Jane Charlotte: a woman with a serious attitude problem, a drug habit and a licence to kill. She has been arrested for murder, and during questioning tells police that she is a member of a secret organisation devoted to fighting evil. Her division, 'The Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons' - or 'Bad Monkeys' for short - is an execution squad that rids the world of especially evil people. However, the man Jane has been arrested for killing was not on the official target list. This strange confession earns Jane a trip to the jail's psychiatric wing, where a doctor interviews her at length about her supposed career as an assassin. Her tale grows increasingly bizarre, with references to hidden messages in crosswords, dollar bills that can see, and axe-wielding Scary Clowns. The doctor does his best to sort truth from lies, but whenever it seems he's getting to the bottom of things, there's another twist to unravel. Not until the full story is told will we learn whether Jane is lying, crazy or playing a different game altogether.
Ruff's first novel, Fool on the Hill, is a fantasy that drew on his experiences living in Risley Residential College at Cornell. It was first written as his senior thesis in Honors English.[7] It was published shortly after Ruff graduated from the university.
His second book Sewer, Gas & Electric: The Public Works Trilogy is postcyberpunk.
His third book Set This House in Order: A Romance of Souls, focuses on two protagonists displaying a fictionalized version of dissociative identity disorder; while not technically science-fiction, it nonetheless contains significant speculative elements.[citation needed]
Matthew Theron Ruff (born September 8, 1965) is an American author of thriller, science-fiction and comic novels, including The Mirage and Lovecraft Country, the latter having been adapted in 2020 by HBO into a TV series.
Bad Monkeys (2007) is a psychological thriller novel by Matt Ruff. It received mixed reviews in national media, but was subsequently optioned for film.
The beginning of the book takes place in the mental disabilities wing of the Las Vegas Clark County Detention Center. A psychiatrist named Dr. Vale interviews Jane Charlotte, who is there for the murder of a man called Dixon. Jane claims that she works for a secret organization devoted to fighting evil and that she is the operative for the Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons, which is also known as Bad Monkeys. She also claims that her job is to eliminate individuals who are guilty of heinous crimes, but might elude normal channels of justice. Jane tells her story to Dr. Vale about her life working with Bad Monkeys.
Ruff has stated that Bad Monkeys is his "Philip K. Dick novel"—and that, for this reason, the protagonist is named for Jane Charlotte Dick, Philip K. Dick's twin sister who died in infancy;[1] He also states that the book was inspired by having watched an episode of South Park and, shortly thereafter, having read David Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets.[1]
The book received mixed reviews in national media. In The New York Times Jonathan Ames wrote, "'Bad Monkeys,' allusions aside, is highly entertaining. It moves fast and keeps surprising you."[2] The Los Angeles Times criticized the book's characters, conversation, and recycled ideas, ultimately concluding that while Ruff "does show flashes of the philosophical underpinnings found in his previous work", that "his talents are better suited to expansive worlds rather than this embedded chicanery".[3] The Washington Post'' compared the book to the G. K. Chesterton novel The Man Who Was Thursday and the film The Matrix, noting that Bad Monkeys contained "so many ingenious fake-out layers that readers will find their heads spinning with awed delight by the book's frenetic climax".[4]
Bad Monkeys received a 2008 Washington State Book Award for Fiction[5] and a 2008 Alex Award from the American Library Association.[6]