Monkey in the middle

the long version

Besmirched by his participation in the botched Operation Slay Dracula—an elaborate mission to assassinate Saddam Hussein—down-and-out Gulf War veteran Dutch Flowers returns to L.A. with a bad case of “compassion fatigue”—and acute paranoia. After scraping by for years as a small-time private investigator, he lands a lucrative job with a mysterious genetics research corporation investigating the murder of a lab chimp at their Sapiens Trial Facility, or STF, a sort of hybridized ecosystem—Brave New World meets the Biosphere. The assignment leads him into a labyrinth of dark streets, strange clues, and ominous characters. Meanwhile, his marriage is falling apart, and Saddam Hussein has dispatched a cross-dressing assassin nicknamed Mr. Wonderful to put him out of his misery.