Wednesday, March 10, 2021

by Emilyn Linden

I love a good mystery, but I also need some comedic relief when I’m reading in a genre that can  be pretty gritty and serious. There are some great funny mysteries ones out there that are already pretty widely known (if you haven’t heard of Janet Evanovich, Tim Dorsey and Spencer Quinn then you’ve probably never looked for a funny mystery before). I’ve rounded up a few suggestions for authors and series that aren’t quite as widely known.

Finlay Donovan is Killing It by Elle Cosimano just came out last month. It features stretched-thin single mother and struggling suspense novelist Finlay Donovan. After being mistaken for a contract killer and unintentionally accepting the job, Finlay finds out the types of situations she writes about are a lot more difficult to manage in real life.

Not only do I like my mysteries leavened with some humor, I like my science fiction and fantasy reads to be flavored with a mystery. The Rook by Daniel O’Malley combines all three of those genres and does it well. A woman with no idea who or where she is finds out she is a high-ranking official of a secret British agency tasked with defending the UK from supernatural forces. She must uncover the conspiracy that got her memory wiped in the first place without tipping anyone off that there’s something wrong and she has no idea what she’s doing.

The Flavia de Luce series by Alan Bradley kicks off with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. Flavia is an eleven-year-old girl living in 1950s England who has a love for chemistry and an enthusiasm for poisons. She’s ridiculous and precocious and simply fun to read about as she works to discover why she came across a dying man in the family’s cucumber patch. 

Dayna is an out-of-work actress with cash flow issues in Hollywood Homicide by Kellye Garrett. After witnessing a hit and run, she decides the answer to her money woes is to turn amateur detective and collect the $15,000 in reward money for information leading to an arrest. 

Murder in G Major by Alexia Gordon is the first book in the Gethsemane Brown Mystery series featuring a Black classical musician stranded without luggage or money in the Irish countryside. Needing work of any kind, she accepts a position turning a rambunctious group of boys into an orchestra. She’s also roped into finding the killer of the deceased owner of the house where she’s staying by his ghost, which is haunting the house.

Emilyn Linden is a librarian in the FDL Public Library Information and Outreach Services department.