Books to make you smile, giggle, chuckle, laugh, smirk, and howl.

I’m a huge fan of humorous crime fiction. Some of the books I enjoy are laugh-out-loud funny on every page, some of them not so obviously humorous, and some of them are downright dark and warped and I’m a sick, twisted person for laughing. So here are some of the perhaps lesser known or less established humorous authors and books that tickle my funny bone while thrilling me with tales of murder and mayhem.

Molly Brown—Invitation to a Funeral
The setting is London in the 1670s and playwright Aphra Behn is in financial difficulties. Her last play was a donkey, and in her current play, she’s coping with the world’s worst actress, who just happens to be the mistress of the drunken, debauched and thoroughly wicked Earl of Rochester. As if that wasn’t enough, she decides to investigate the murders of two brothers she used to know. Bawdy and brilliant—a real Restoration romp.

Sean Doolittle—Dirt
Quince Bishop is having a bad day. It starts out pretty grim when he has to attend his good friend Martin’s funeral and it goes downhill from there. Literally. When a group of masked environmental activists gatecrash the funeral, one of them lands in the hole on top of Martin’s casket. Stir in a dodgy funeral director, a pair of ex-cons, and a convention for morticians, and you have a noir caper that made me laugh and made me cry—sometimes both on the same page. Sad, touching and bloody good fun.

Eric Garcia—Anonymous Rex
Vincent Rubio is a private eye who is addicted to basil. He’s also a velociraptor.What normal people don’t know is that the dinosaurs faked their extinction millions of years ago and are walking amongst us, cleverly disguised in latex suits. Pass me the basil—I want some of what Eric Garcia is having. This book had me going to work wondering which of my colleagues was a triceratops. Eric Garcia has created a bizarre yet oddly believable concept. More than that he has created a charming, imaginative and funny PI.

Victor Gischler—Gun Monkeys
Charlie Swift is a hardworking, loyal, efficient employee. The fact that his employer is one of Florida’s top mobsters is beside the point. Up until the start of this book, Charlie is quite happy with his job—making sure things run smoothly, taking home a decent paycheck, and tidying away the odd dead body. Unfortunately, things start to go slightly awry from page one. Charlie’s driving around with a headless body in the trunk of his car and from there on, the bodies start to pile up so quickly that he’d need a U-Haul to transport them by the end of the book.

Allan Guthrie—Two-Way Split
A simple, heartwarming, noir tale of a post office robbery gone wrong, an unfaithful wife, a couple of psychopaths (at least), a pair of seedy PIs, and an ex-con who really loves his mother—Two-Way Split is a book which takes that noir finger of fate, gleefully pokes you in the eye with it and then hands you your eyeball back, just for fun. Dark, warped, violent. Every character is superbly drawn and compellingly believable (although, in several cases, you wish they weren’t). I laughed on numerous occasions, and then worried about what that said about me.

Mark Haskell Smith—Moist
If I tried to give a brief synopsis of this book a) you wouldn’t believe me and b) it would make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Let’s just say there are a couple of tattooed arms without bodies, one tattooed man missing an arm, a masturbation coach, assorted mobsters, sex, drugs and...oh...a bit more sex. This book was completely bizarre, over the top, funny and...well...moist. Highly recommended to those whose favourite word is “warped.”

Chris Niles—Hell’s Kitchen
Apartment hunting can be murder. Millionaire Cyrus has a big gap in his life that all the money in the world can’t fill. Until the day he accidentally shoplifts a self-help book and discovers that The Master has a message for him. And the message is “Cyrus, you need to become a serial killer.” Cyrus is fulfilled at last. He lures desperate apartment hunters to their grisly ends. A very funny book with some great satire and one liners. Hell’s Kitchen has its tongue firmly in cheek and the rest of the body parts neatly tucked away in the fridge.

Scott Phillips—Cottonwood
It’s 1873 in the burgeoning frontier town of Cottonwood, Kansas. Cottonwood is a town where the men are men, and so are most of the women. As the town grows, so does sin and crime (and, heaven knows, it was never a sinless town to start off with). Cottonwood is a frontier town where nothing is done in half measure—sex, drinking, and “killin’ those as needs killin’” (and a good few who don’t) are the main pastimes for the town’s bawdy, brash, and brazen residents. And in the midst of all the normal sorts of sin, solitary travellers seem to be disappearing, never to be heard from again. Is there a serial killer at loose in Cottonwood? Cottonwood is base and earthy and darkly comic. It’s not so much Little House on the Prairie as Little Whorehouse on the Prairie.

Mike Ripley—Angel Hunt
Fitzroy Maclean Angel—cab-driving, trumpet-playing PI in London—is house sitting when someone drops in—quite literally—through the bathroom skylight. Dead. Oh, and by chance, it turns out to be an old friend of Angel’s. Angel is a great character—a rascally charmer who loves booze and birds with equal enthusiasm. Politically incorrect, sardonic, and witty.

