On their way home from Germany, Natalie coerces Mr. Monk to stop in Paris for a real vacation.  When he finds a recently murdered skull in the famous catacombs, however, their vacation once again turns into a work trip.  When the skull is identified and tied back a crime in San Francisco, Captain Stottlemeyer and Lt. Disher join them in the city of lights, looking for the mysterious killer.

Mr. Monk Is Miserable is the seventh of 18 novels based on the USA Network dramedy that ran from 2002 to 2009 from series writer Lee Goldberg. This outing once again over exaggerates Monk’s reactions everyday occurrences way beyond what would be seen in the show and again adds in a pair of local Parisian detectives who are thinly veined copies of Stottlemeyer and Disher, but also eventually brings in the real deal, which helped this outing feel like a closer fir with the television series. I’ve got eleven more of these books waiting for me, so hopefully this upward trend continues.