6 Humorous Mysteries That Are Actually Funny

Look, I’m going to say a thing and it’s going to sound a little bit foolish, but stick with me, we’ll work it through.

I don’t like comedy books, I like funny books.

Yeah, I know. I can see the face you’re making. I understand it. It’s like saying, “I don’t like eggs, but I do like eggs.” But, as you probably know, you can have your eggs in a hundred different ways. There’s a subtlety to cooking a good egg and that matters.

Although I do have to admit, I don’t actually like eggs but let’s gloss over that for the sake of apt metaphor.

So, R.J, I imagine you thinking now. Explain the difference to me, split this hair you are balancing on that finely honed knife because “comedy” and “funny,” they seem pretty close friends to me. And yeah, true, they are good friends, but they don’t live in the same house.

You see, comedy has a point, and the point is the joke. All else is in service to it. Is there a metaphor, a poignant point to be made about humanity’s constant struggle to reach for the unobtainable in Wile E Coyote’s desperate attempts to catch the Roadrunner? Well, probably, but it kind of fades into the background when we drop a 10,000lb weight on him. Because that is the joke, and the joke is the point. All else is secondary.

Now a funny book is a different thing. Because the point is the character, and the drama and the plot. I have a sneaking suspicion that most “funny’”books, as I define them, don’t start off that way. It sort of seeps out of the author (now there’s a pleasant image for you) but the humor comes from the characters. You can’t generally read a few lines to a friend and make them laugh, because what is funny needs the context of the book. Probably not an easy trick, but when it works, it really works.

So, let’s talk about a few and how they have tied into what I’m doing. And lets start with A, because as everyone knows…

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Sue Grafton, A Is for Alibi

Kinsey Millhone is a classic P.I., albeit a female one written in the early 80s when it wasn’t a common thing. In many ways a gender swapped Sam Spade but even from the off, Kinsey is her own thing and like a lot of serial fiction they get stronger as they go on. But the reason it’s in this list is Kinsey’s gently sardonic voice, and her wise cracks as she moves through the world.

You may not laugh out loud, but you’ll definitely smile as she works her way through the twists of her PI career. Sadly, we’ll never get to find out what Z is for as we lost Sue Grafton in 2017. (Though Kinsey lives on in occasional cameo appearances in other authors work)

An awful fact for me is that Kinsey is historical fiction as it starts in the eighties, like I did. But if you’re willing to get a bit more historical please do follow as we sample the delights of Marcus Didius Falco.

Lindsey Davies, The Silver Pigs

The first Falco novel, and they are all great. Let’s put aside the impeccable research or how well the books ground you in the world of ancient Rome and instead focus on Falco himself. What I love about Falco is that he is just a delight. His tone is pitched exactly right, he comes across as mostly carefree and a bit hapless and that allows Lindsey Davies to turn him on a dime. One minute he’s funny, (he introduced me to the term floppsy moppet) the next he’s in terrible danger and you feel it, which is an incredibly hard thing to balance and Davies does it brilliantly.

But let’s move forward a bit, to what is my big love in amusing noir; the detective with a really dangerous friend. And we can begin with what is, for me, the grandaddy of them all. Meet Spenser, spelled like the poet.

Robert B Parker, Promised Land

Not the first Spenser book, but it is where Hawk makes his debut and the interplay between Spenser and Hawk is where the books really shine (it’s always all about character). Spenser is a man who likes violence, but keeps it in check because he sees himself as white knight. Hawk is Spenser without the brakes. In this sort of fiction, that becomes a theme but the comedy is often in the that tension between the two characters. And parker does it wonderfully.

Quick break to mention Elmore Leonard and Janet Ivanovitch. Titans of noir/humor but I haven’t found the book for me yet. You might though.

Robert Crais, L.A. Requiem

Not the first Elvis Cole/Joe Pike book, but the one that made me think differently about writing. Like many of the others, the humor comes from the interplay come from the narrative voice of Elvis Cole, who is jolly and flippant and likes Disney clocks, and the way it runs up against the cold and quite murderous, moral code of Joe Pike.

The plots of Crais books are always serious, always high stakes and yet the books are always amusing. But never in such a way as to turn down the level of threat. It’s an astounding balancing act. (Harlen Coben did a similar thing with his Myron Bolitar books but a narcissistic millionaire as the cold killer just never quite sat with me. And, kind of not aging well….) Also, these books feature an excellent cat which is always a winner.

Joe Lansdale, Mucho Mojo

The wise cracking detective and the killer again. Except that they are both capable of killing and wise cracking and they are also both really bad detectives. I love these books, part of the genesis of Mal and Jackie was, could you do that in England?

One thing it does very differently to the other books in the list is in how far it pushes the world around them. It’s not cartoony by any means, but also everything and everyone is slightly larger than life.  I am still quite cross we didn’t get more of the Hap and Leonard TV series too. But talking of slightly larger than life, and England….

Mick Herron, Slow Horses

So good. But I honestly think the root of those books is really simple. “They are not James Bond.” And oh yes, Jackson Lamb is a towering creation but at the base of it, is they are not James Bond. We have ideas about what a spy is, and it is not the crew of Slow Horses.

These uncomfortable, foolish, and often ridiculous people are recognizable in a way the detectives of the other books on this list maybe are not. Then they are put into unreal situations and part of us likes it. Because we know that’s how we would act. We would mess it up, be terrified, get everything wrong and hate Roddy Ho. Jackson Lamb would put up with me for all of ten seconds and I know I would quickly go the way of Min. (RIP. Is it too soon. It is too soon. Sorry.)

So through all that, is how I somehow got to Mal and Jackie. Jackie is the dangerous friend who is always there for us, even when it might be better if he wasn’t. The situations and people are a little bit larger than life, and the narrative voice knows that, it shares that with us. And in Mal, we have a disappointed in life, slightly sardonic, narrator who is a real person. He doesn’t want to be mixed up with gangsters, he doesn’t want danger in his life. He wants to be left alone. But life has other plans.

And like in all my favorite books, beneath the funny is a deadly earnest, high stakes thriller. One which I hope you’ll enjoy reading, as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it.

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