Ray Shannon—Firecracker
Reece Germaine is a successful, independent businesswoman who runs her own PR agency. She’s also eight months pregnant following a wild Vegas weekend. The father is Dallas Cowboys football star Raygene Price who has a soft heart and a soft head—a dangerous combination when you’re worth a lot of money. Raygene dispenses love with indiscriminate and fertile abandon. Reece is not the only woman who Raygene has impregnated—but she’s probably the only one who’s not looking to take him for every penny he’s got. A fast and furious comedic thriller.

Keith Snyder—Coffin’s Got the Dead Guy on the Inside
Jason Keltner is doing what he loves to do best—composing and playing music. OK, so his regular gigs don’t pay much, he’s struggling with his latest composition—“Unnamed #23,” and the rent on the dilapidated boarding house he calls home is overdue. He’s contemplating getting away for a while to finish his composition when the mysterious Norton Platt turns up with an offer Jason can’t refuse—despite his best efforts. Platt wants to hire Jason to babysit Paul Reno, a former friend of Jason’s who appears to be involved in some shady deals. Confusion, computer chips, car chases, and comedy. A wonderfully sprightly humorous book.

Mark Sullivan—Corned Beef Sandwich
A really funny and sweet book. Minimal crime but maximum fun. The main premise of the book is a holdup gone awry, the wrong person ends up with the loot and the baddies want it back. But there’s far more to it including a goth protagonist, a halal corned beef sandwich, and some goldfish with really weird names. If Donald Westlake had been born in Manchester and listened to Marilyn Manson, he could well have written this book. Instead, Corned Beef Sandwich is author Mark Sullivan’s first novel, and very enjoyable it is too. Reservoir Goldfish. This is a really good read—completely original, charmingly scruffy and has that real feel-good factor. It’s also the only time I’ve ever found corned beef appealing.

Duane Swierczynski—The Wheelman
Swierczynski’s Lennon drives cars for the bad guys. He’s also mute following a nasty meeting with a bullet in a previous robbery. He should have taken that as a cue to get out of the robbery business, but no. Instead he takes part in a bank robbery which nets him and his co-conspirators $650,000. Things, as they are wont to do in noir fiction, turn from bad to really, really bad. Lennon is beaten, shot, and stuffed down a drainage pipe. Meanwhile, the body count rises around him. Over the top (in a very, very good way), action packed, violent, and funny, with a plot as convoluted and stuffed full of twists, turns, and shocks as...well...a drainage pipe stuffed full of bodies.

John Welter—Night of the Avenging Blowfish
A humorous thriller love story, featuring a Secret Service agent looking for love, happiness, and a covert baseball game against the CIA. His job is to protect the president. From what is never quite clear, although it seems to have something to do with protecting him from eating Spam. Funny and gentle and touching.

Charlie Williams—Deadfolk
Royston Blake is a big man in Mangel—what with being head doorman of Hoppers and driving a clapped-out Ford Capri and all, but there are rumours that he’s lost his bottle. And that’s not good. Not good at ALL. They’re worse than the rumours that he might have killed his wife. Blake is someone that, on the face of it, is not easy to like. He’s violent, drinks too much, and you wouldn’t really want to be his girlfriend, but he sort of sneaks up on you and worms his way into your heart like a slightly lost and endearing tapeworm. Deadfolk is violent, bloody, hilarious, touching. It has a bizarre but brilliant plot, outrageous characters, a wonderfully original voice, and a chainsaw called Susan. Demented, deranged, and totally, utterly delicious.

Brian Wiprud—Sleep With the Fishes
When Sid ‘Sleep’ Bifulco (so called because he puts his victims to sleep before he whacks them—it's tidier that way) rats out the Palfutti family, he tells the FBI to stuff their witness protection program and comes to an arrangement with a rival mob family. In prison he develops a passion for fishing (which he learns without the aid of water, or fish for that matter) and, on his release, he retires from the wiseguy life to pursue some quiet fishing in Hellbender Eddy. Only it doesn’t quite work out that way. There are some sharks circling, and none of them have gills. This book is a hilarious caper—fish, porn, and two guys named Bob. It’s an offer you can’t refuse.

So there you have it—some quiet and quirky, some rambunctious and rowdy. From cosy to noir, amateur sleuth to police procedural to hardboiled PI, humor can be found in all subgenres of crime fiction. As Mel Brooks once said, “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.” Thank heavens for those who walk into open sewers and die.

Donna Moore is the author of Go to Helena Handbasket (PointBlank Press, 2006), a crime-fiction spoof and the 2007 winner of the Lefty Award for most humorous crime novel. Her latest novel is Old Dogs (Busted Flush Press, 2010). She lives in Scotland.

This article first appeared in Mystery Scene Spring Issue #99.