Comedy Crime Fiction

Une soirée entre amies vire au cauchemar alors que Chloé tue Claire par inadvertance. Est-ce qu'elle appelle la police ? Non. Durant les heures qui suivront, elle apprendra qu'il est plutôt compliqué de maquiller un crime en bête accident de la route. Elle n'aurait jamais pensé qu'il y ait tant de détails à couvrir. Ajoutons au cocktail sa personnalité désorganisée...Rien ne sera facile pour elle!

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.

Serge Storms, that loveable thermonuclear vigilante and one-stop-Florida-trivia-shop, has been leaving corpses strewn across the Sunshine State for more than a decade. The authorities - especially one tenacious state agent - have begun to notice the exponential body count, and send a police task force to track down Serge. Could his luck finally have run out?

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.

Detective Roger LeCarre: a man on a quest to rid the world of crime (starting with Devon and Cornwall and then working outwards) so he can concentrate on his watercolours. LeCarre runs 10 km a day but probably burns more calories shaking his head at what has become of his city. Now Exeter is set to become the UK Capital of Culture and the ambitious lord mayor wants to turn things around. But when a young man's (dead) body is found in the centre of town, things get murky.

To his chagrin, Alaskan PI Cecil Younger learns his teenage daughter has launched her own detective agency. But when her first case goes awry, she’s going to need some help from an unlikely source: her father, who’s currently locked up in prison.

Junior Bender, Los Angeles burglar and off-the-books detective to the felonious, is reminded that rock and roll will never die (no matter how fervently he wishes some of it would) when Hollywood’s most dangerous geriatric mobster, Irwin Dressler, retains Junior’s investigative services to solve a rather unharmonious problem. Junior has one weekend to figure out who’s to blame—a weekend that begins with his tires being slashed, threatening notes left on his car, and a theatrical backdrop falling on a drummer during the truly terrible first set of the first concert.

Twenty-nine-year-old Alexandra Dorenfield suddenly finds herself in heaven after an unfortunate encounter with a Mini Cooper. The seventh - and highest - level of heaven to be exact. Her dog, Peaches, is with her; she is reunited with her beloved grandparents; she has the wardrobe of a movie star; and she lives in the house of her dreams next door to a handsome guy. This is heaven!

Daniel T. Drunk, Jr. if you really wanna know. And I’m on a plane headed to Paradise Isle on the trip of a lifetime. The occasion? My honeymoon. Except, there’s only one problem. I’m riding solo. It’s a really long story, and if you don’t mind, I’d prefer to leave it at that. Really? You must know? Fine, I get it. You’re the nosey type. Here’s the abbreviated version. I came within an inch of marrying a cheating slut. There. Get the picture? Good.

When hordes of people descend on the picturesque village of Nasely for the annual celebration of its most famous resident, murder mystery writer Agnes Crabbe, events take a dark turn as the festival opens with a shocking death. Each year the residents are outnumbered by crowds dressed as Crabbe’s lady detective, Millicent Cutter. The weekend is never a mild-mannered affair as fan club rivalries bubble below the surface, but tensions reach new heights when a second Crabbe devotee is found murdered. Though the police are quick to arrive on the scene, the facts are tricky to ascertain as the witnesses, suspects and victim are all dressed as Miss Cutter.

Lady Cop Makes Trouble sets Constance loose on the streets of New York City and New Jersey - tracking down victims, trailing leads, and making friends with girl reporters and lawyers at a hotel for women. Cheering her on, and goading her, are her sisters, Norma and Fleurette - that is, when they aren't training pigeons for the war effort or fanning dreams of a life on the stage.

Aldo is determined to become a better person. His best pals Dougie and Craig and the four-legged love of his life, Bruce the Staffy, do their best to keep him on the path to redemption, but his lawless nature and chaotic home life propel him into a series of comical, exhilarating, occasionally brutal adventures.

What do you do when you fall through the loopholes in the system and all you have to rely on are your own wits? Lois and Sophie have scrambled and saved for years, planning for their retirement in Florida. But now they've lost it all, and Lois' sniper training from her long-ago service as an Army nurse leads to a desperate career choice. When Detective Morgan Holiday is assigned to investigate a spate of sniper killings, it's just one more stress point in her already overburdened life.

Having a hot boss isn't complicated or confusing at all, said no one ever.... But all I have to do is resist for a few months. Come January, I'm flying to Paris to chase my dream of being an artist. Too bad I can't have my treat and eat it, too. I forgot to mention.... My hot boss was also my high school crush. Sort of. First, I wanted to crush him with gooey affection. In the end, I just plain wanted to crush him. Now he's back, and he might as well have "do not touch" printed on his chest. One tiny question: Would it count if I didn't use my hands?

Bob Burns is an old-fashioned kind of Scottish sleuth, more interested in catching villains than creeping to get promotion. But, when his enquiries into a brutal and bizarre murder are blocked by his bosses, he wonders if he should risk losing his career by carrying on his investigations? Encouraged by an attractive, though maverick, forensic scientist and assisted by a keener-than-bright young constable, Bob does it his way. The trail leads the trio from Scotland to Mallorca, where intrigue and mayhem mingle with the crowds at a fishermen’s fiesta.

At 44, Eve Mozell has a wonderful husband and a creative job. She also has a temperamental teenage son, two headstrong sisters, and a demented old father. As she deals with her family's frequent crises, her days overflow with lengthy phone calls. She is never far from a dial tone. But as her father begins to die, Eve is tempted to disconnect and to sort out her feelings for this difficult man.

When wannabe criminal Jonathan hears about a life-changing amount of unprotected cash just begging to be stolen, the opportunity is too good to pass up. Problem is he can’t do it alone, so he ropes in a couple of low rent potheads, kicking off a whole bunch of trouble. It’s left to Nuke, a gangster with an explosive temper and marital difficulties, to sort out the mess, all the time dealing with his psychotic bosses, some dodgy cops, his bored wife, and of course Jonathan, the man with the plan.

Two dumb, wannabe criminals bite off more than they can chew when they abduct a schoolgirl from a particularly modern, angular suburban house. In the mould of Elmore Leonard or early Tarantino Blockhouse Blues and the Elmore Beast is a distinctly Australian story about kidnapping, obsession, and architecture. So, if you enjoy your crime gritty, your humour dark and dry and don't object to a little colourful language, you’ll love Jack Stroke’s debut novel Blockhouse Blues and the Elmore Beast.

Meet Martin, a broke British drama teacher trying to make ends meet in a picturesque Irish town. Saddled with a subprime mortgage containing terms & conditions that even loan sharks would disapprove of, he seeks a deadly escape route. A healthy payout would be some consolation should anything happen to his dear wife, like being bitten by the viper housed in his terrarium (It’s like a corner of Arizona but in the good room). Enter Laura, a beautiful staff nurse and medieval weaponry expert who has ruthless plans of her own. None of them involve being murdered.

Revenge is a dish best served cold—especially when it comes in the form of one of Grandma’s “special” pies. Get the best of family hijinks, girl power, and hilariously justifiable crime in the latest novel from award-winning author HelenKay Dimon.