Comedy Crime Fiction

I am sure you have heard of "Operation Mincemeat", the ingenious plan to land a dead man on a Spanish beach - to fool the Nazis and send their jack-booted, Panzer-clad, stiff-armed, blond-haired boys up the wrong alley. Allow me to let you into a secret. I was the rehearsal, some months before hostilities began; before the unpleasantness, so to speak. I was the practice run; the "upper-class twit" sent on a wild goose chase, scattering fair Albion's imminent enemies hither and thither.

Susan Frobisher and Julie Wickham are turning 60. They live in a small Dorset town and have been friends since school. On the surface Susan has it all - a lovely house and a long marriage to accountant Barry. Life has not been so kind to Julie, but now, with several failed businesses and bad relationships behind her, she has found stability: living in a council flat and working in an old people's home.

The career of George, the famed Greek mob boss, gets off to a bad start. As a teenager, he kills Joey, the man who might have been his father. Joey's twin brother, Lazarus, vows revenge. All George has to do to survive is to marry a Greek girl picked by his family. Unfortunately, George falls in love with Kelly, a girl who isn't Greek. She loves him. All she asks is that he leave his family. This is the first book in The Saga of George trilogy, a satire of mob novels. Set in the late 1960s, it blends Greek culture, mythology, and religious themes with sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

Mary Shields is a moody, acerbic probation officer dealing with some of Glasgow’s worst cases, and her job is on the line. Liam Macdowall was imprisoned for murdering his wife, and he’s published a series of letters to the dead woman, in a book that makes him an unlikely hero - and a poster boy for Men’s Rights activists. Liam is released on licence into Mary’s care, but things are far from simple. Mary develops a poisonous obsession with Liam and his world, and when her son and Liam’s daughter form a relationship, Mary will stop at nothing to impose her own brand of justice.

Bobby Palumbo is a low-level bagman for the Brooklyn mob. After he is persuaded to "borrow" $200,000 from his collection bag for 24 hours, he is left on the hook for the missing money. On the run, he hooks up with Frannie Jo Overby, a savvy young girl from the dying Texas town of Ecstasy. Bobby is largely clueless, and it's Frannie Jo who turns out to have the street smarts. She's the one who cooks up the scheme to save Bobby's bacon.

Bryan LeBlanc worked his way up into a plum position on Wall Street as the boy genius of the foreign exchange desk. Surrounded by "the few, the proud, the completely full of themselves", he decides to give Wall Street a taste of its own medicine and hatches an intricate plan to disappear permanently with just enough misappropriated money - and sailing classes - to spend his golden years cruising the Caribbean. Bryan quickly learns that being a criminal, even a really smart one, is more complicated than he thought. He finds himself on the run in the Cayman Islands, wanted for murder.

When ex-con Craig Collins began his new job mowing lawns, he was ready to leave his former life where it belonged - in the past. But everything changes when Craig suddenly loses one of his contracts after staring a little too hard at the aging trophy wife of his pizzeria mogul client, Big Gino Pasarelli. Soon, Craig begins to hatch a plan for revenge - along with his transgender sort-of-girlfriend, Juana. Since Big Gino seems to enjoy cheating on his wife, Craig and Juana decide to blackmail him with a sex tape.

A finely tuned comic depiction of Melbourne's ethnically diverse northern suburbs and the dark underbelly of city life. Down on his luck and hard up for cash, Carl works in the kitchen of a seedy rock 'n' roll joint in ethnically diverse Brunswick. The bouncers and bosses terrify him, he's desperately in love with a much younger Greek waitress, and to make matters worse his mother has come to stay with him. Then a dead body turns up. He and his best mate, Dave, will have to do something about it, and fast....

When an orangutan goes on the lam, anything can happen. Chasing Harpo is an intriguing cast of quirky characters you'd like to visit with longer. Including the star, Harpo, an orangutan who believes humans are here purely for his entertainment and, of course, to deliver his food. A fun ride and a great adventure for all ages, as Harpo and his trusty servant, Carl, try to outwit the zoo security team, the police, the attorney general, and a gang of drug dealers.

