The eighth book in the Monk series, 2009

This is the first Monk novel in several years that wasn’t written on different computers in various cities, countries, and modes of transport. I wrote the entire manuscript at my desk in Los Angeles.

I would like to thank my friend, author Michael Connelly, and cops-turned-authors Lee Lofland and Paul Bishop, for their advice on police matters.

And, as always, I am indebted to Andy Breckman, the creator of Monk, for entrusting me with his characters and for his unwavering support and enthusiasm.

I also would like to thank Gina Maccoby, Kristen Weber, and Kerry Donovan for making it all possible.

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.

My name is Natalie Teeger. I’ve spent a good chunk of my life trying to figure out who I am, who I want to be, and what I want to do.

Although I don’t have the answers to those questions, I’ve pretty much reconciled myself to the fact that I’m not going to be a rock star, a U.S. senator, or an international supermodel.

I’m also probably not going to discover the cure to some horrible disease, host my own TV talk show, bring peace to the Middle East, or come up with a handy invention that completely changes the way we live.

Not that I necessarily aspired to any of those things in the past, but now I’ve officially stopped searching for a career and dreaming of lofty achievements.

I’ve set more modest goals for myself-like finding a steady boyfriend, doing the laundry before I run out of clean underwear, and paying off my credit cards in full each month.

There was a time when I was desperate to define myself through a career, but I couldn’t seem to find one that suited me (not that I was ever entirely sure who “me” was). Along the way, I tried all kinds of jobs, from blackjack dealer to yoga instructor, but nothing stuck; nothing felt right.

Who I turned out to be, and what I’ve ended up doing, found me rather than the other way around.

I certainly didn’t plan on being a widowed single mother with a teenage daughter, or working as the assistant to a brilliant, obsessive-compulsive detective.

Yet here I am.

If who we are is a reflection of what we do, how we perceive ourselves, and how others see us, then I suppose I am a loving, supportive mother to Julie and a capable, reliable, and hardworking assistant to Adrian Monk.

I’ve been fulfilling those roles comfortably, and more or less happily, for many years now, and yet I still feel as if I haven’t found myself.

I guess it’s because I’m not doing something that I always dreamed of doing or that feels like the perfect expression of who I am and my natural talents, not that I have a clue what they might be.

I envy people who don’t have those problems-and that seems to be just about everybody I know.

Take my late husband, Mitch, for example. From the time he was a kid, he always wanted to be a fighter pilot, a husband, and a father. So that was what he set out to accomplish, and he succeeded.

Mitch died being the man he wanted to be and doing what he knew he was meant to do. I’m sure that even in his last moments, he never doubted that. When I think about him and how he died in Kosovo, that certainty, along with the knowledge that he knew how much he was loved by me and Julie, gives me a measure of peace.

Adrian Monk is another good example of what I mean. He craves order, predictability, symmetry, and cleanliness. Early in his life, he longed to be an inspector for the California State department of weights and measures, but that soon changed. As early as grade school, he exhibited an amazing knack for solving little mysteries, like who stole the money from the bake sale or who was responsible for vandalizing a locker.

He wasn’t driven by nosiness, or curiosity, or a need for attention, or a quest for justice, but rather an overpowering compulsion to restore balance and order to the world around him.

To him a mystery is a form of chaos, a mess that has to be cleaned up or an imbalance that has to be corrected. It’s his uncontrollable need to literally straighten up, to put things back where they belong, that enables him to see the little details everyone else misses and solve the crimes that boggle everybody else.

Justice isn’t a philosophical, moral, or ethical ideal for him. It’s a balance that must be maintained. In a way, he became an inspector of weights and measures.

There’s absolutely no doubt that Adrian Monk was meant to be a detective. It is the natural extension of his personality, his talents, and his psychological disorder.

Everybody knows it. And he does, too. There are a thousand things he is insecure about (exactly a thousand, by the way, he has them cataloged and indexed) but being a great detective isn’t one of them.

That’s why he won’t give up trying to get back on the San Francisco Police Department, even though they fired him after he suffered a complete mental and emotional breakdown in the wake of his wife Trudy’s murder.

And that’s why his friend Captain Leland Stottlemeyer hired him as a consultant to the Homicide Department, despite Monk’s many phobias and behavioral peculiarities.

Stottlemeyer knew that being a detective was an essential part of Monk’s character and that working was the only thing that would begin to make him whole again-at least until the day he finally finds whoever put a bomb in his wife’s car.

But doing that favor for Monk came at a huge price, and I don’t mean the countless things that Stottlemeyer, and his right-hand man, Lieutenant Randy Disher, have to do to keep Monk happy. (Like making sure there are no black-and-white police cars in sight at a crime scene because it will ruin his concentration. He believes that if cars are painted two colors, it must be done symmetrically, black on one side and white on the other. Anything else would violate the laws of nature.)

Monk is called in to consult whenever there is a crime that totally stumps Stottlemeyer and his detectives. He inevitably solves the mystery so easily that the captain feels stupid for not seeing the clues himself. I know this because the captain has said so on many occasions.

That’s one thing I really like about Stottlemeyer. He always expresses his gratitude and gives Monk all the credit he deserves. But I know it takes a toll on him. Relying on Monk implies that the captain and his men weren’t good enough to solve the crime on their own… or at least not as quickly.

What’s got to make it even worse is that even on the homicide cases that Stottlemeyer and his detectives could and undoubtedly would solve on their own, Monk often figures out the solution while they are still taking out their notebooks.