Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii

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Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii is the second novel in the Monk mystery book series by Lee Goldberg.

[edit] Plot

Natalie, feeling overworked, is delighted when her best friend Candace invites her on a comped trip to Kauai to be the maid of honor at her wedding. The only question is, how to tell Monk. She decides to drop the bomb at the last second: when Monk is on his usual high after solving a murder case – a famous heart surgeon who was actually killed by poison from his own patient while she was on the operating table – and tells him she's leaving the next day. He is devastated, and she quickly pushes him off to his normal appointment with Dr. Kroger.

The next day, Natalie's peace of mind lasts all of one hour, when she is shocked to see Monk sitting in the aisle across from her on the plane. Only now, he is "The Monk" – the infinitely-better-adjusted, but insufferably obnoxious persona brought on by Dioxnyl, the anti-OCD drug Dr. Kroger once prescribed for him. Trapped, Natalie has no choice but to suck up and accept him along.

On the ground, the pair of them meet Candace and her fiancé, Brian Galloway. Brian is full of adventure stories, many of which are repeated by his adoring betrothed. They also invite Monk to the wedding, saying the more the merrier.

Monk and Natalie check into their hotel, which is playing host to a live taping by famous TV psychic Dylan Swift. Natalie carefully arranges their room placement, anticipating the next morning, when the drugs will wear off.

When they do, Monk is horror-struck at how he's spent the last twenty-four hours. But Natalie is firm about him behaving himself while they are on vacation.

A few hours later, Monk, to everyone's shock and embarrassment, speaks up in the middle of the wedding and catches Brian in several lies – the whopper of which is, that he's already married to a woman in New Jersey, and was planning to travel back and forth between his two families. Furious and mortified, Candace storms out of the wedding. As mad as she is at Monk for humiliating her friend, Natalie is also grateful that he saved her from a bigamist marriage.

With the wedding canceled, Monk is eager to go home, but Natalie says their booking is for a week, and she plans to enjoy it. On their way back to the hotel, however, they see a dead woman being loaded into a coroner's wagon. She apparently drowned in a hot tub after being hit on the head by a falling coconut – but Monk, right away, says it was murder.