Bad Monkeys: A Novel

Matt Ruff

Mar 2020 · HarperAudio · Narrated by Emily Woo Zeller, Greg Tremblay, and Gary Tiedemann

About this audiobook

“Bad Monkeys has wit and imagination by the bucketload. . . . Buy it, read it, memorize then destroy it. There are eyes everywhere.”—Chris Moore, bestselling author of A Dirty Job and Lamb

Jane Charlotte has been arrested for murder. She tells police that she is a member of a secret organization devoted to fighting evil; her division is called the Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons—“Bad Monkeys” for short. This confession earns Jane a trip to the jail’s psychiatric wing, where a doctor attempts to determine whether she is lying, crazy, or playing a different game altogether.

Clever and gripping, full of unexpected twists and turns, teasing existential musings, and captivating prose, Bad Monkeys unfolds at lightning speed, taking readers to another realm of imagination.

Ratings and reviews

The book uses two voice actors, but rather than having each actor play a character, they have each actor narrate alternating chapters. So all the characters have two voices: Narrator A and Narrator B. It's a bizarre choice the production crew made here, and it's not *bad* per se, but for me it added nothing. I didn't need a change of voice to know if I was in a "past" chapter or "present" chapter. The story kinda came off the rails in the third act. I knew it was an unreliable narrator, but a relatively grounded story was muddied by a LOT of fantastic elements, and a few too many twists. Worth a listen if it's on sale.

About the author

Matt Ruff is the author of Lovecraft Country and its sequel, The Destroyer of Worlds, as well as 88 Names, Bad Monkeys, The Mirage, Set This House in Order, Fool on the Hill, and Sewer, Gas & Electric: The Public Works Trilogy. He lives in Seattle, Washington.