Determined to thwart her parents' plans to marry her off into Asian suburbia, Fiona seeks her freedom at any price. How far will she go to bury the Hello Kitty stereotype forever? Fiona's journey of self-discovery is biting and clever as she embraces her true nature and creates her own version of the American Dream, eliminating - without fear or remorse - anyone who stands in her way.

Bumping Off Fat Vinny is a lighthearted look at the attempts of authors Margaret Stanton, Danny Garrett, and Maria Mancuso make to do away with a scoundrel who seemingly has more lives than a cat. It confirms the old adage that the best laid plans of mice and men sometimes do, in fact, go astray.

Here, in Lynne Truss' first novel, we meet Osborne Lonsdale, a down-at-heel journalist, mysteriously attractive to women, who writes a regular celebrity interview for Come into the Garden. This week his "Me and My Shed" column will be based on the charming garden outhouse owned by TV sitcom star Angela Farmer. Unbeknownst to Osborne, driving down to Devon to interview Angela in her country retreat, the sleepy magazine has been taken over by new management.

Comic book artist Mike Mason arrives at San Diego Comic-Con seeking sanctuary with other fans and creators - and maybe to reunite with his ex - but when his rival is found murdered, he becomes the prime suspect. To clear his name, Mike will have to navigate every corner of the con, from zombie obstacle courses and cosplay flash mobs to intrusive fans and obsessive collectors, in the process unraveling a dark secret behind one of the industry's most legendary creators.

L'affaire de la Logia a beau être close, elle n'a pas pour autant épargné le fameux Justan Lockholmes. Un mois plus tard, alors que de terribles cauchemars le hantent, il va devoir reprendre du service aux côtés d'un tout jeune officier de police, et cela, qu'il le veuille ou non ! Un orphelin noyé, une énigme prométhéenne et une pintade bien peu digeste. Voilà que Justan plonge dans une histoire passablement compliquée !

COVID-19 is spreading across the country. Peaceful demonstrations for Black Lives Matter after the murder by cop of George Floyd have turned violent. President Trump’s handling of the pandemic seems incompetent and chaotic. Infections and deaths continue to rise. When Attorney General Barr orders riot police and troops to clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square for Trump’s photo-op with a Bible, something snaps in Jack Blair. After a psychotic episode he is thrown into prison, and his life is threatened by white nationalist boogaloo bois.

The sequel to Bocas, Bronte follows George to Australia. PJ left a little surprise back home. And her name is Charlotte.

Existential noir meets absurd comedy when a young man reluctantly enlists as source material for an art project. Stanley had known it was a mistake to accept his uncle Lech's offer to apartment-sit in Prague - he'd known it was one of Lech's proposals, a thinly veiled setup for some invasive, potentially dangerous performance art project. But whatever Lech had planned for Stanley, it would get him to Prague and maybe offer a chance to make things right with T after his failed attempt to propose.

Pammy and Lyle Wynant are an attractive, modern couple who seem to have it all. Yet behind their "ideal" life is a lingering boredom and quiet desperation: Their talk is mostly chatter, their sex life more a matter of obligatory "satisfaction" than pleasure. Then Lyle sees a man killed on the floor of the Stock Exchange and becomes involved with the terrorists responsible; Pammy leaves for Maine with a homosexual couple...and still they remain untouched, "players" indifferent to the violence that surrounds them and that they have helped to create.

Lou Sciortino, erede di una dinastia di italoamericani che hanno fatto fortuna riciclando i soldi della mafia a Hollywood, è costretto a rintanarsi in Sicilia. A Los Angeles è scoppiata una guerra tra famiglie e suo nonno, che ha la fissazione di fare di Lou "una personcina per bene", non lo vuole tra i piedi.

I get paid to erase problems. Did your extramarital affair produce an unwanted complication? Family problems? Just want to enjoy your midlife crisis by yourself? That's where I come in. For a fee, I'll take care of it. A big fee. Only, I'm not going to do what you think. I'm not going to save you from them, I'm going to save them from you.