Andrew Yancy - late of the Miami Police and soon-to-be-late of the Monroe County sheriff's office - has a human arm in his freezer. Yancy thinks the boating-accident/shark-luncheon explanation is full of holes, and if he can prove murder, the sheriff might rescue him from his grisly Health Inspector gig. Yancy must negotiate an obstacle course of wildly unpredictable events and characters, including a hot-blooded fugitive from Kansas; the twitchy widow of the frozen arm; the Bahamian voodoo witch known as the Dragon Queen, whose suitors are blinded unto death by her peculiar charms; Yancy's new true love, a kinky coroner; and the eponymous bad monkey - who just may be one of Carl Hiaasen's greatest characters.