I don't own any characters from the TV show Monk. For those of you who might have come here from the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fandom, these are Adrian Monk, Natalie Teeger, and Julie Teeger. They belong to whoever writes the scripts for the show.
I don't own any characters from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They belong to Roald Dahl. Also, so you will know, I'm basing this off of the 2005 movie version of the book.
The character of Estrella Tryon is a self-insert. I fictionalized her a bit, though, as well as giving her a made up name. I don't have a sister, for example. Since Estrella Tryon is a fairly minor character, I feel I can get away with this.
I wrote out the whole story before I started posting chapters. However, I'm still open to suggestions about things I can do in the story (and I will make sure to give credit when I use someone's idea at the beginning of a chapter). I might not be able to work them all in, but I am open to them.
This will also be the first story that I didn't post all at once. I'll try posting it a chapter at a time and see how well it works.
Monk might be out of character since I haven't been able to watch the show for a while and don't know what kind of progress he might have made.
If Natalie and Julie seem out of character, it's because I never actually watched any shows where Natalie was the assistant. I used her because I like the way people have written her better in the fanfiction stories I've read than I liked how people cast Sherona. Since, as I said before, I haven't been able to watch the show, this is really the only way I can make my decision of which one to use. Also, I think I remember that after 2005 (when the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie came out) that Natalie was the assistant. I wanted to keep it accurate.
I will sometimes use lines from books, TV shows, and movies I know. When I do this, I will let everyone know with an author's note and will often set a contest to see who if anyone can identify it. The right answer, as well as who had gotten it right, will be posted on the beginning of the next chapter.
For the sake of this story, Charlie and Julie are about the same age. I figured that age to be around twelve years old. I checked the Internet Movie Database and both the actor who played Charlie (Freddy Highmore) and the actress who played Julie (Emmy Clarke) were about this age in 2005. Freddy Highmore was thirteen and Emmy Clarke was fourteen. So saying they are both twelve for this story really isn't too far off.
I never realized before this how hard it is to write a mystery story. You have to come up with what happened. Who did it. Evidence. Etc. Etc. Etc. So, all that said, if the mystery part of the story seems not as complicated as it normally would be for Monk, please don't scold me about it. I did the best I could.
As writing teacher always said: "We are not here to bury or sanctify anyone…A specific criticism is worth more than an boatload of fluffy praise. Try to write your reviews with the Golden Rule in mind." In other words, no flames, please. My teacher always concluded with: "It is a privilege to have others read and criticize your writing."