Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff

Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff is a condensed, fast-paced, insightful romp that walks the line between gritty literary realism and surreal science-fiction. I’ve been waiting for the next Ruff novel for quite a while and Bad Monkeys will hold me over until I get my next fix.

Bad Monkeys revolves around Jane Charlotte as she converses with a psychologist and explains how and why she’s now arrested for murder. The explanation is, as you’d expect from a Ruff novel, a whopper! Jane details two secret societies locked in a battle of good and evil.

She explains how, as a child rejected by her mother, she found herself in central California on the trail of a serial pedophile and murderer dubbed The Angel of Death. It’s here that she first encounters the ‘organization’ and uses an NC gun to fend off and kill the The Angel of Death. What’s an NC gun? Come now, it’s a gun that kills by Natural Causes. Quintessential, inventive Ruff!

As you may have realized, the topics covered by Ruff aren’t shallow or glitzy in an Elmore Leonard way. Like Set This House In Order, he’s dealing with serious issues that fracture the lives of people. Bad Monkeys covers some of the same ground as Set This House In Order, and nearly feels like a mash-up of that novel and Sewer, Gas & Electric.

But Ruff makes it different enough and keeps you guessing as to whether Jane is just a very troubled woman who’s built a fantastic and bizarre world as a coping mechanism, or if she’s on the level and is on the front lines in the war against evil. Just when you think you know which way it will go, that’s when the plot twist(s) make you doubt yourself.

I read Bad Monkeys in two round-trip BART rides. It’s a rather short novel, particularly for the usually Homeric Ruff. So part of me wishes he’d taken one more year and written another 200 pages to fully explore the fantastic framework he established. Another is happy that the next novel is that much closer.