Recently, I told an acquaintance that I write comedic crime fiction.
This new friend made a quizzical face. “Crime and comedy?” she said. “That’s a strange pairing.”
But comedy and crime go together like beans and rice.
Don’t believe me?
Then step into any cop shop, emergency room, or domestic violence shelter in the country. Listen and you’ll hear it: bleak jokes coming rapid-fire, humor dark and reinvigorating as a double shot of espresso.
As a full-time advocate at a safe house for survivors of intimate partner violence, I learned this truth first-hand: people who work in crime’s aftermath lean on humor because they intuitively understand that without it, life might just be one very dark night of the soul.
Cops, detectives, paramedics, social workers, and ER nurses aren’t the only ones who get this.
Many crime writers know it too. Life can be hard, even brutal. Laughter helps.
Last Night Was Killer is my first foray into comedic crime writing. It’s a murder mystery about an overwhelmed single mother who—after a rare wild night out with friends from her new pole dancing class—wakes up to find a corpse in her trunk. Writing it turned me into a ferocious student of funny crime novels of all stripes. I study them relentlessly to discover the elements that make them irresistible.
Here are a few of my favorites, along with one ingredient from each I’ve used as inspiration for my own work!
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First Page with a Hook
Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip
In a world of short attention spans, writers have to ask: how do you hook a reader right away? In the opening lines of Carl Hiaasen’s Skinny Dip, our protagonist, Joey Peronne, plummets through the air, toward the ocean far below. Her husband—to her great surprise—has just thrown her off the deck of a cruise ship. Luckily, he’s underestimated his strong-swimming wife, who spots the lights of the Florida coast and starts for shore.
Readers (and our protagonist!) are already asking the novel’s great question: “Why did Joey’s husband so unceremoniously dump her over the rail?”
Unlikely Amateur Detectives
Bella Mackie, What A Way To Go
There are countless crime novels featuring actual detectives on the hunt for a killer. These days I often like murder mysteries with less-likely sleuths. In Bella Mackie’s What a Way to Go our two main investigators are: a filthy rich murder victim and a local true-crime enthusiast. After financial wizard and prolific philanderer Anthony Wistern dies at his own sixtieth birthday bash, he’s trapped in a bureaucratic afterlife until he can figure out the mystery of his own death.
In the earthly realm, a true-crime-obsessed YouTuber has learned the hard way that men like Anthony trample people with less status and power. She hopes that by finding Anthony’s killer, she’ll gain a little status and power herself.
The unlikely sleuths and quirky setup keep this wickedly funny peek into the unsympathetic world of the uber-rich fresh and funny.
Note: I recommend this as an audiobook, because there’s nothing better than listening to people with English accents say hilariously snobby things. (The dead man’s wife, for example, muses that one of her friends is one facelift away from “looking like a Renaissance baby.”)
A Great Elevator Pitch
Kirstin Chen, Counterfeit
These days, to have a shot at getting attention, a novel often needs a great elevator pitch. (My theory is that six words or fewer work best!) I’d pitch Counterfeit as a novel about a “counterfeit designer handbag ring.” (See? I’ve only said four words about Counterfeit and now, if you haven’t read it yet, you want to!)
Luckily for readers, this novel is even more genius than the pitch. Come for the unreliable narrators, brilliant POV switches, and high-end designer handbag dupes. Stay for the hilarious sentences and refreshing send-up of the “ideal immigrant” stereotype.
Relatable Family Dynamics
Jesse Q. Sutanto, Dial A for Aunties
The very prolific Jesse Q. Sutanto has blessed us with many novels, but Dial A for Aunties is my favorite, precisely because the family dynamics are both culturally specific and universally relatable. Meddy Chan, a Chinese Indonesian immigrant, feels tension between loyalty to her family and a desire for independence. But she’s forced to seek her aunties’ help after a first date that starts out bad and ends up deadly.
I laughed so hard at the aunties’ antics that I snorted iced latte out of my nose. 10/10 for comedic shenanigans!
Aspirational Female Friendship
Deanna Raybourn, Killers of a Certain Age
In Killers of a Certain Age, Billie, Helen, Natalie, and Mary Alice are recent retirees on a cruise together to celebrate their long, collaborative career—as a team of all-female assassins! But they soon find they’ve become targets themselves and have to work together to kill the very people who want them dead.
Decades of assassinating war criminals together has made this fearsome foursome as close as a group of women can be. They irritate each other almost as much as they love each other, and no matter how terrifying or dangerous the situation, they always, always, have each other’s backs!
A Deep Dive into a Niche Subculture
Ariel Delgado Dixon, Sourland
Let me be clear: Sourland is more high-lit thriller than knee-slapping comedy. But I’m sneaking this novel about two rivals battling for control of an illegal weed farm in Humboldt County onto this list because it’s not just fast-paced, perfectly plotted, and packed with sex and violence—it’s also very, very funny.
Dixon explores how someone driving the road of optimistic criminal ambition might be forced to swerve into a lane full of raw violence and trauma. But every hapless misstep is accompanied by a killer quip about the hazards of being a misfit burnout. Criminal perfection!
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