Crime novel: Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen (Sphere, £16.99)

When detective Andrew Yancy assaults his lover’s husband with a portable vacuum cleaner he soon realises the full meaning of the phrase “it sucks”. Deprived of his badge, he is forced to become a restaurant inspector which sorely — and stomach-turningly — tries his love of wildlife.

However, when a fishing honeymooner hooks a man’s severed arm instead of a swordfish in the Florida Keys, the quixotic ex-cop smells an opportunity to get his job back. Convinced that a gold-digging wife has committed murder, he and his sidekick — a glamorous half-Cuban coroner — fly to the Bahamas, where all manner of appalling antics are uncovered.

Only Carl Hiaasen would precede the word “atrocities” with the adjective “blithe” — but then he is a comic genius. Bad Monkey sees him on top form, describing his cast of colourful characters — a crinkle-eared goon called Egg, a skanky voodoo priestess known as the Dragon Queen and the eponymous capuchin, a scabby star of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies — in equally colourful language and deploying an impressive range of inventive insults.

Like Evelyn Waugh, he has a cynical view of human nature but the energetic way he skewers venality and venery is laugh-out-loud funny. In a word, disarming.