'Best' Humourous Crime Novel

[Jeff Ross]

I've begun reading Carl Hiassen and wonder what other people believe are the 'funniest' or 'most humorous' crime novels out there. Steve Hamilton's stuff is great as well, but I feel like I'm missing out on a bunch.
Any ideas?

[I. J. Parker]

Dalziel is fantastic. I'm reading THE PRICE OF BUTCHER'S MEAT, a novel that is somewhat unwieldy because it alternates between Dalziel talking to himself and an ongoing e-mail from a somewhat ditzy young woman to her sister. It is the Dalziel passages I look forward to. The character is irrepressible, especially when compared to Pascoe and Pascoe's wife, neither of whom has a sense of humor.

[Gaile Hughes]

Has to be for me DeMille's 'Gold Coast' (early work) followed by his 2008 ' The Gate House', same characters quite a few years later. The narrations and witty observations of life seen through the eyes of his main character John Sutter, just crack me up. Have you read them? If not, it is pure 'candy for the writer's brain'. Cheers...

[Bill Baber]

the first Fletch was good but how about Kinky Friedman? Pretty funny stuff...

[charlie ness]

I discovered Carl years ago, and he's definitely one of the best !  Some other fairly good ones are Donald Westlake's 'Dortmunder' books,  Elmore Leonard's  and Laurence Shames.

[Mark Porter]

Love Carl Hiaasen, esp 'Double Whammy' and 'Lucky You.'

 

Joe R. Lansdale is the master for me. The Hap Collins and Leonard Pine mysteries leave the majority of other crime/humor novels I have read in the dust.

 

Lee Goldberg's 'The Man With The Iron On Badge,' is also seriously funny.

 

Donald Westlake is also funny and entertaining too. I still think Lansdale is the master, though.

 

It's my genre, too ;-)  

[Seth Kaufman]

I just scrolled thru a couple of pages and I didn't see the name Dorothy Sayers, of Lord Peter Wimsey fame. Yes, she's dated. And yes many of the solutions involve the details only a trainspotter could love. But yes, she is hilarious. As class-sensitive a writer as any, she sends up the snobs, she's got witty banter coming out of her eyeballs. And she was operating in the Roaring Twenties, so there's a surprising amount of booze and drugs. And Lord Peter never gets the girl he wants. As for which book is the funniest, I'm hard pressed to say. Murder Must Advertise is good. And so is Whose Body.  Sayers was apparently a leading Christian Scholar in her day, so it's amazing how prolific she was (all without a computer!)

[Suzanne]

Charlie Huston's Hank Thompson trilogy (Caught Stealing, Six Bad Things, and Dangerous Man) gave me a few

laughs, but then I am an unwell person.

[Ron Macdougall]

The best is a Scottish author Christopher Brookmyre.

 

All fun and games until someone loses an eye

To Boil a Frog

The Attack of the unsinkable rubber ducks

Quite ugly one morning

Country of the blind

Not the end of the world

A big boy did it and ran away

The sacred art of stealing 

Be my enemy

One fine day in the middle of the night

A snow ball in hell

 

 

great fun...

 

 

[charlie ness]

I like Donald Westlake's 'Dortmunder' novels. - A gang of 'working thieves' and bunglers who have a lot of funny mishaps.  - Many of Elmore Leonards books are very humorous too, I loved 'Maximum Bob' and 'Get Shorty' in particular. 

I inevitably go back to one of these kind of books after 5-6 thrillers,  I find a bit of difference helps getting in a rut.

[Susan]

I'll second your take on the Elmore Leonard books. Freaky Deaky (an early one) is also great. Not to be missed is the interview between the bomb squad cop and the shrink after a bomb blows up ...

[Mark Porter]

Classic scene, Susan. Also love the entire bomb set up.

[Benjamin Sobieck]

May I offer up my own short story series? Maynard Soloman is a profane and clueless private investigator solving 21st Century problems with a 1930s vocabulary. Most recent installment is "Maynard Soloman & The Job-Nabbin' Illegal Immigrants."

 

If we're talkin' novels, though, I don't think I've read an Elmore Leonard work and not found something humorous. "Up In Honey's Room," for all its serious plots about Nazis and killing President Truman, is full of comedy.