I’ve always enjoyed the satirical, darkly humorous elements in crime noir, and while writing my debut novel, Privilege, about a passive and bumbling professor at an elite university who stumbles into murder, I became further obsessed. Take the Coen Brothers’ film, Fargo, for example. It’s replete with horrendous criminal acts played out in vividly graphic violence. But try to get through the movie without laughing. I dare you. The same goes for so many works of crime fiction. The brilliance of black comedy in crime noir is the ability to probe behind the horrific and reveal the undertone of humor that plays beneath. This is artfully achieved through a multitude of devices: the blundering murderer, the juxtaposition of the mundane with the violent, the bad guy with relatable problems. One finds black humor satirizing our worst moments. For example, when the infamous Victorian murderer, William Palmer, was being led to his execution, upon looking at the trap door of the gallows he turned to the hangman and said: “Are you sure it’s safe?”
Freud, among others, has speculated that we seek the absurd, the humorous, and the satirical in the direst contexts as a survival mechanism. We circumvent the horrific with a transgressive joke, perhaps as a last act of rebellion against mortal circumstances.
Below are eight standout examples of crime fiction that artfully employ humor and satire so well that it’s downright criminal.
Ripley’s Game by Patricia Highsmith
This is arguably the best in Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley series. We find the amoral and amorphous Ripley exacting a sadistic game of revenge on a person who’s slighted him at a dinner party, only to become his protector when it turns dangerous. Readers will be treated to a sardonically funny episode involving Ripley, a garrote, and a targeted mafioso—all on a moving train.
Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
Those familiar with the popular series should delve into the novels for an even darker portrayal of everyone’s favorite and likable serial killer. Yes, he plays by his own rules—targeting other serial killers—but the chilling and humorous first-person narration reveals a mind more twisted than even the series could capture.
American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis
A major controversy when released, due to its overly graphic and sadistic violence, this novel has, over time, come to be appreciated for its satire of ‘80s finance culture. The protagonist is a basket case, barely stemming off anxiety attacks when comparing the quality of his business cards with those of his peers. The constant angst over such ridiculous materialism is juxtaposed with sadistic fantasies, grouping both into the entire landscape of striving, status-obsessed yuppies. Crass material pursuits and sadistic fantasy become one satirical entity.
Hit Man by Lawrence Block
Keller is your typical Gen-X guy. He works his job, tries to get along, sees a shrink to deal with his depression and angst. He tries to fill the loneness by getting a dog and a girlfriend. Sure, his job is killing people under contract, but he’s really just your average man dealing with the conventions of life in the late ‘90s. As Elmore Leonard famously said about bad guys: “They want pretty much the same thing you and I want: they want to be happy.”
Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell
The novel opens with Dr. Peter Brown giving readers a precise anatomy lesson while disabling a would-be mugger’s arm. The good doctor knows his stuff: in a previous life, he was Pietro Brnwa, a contract killer for the mafia who escaped that world. When a cancer patient he is treating happens to be a mafioso who recognizes him, he is given a proposition: save me and I keep your secret; don’t, and I’ll make sure your old bosses get the word. The collision of his two identities is both comedic and suspenseful, and his plan to get through it is one of the most original and outrageous I’ve encountered.
The Seventh by Richard Stark
Humor is not the first thought that comes to mind when one thinks of Parker, the notoriously laconic and serious anti-hero. In The Seventh, Parker’s heist of a college football game goes array, leading him down a wild path of criminals, cops and bumblers. The humor in the Parker novel is as laconic as he is—it’s the understated context of the humorless and ultra-professional thief coping with a satirical world of amateurs and idiots. He’s the perfect criminal straight man trying to ensure that the he’s not the butt of the joke.
Layer Cake by J.J. Connelly
Made into a film that likely propelled Daniel Craig to James Bond stardom, Layer Cake is vividly and humorously narrated by the nameless protagonist, a young drug dealer with an early retirement plan. Of course, like all good plans, it goes off the rails. The collection of London underworld dealers, rival gangs, and losers is wickedly funny while suspenseful and twisty. As an added benefit, readers will come away with some serious knowledge of London crime slang.
Hangman by Jack Heath
Timothy Blake is an FBI consultant with strange tastes—namely, a taste for human flesh. Given how successful he is in bringing cases to close, he’s worked out a secret deal with an FBI special agent, who supplies Blake with corpses as payment for his work. Who says a cannibal can’t contribute to society? Working on a missing child case, things get interesting when he’s teamed with a new FBI partner, a woman with a link to a past he’d rather keep hidden (like the body parts in his freezer).
Out by Natsuo Kirino
A brilliant novel about the pitfalls of covering up murder, a young Tokyo mother who works the night shift strangles her abusive husband and her coworkers help dispose of the body, leaving body parts around Tokyo. As the plot ensues, the women find themselves ensnared in Tokyo’s criminal underbelly, and the darkest humor infuses the suspense with brilliant insights into crime and gender in contemporary Japan. Kirino’s first novel to be translated into English.
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Korede’s sister, Ayoola, is beautiful, the favorite daughter, and a sociopathic killer. What’s an overlooked, practical-minded sister to do? Clean up after her mess, of course. Not that she gets any credit for her solutions. The deadpan wit and whacky predicament of mixing the trope of sibling rivalry with murder and mayhem is both chilling and funny—and completely original.
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