, and Gina D have each won a copy of The Last Camellia by Sarah Jio.  Congratulations!  I'll send those books out to you as soon as I get your mailing addresses.  It sounds like quite a captivating book and I hope to read my own copy of the book, (relatively) soon. If you didn't win this time, please take a look at the other book giveaways in my blog's sidebar.  I know, the book covers in my giveaway list are larger than usual; more about that next.

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Suko's Notebook  ·  Layout

 

Is anyone else having layout problems in Blogger?  I've mentioned this already to a few of you, so please excuse any repetitiveness on my part if you've heard it before.  Specifically, I'm having a hard time with the Configure Image Gadget in Layout, which used to work easily and perfectly.  Now, suddenly, I'm getting a message that I need to include a title ("required field must not be left blank") when I try to save images, and the size of images is larger than it used to be, so the book covers are not of uniform size.  I've figured out how to bypass adding a title and will continue to do this if I absolutely need to, but it used to work without this hassle.  As a courtesy to my readers, I list book giveaways in my right sidebar, and that's what's being affected by this.  I'm not sure if Blogger made some permanent changes (I hope not!), or if this is just a temporary glitch of some sort.  Sometimes, these issues resolve themselves within a few days, and I'm hoping that will be the case with this, because it's been a pain to contend with.  Thank you for letting me vent about this!  Is anyone else having similar problems?  I hope someone at Blogger reads this and that it will work the way it used to soon.

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Autumn officially started on September 22.  In my neck of the woods, Southern California, we had one day of cool fall weather, autumn's "opening day", but yesterday was hot.  It should be a bit cooler today, though, thankfully.  Regardless of the actual weather, it is fall, so I'm posting a few quotes from authors about this time of the year to help put us all in the mood for the days ahead.

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."
~ Albert Camus

"Delicious autumn!  My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."
~ George Eliot 

“Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn--that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness--that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.”
~ Jane Austen, Persuasion

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Appearing on random Tuesdays, Really Random Tuesday is a way to post odds and ends--announcements, musings, quotes, photos--any blogging and book-related matters you can think of.  I often announce book winners in these posts.  If you have miscellaneous book news to gather up and are inspired by this idea, "grab" the button for use on your own blog, then add your link to the "master" Mister Linky on the Really Random Tuesday page. 

As always, thanks for reading!