Comic Mysteries

Many of the best serious mysteries have comic elements, and many comedies have true mystery situations, so this list is just a pointer to authors whose aim is primarily comic, and who are also genuinely funny. Those criteria cut down on the number of entries. There were some mystery authors who wrote some supposedly comedic series (Elliot Paul's Homer Evans books set in Paris, Gardner's A. A. Fair Lam & Cool books, Craig Rice, even S.S. Van Dine in his Gracie Allen Murder Case, which is so awful that it actually is funny), but they are mostly too facetious for more than an occasional chuckle.

• John Mortimer Rumpole of the Bailey. The ultimate Old Bailey hack. Leo McKern has the copyright on this more than the author.
• Henry Cecil More courtroom shenanigans. English legal system and bureaucracy put to the spit.
• Winston Schoonover Wilkes. The American Rumpole, but he is sleazy and Rumpole is definitely not.

  [Note that many comic mysteries involve the legal profession; why should this be?]

• Douglas Adams Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul are two oddly unique books cut short as a series by the untimely and lamentable death of this great author.
• Joyce Porter The Inspector Dover series. Very funny books about a complete slob of a policeman, lazy, greedy, and self-aggrandizing (although he does solve his cases). See under Series Detectives.
• Colin Watson The Flaxborough Novels. Many starring the fine old con-lady Lucilla Teatime. A comic market town one would hate to visit. See under Series Detectives.
• Simon Brett This very amusing author has two main series: Charles Paris is a sottish small-time actor (TV ads, soap operas, Victorian revivals, etc.) who always manages to get involved in back-scenes crimes and solve them, and Melita Pargeter, the widow of a criminal mastermind who was a true gentleman and never let on to her what he did for a living (she knows, of course) and is still treated with great respect by his ex-colleagues, and of course gets into capers. Also see Series Detectives.
• Donald Westlake Very funny 'caper/scam' novels that could go up in the sleaze category, but are here instead to insure some sort of a balance. He has New York slimes down to a fine art. Since you laugh out loud rather than click your tongue, Westlake is in this list.
• Frank McAuliffe The Commissions of Augustus Mandrell. Whatever happened to this guy? Those stories were hilarious, complex, and unique, with an interlocked cast of characters including Adolf Hitler. This should have been made into a TV series with Monty Python actors.