Bad Monkey (Andrew Yancy, 1)

by Carl Hiaasen

Yancy received his first bribe offer at a tin-roofed seafood joint on Stock Island called Stoney’s Crab Palace, where he had documented seventeen serious health violations, including mouse droppings, rat droppings, chicken droppings, a tick nursery, open vats of decomposing shrimp, lobsters dating back to the first Bush presidency and, on a tray of baked oysters, a soggy condom.

It was traumatizing to see how many ways food could be defiled. His first sighting of maggots put him off rice pudding forever.

The typical Key West murder is a drunken altercation over debts, dope or dance partners. Premeditated robbery-homicides are rare because they require a level of planning and sober enterprise seldom encountered among the island’s indolent felons.