Mr. Monk Goes to Germany by Lee Goldberg

From the Publisher

An all-new novel starring the obsessively beloved TV detective who always knows when something's out of place...

Adrian Monk has actually been doing well lately. He's solving murders as fast as they come, and he's been noticeably less compulsive. Monk knows he owes it all to his therapist, Dr. Kroger. So when Kroger attends a conference in Germany, Monk hits the skids, reverting to his OCD habits full-time. Desperate, Monk follows his shrink to Germany. And that's when he sees the man across a crowded town square. A man with six fingers. Monk knows it could be the man responsible for his wife's death.

Publishers Weekly

The sixth novel (after 2007's Mr. Monk in Outer Space) based on the popular Monk TV series created by Andy Breckman effectively meets the challenges of translating the screen concept to the page. Monk, an extreme sufferer of obsessive-compulsive disorder who left the San Francisco police department after his journalist wife, Trudy, was killed in a car bombing, decides to accompany his psychotherapist, Dr. Kroger, to a professional conference in Germany so that he won't miss his weekly therapy session. Once in Germany, Monk spots a six-fingered man he believes may have ordered the hit on Trudy. The discovery that the man is an old acquaintance of his psychotherapist leads Monk to investigate Kroger as well. Despite the lack of the TV series' visual humor and the performance of actor Tony Shalhoub, Goldberg does a decent job of conveying both the sleuth's quirks and his genius.
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Kirkus Reviews

Television's most obsessive-compulsive investigator (Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants, 2007, etc.) de-compensates when his psychiatrist goes to a conference overseas. Since his breakdown following the car-bomb death of his reporter wife Trudy, Adrian Monk has been doing better. He still obsesses over the disappearance of his sock ("a left sock," he points out) and frets that his one-legged neighbor is a cannibal, but he solves the murders of Amy and Eric Clayson without leaving the Telegraph Hill apartment in which their corpses are found, and he unmasks Clarke Trotter's killer overnight. Although his therapist doesn't think he's quite ready to rejoin the police force, Dr. Kroger does think Monk will be able to skip a session while Kroger attends a seminar in Germany. Too bad Monk doesn't agree. He's so freaked at the thought of a missed appointment that he browbeats his assistant Natalie Teeger into flying to Lohr with him (on a plane! with recirculated air!) so he can see his shrink. Of course, Lohr is a nightmare to Monk (cobblestone streets! buildings with no right angles!), but the scariest sight is a six-fingered man-like the man who ordered Trudy's death-arm in arm with his psychiatrist. Committed to proving that the polydactylic Dr. Rahner is a killer, Monk tangles with Hauptkriminalkommissar Stoffmacher of the local Polizei and nearly gets committed for good. Monk's antic neurosis may be cute on television, but on the page, it's just silly. Agent: Gina Maccoby/Gina Maccoby Agency

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