When negotiations with the police union go south leading to an unofficial strike, the mayor offers Monk his badge back and promotes him to captain, leading a rag-tag group of detectives who have also been rehired despite some issues that led to them losing their jobs in the first place.  His task: find the  Golden Gate Strangler and deal with other murders that come up along the way.  While Monk and his team crack the Golden Gate Strangler case and track down another murderer, the real police return when one of their own is gunned down.  Working again with Stottlemeyer and Disher, Monk helps to solve that case, but once again loses his job in the process.

Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu is the third of 18 novels based on the USA Network dramedy that ran from 2002 to 2009 from series writer Lee Goldberg. Once again told from the perspective of Natalie, the story shares the bones of the plot with an episode from Monk‘s final season, aired two years later.  With the remaining fifteen books waiting for me, hopefully things start to gel more as the series goes forward.