When a friend's college-age son dies mysteriously in Mexico, the mayor sends Monk to investigate. Doubting the coroner's report that the young man ""drowned"" in mid-air, Monk nevertheless has difficulty concentrating on the case. His eighteen suitcases carrying not only his clothes and ""back-up pillowcases"" but a year's supply of food and his favorite brand of bottled water are stolen, leaving him with nothing he considers safe to eat or drink. Even worse, someone is trying to kill him, first by running him down with a pick-up truck and then by planting an explosive device behind a picture that he compulsively straightens every time he enters his room. Neither the witnesses nor the police, a south-of-the-border caricature of Stottlemeyer and Disher, offer any helpful leads--except for the mention of another unsolved murder, this one a mauling by a ""wild lion,"" the previous year. The fact that both victims were from San Francisco offers Monk the clue that he needs to solve the case and e

Sharona's actress sister, Gail, is suspected of murdering Hal Duncan, a fellow actor who dies onstage after Gail stabs him with what she insists is a retractable knife. When Sharona's mother (who thinks that Sharona is Monk's partner, not his assistant) arrives for a visit and Sharona tells her the bad news, Monk and Sharona promise to ""do whatever it takes"" to discover what really happened. ""Whatever it takes"" turns out to be a bit more than Monk bargained for, however. After talking with the props manager, he begins to suspect that Jenna Ryan, Gail's understudy, somehow killed Duncan and framed Gail, even though she was at a party on the other side of town when Duncan died. In order to talk with and observe Jenna, he endures a painful half hour at a speed dating service and even agrees to take the dead man's part in the play for two days until a new actor arrives. While Monk is on stage battling stage fright and fully aware that one of the knives on the stage is real, Sharona searche