titular character, Joe Mannix. The novel Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop has at least two significant homages to Mannix: Intertect was the name of the private detective agency that Mannix worked for in the first season of Mannix. It reappears in Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop as the agency that Monk and Natalie are employed at throughout most of the novel. One of the first case files that Monk is seen working on is a case involving a man named Lou Wickersham, whom he says disguised his suicide as murder. Lew Wickersham was Mannix's boss at Intertect during the first season of that show. He was portrayed by Joseph Campanella. By coincidence, Stanley Kamel, who portrayed Dr. Kroger during the first six seasons of the show, actually guest-starred in an episode of Mannix. Lee Goldberg wrote the Diagnosis Murder episode "Hard-boiled Murder," which featured the return of Mike Connors as Mannix and included flashbacks from a Mannix episode. Murder, She Wrote Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop contains numerous references to the 1985 television series Murder, She Wrote, which starred Angela Lansbury, William Windom, Tom Bosley, and Ron Masak. It is mentioned that Steve Wurzel died on the road between San Francisco and Mendocino, California. Mendocino was the town representing Cabot Cove, Maine in Murder, She Wrote. While reading several Murder, She Wrote novels to enhance her detective skills, Natalie mentions how Cabot Cove has the highest murder per capita rate in the world. This in fact is a reference to an article in a 1996 issue of The New York Times that mentioned how in the course of the Murder, She Wrote series, at least 2% of the population was murdered, and visitors fared even worse. Stanley Kamel also guest starred in two episodes of this series as well. Lee Goldberg's Monk books are published by Penguin/Putnam, which also publishes the Murder, She Wrote series of novels by Donald Bain. Murder, She Wrote was co-created by William Link & Richard Levinson, who also co-created Mannix Murder, She Wrote and Monk are both properties owned by NBC/Universal Studios. List of characters Characters from the television series Adrian Monk: the titular detective, played on the series by Tony Shalhoub Natalie Teeger: Monk's loyal assistant and the narrator of the book, played on the series by Traylor Howard Captain Leland Stottlemeyer: Captain of the San Francisco Police Department's Homicide Division,