Late Former Owensboro KY Resident Had a Cameo in a ‘Monk’ Novel

The great character actor Tony Shalhoub has been appearing on our TV screens and now streaming platforms for multiple decades. I remember seeing him for the first time on the sitcom Wings.

Soon after, he was the lead guest actor on an episode of The X-Files called "Half-Light" in which he played a man whose shadow was a black hole. In recent years, he's had a prominent supporting role on the Amazon Prime comedy The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, for which he won one of his four Primetime Emmy Awards in 2019.

But I'm guessing he is most well-known for playing germophobic detective Adrian Monk on the comedy series Monk. It's the role that won him the other three Emmys. He's also won a Daytime Emmy, a Golden Globe, and a Tony Award.

Created for the USA Network by Andy Breckman, Monk was so popular, a series of 19 novels by Lee Goldberg were subsequently written featuring the Adrian Monk character. The eighth such outing from 2009--entitled Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop--features this paragraph on page 55. The setting is a police conference Q&A session. Check this out:

I always love it when Owensboro or even Kentucky gets love on the big screen or small screen; it never occurred to me to think about mystery novels. And "mystery" is the key word here.

Back in the day, the RiverPark Center in downtown Owensboro hosted International Mystery Writers Festivals, and it was during one of these events that Monk producer David Breckman--Andy's brother--made an appearance at the behest of then-RiverPark president Zev Buffman. I'm guessing this friendship is how Buffman became a member of the Owensboro Police Department for Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop. Zev Buffman passed away in 2020 at the age of 89. Here he is in a 1988 interview from his time in Miami.

Now that I think about it, I remember the Monk producer showing up at the festival. Fun times.

By the way, I tip my hat to my sister, the biggest Monk fan I know. She was reading Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop and made the discovery, and a very cool one it was.