Written by author Dorothy Porter, The Monkeys Mask (published in 1997) tells the story of a 19-year-old girl named Mickey who loves poetry and poets. Then, Mickey mysteriously goes missing under suspicious circumstances and the missing person case turns into a murder case. When a private detective gets hired to find Mickey, he must uncover her past and ultimately find the killer. When Mickey has been gone for an extensive period of time the family must accept his passing.
When The Monkeys Mask was released, it was liked by many. A reviewer from Kirkus Reviews liked the book, saying that "What's most interesting, of course, is what gets left out of the individual poems almost all the accidents of color and manner and high-fiber description reducing each scene to a few snatches of lapidary dialogue and the susurrus of Jill's reflections. Of course the story is simpler than in Ross Macdonald, but Porter manages a deft balance between nervously lyrical moments and an insinuating forward movement. Another reviewer who liked the book said that this book was"Beautifully imagined and breathtakingly original."
