Hy Conrad, Mr. Monk is in Business

I suppose I have to resign myself to the fact that we're living in a new age. Hy Conrad's Monk books are not going to be the same as Lee Goldberg's, and I shouldn't expect them to be. So far, Conrad's stories are not as funny or as poignant as those of his predecessor—the series' main selling point, in my opinion—but they're still good and worth reading. This time out there's a pair of mysteries—thematically related, it ultimately turns out. One of them I had mostly figured out early on, the other not at all. I'm not usually very adept at solving these things before the principals do, so I have to assume Conrad telegraphed the solution more than is customary.