A Little Bit of Comedy with your Crime?

Once upon a time (as the fairytale goes) I use to read a lot of the crime genre – Patricia Cornwell, Lisa Gardner, Jeffery Deaver, Harlan Coben (one of my favourites), and others but after watching too many CSI type programmes on TV, I found that I no longer enjoyed that sort of novel. Over the last few years I have discovered a new style of writing in the crime genre – comic crime. For pure entertainment, these books have it - light hearted and funny but be warned, you have to check your sense of reality in at the door.

Firstly, Janet Evanovich and her Stephanie Plum series of novels, One for the Money, Two for the Dough, Three to Get Deadly, and so on (you get the idea). When we meet Stephanie in One for the Money, she has lost her job as a lingerie buyer, her car has been repossessed and the only job she can get is as a bail bondsman for her horrible cousin, Vinny. She has no experience, no handcuffs, and wouldn’t know what to do with a gun even if she had one. If things can’t get worse, her first bail jumper to bring in is Joe Morelli, a gorgeous, former vice cop accused of murder one, who Stephanie has “history” with, as well as fireworks.  Combined with a setting in the “burbs” where everyone knows everyone else, a mother who is finding it hard to let go of the apron strings, and a grandmother who has a distinct liking for funeral viewings and lycra makes for a hilarious and very different novel.

In the later books, enter a couple of interesting characters.  Firstly Ranger, her colleague in the bail bond business, the hunky latin lover type and her exact opposite in the bail bondsman stakes – successful in business, drives a Porsche, and never misses getting his man. Then there’s Lula, a former hooker turned file clerk and now a wannabe bounty hunter and Stephanie’s new sidekick who has a interesting take on fashion.  Nothing ever seems to go right for Stephanie and this makes for lots of laugh out loud moments, interspersed with sexual tension between Stephanie and the men in her life. I’ve just had to keep reading them even though the series is up to number sixteen now.

Another series in a similar vein is Lisa Lutz’s “The Spellman Files”, The Spellman’s Curse, and “The Revenge of the Spellmans”.

The first novel introduces private detective, Isabel Spellman and her dysfunctional family. There’s Izzy’s parents, Albert and Olivia who run a private detective agency and are Izzy’s employers, her teenage sister Rae who likes to practice her surveillance skills on the people in her neighbourhood, and her blackmailing skills on her family to get what she wants, Izzy’s Uncle Ray – former cop but now alcoholic and gambler – who disappears for long weekends and has to be rescued.

Izzy is luckless in love and her ex-boyfriends have cameos in the book as Izzy tries to work out why none of them stick but there's hope for Izzy yet.  The subject of Issy’s new case, Daniel, turns out to be boyfriend number 9 material but there’s one problem – he’s a dentist, a profession that her mother distrusts intently. What follows is a tale of subterfuge as Izzy tries to hide her profession from Daniel, her boyfriend’s profession from her mother, while avoiding discovery by Rae who has been “hired” by Izzy’s parents to find out about the new boyfriend. To cap it off, Rae goes missing, and Izzy has to solve the most important missing person’s case of her career

If you like a bit of light relief in your crime then try this series.