Comedy Crime Fiction

A selection from the John Updike audio collection. These extraordinarily evocative stories depict the generation born in a small-town America during the Depression and growing up in a world where the old sexual morality was turned around and material comforts were easily had. Yet, as these stories reflect so accurately, life was still unsettling, and Updike chronicles telling moments both joyful and painful.

There's a brutal murder in the small Welsh village of Gilfach. The police are clueless. With no motive and no real suspect, the investigation soon grinds to a halt. Enter Mary Anne Smith, otherwise known as Granny Smith, the 71-years-young, pipe-smoking, heavy metal-loving, chaos-causing amateur sleuth with a difference.

The night world of Old Town, Portland, Oregon, has gone mad in the grip of gentrification, and at the center of it all is Lucky Supreme, a seedy tattoo parlor, whose proprietor is a street-bred artist with a unique approach to problem solving. Darby Holland has enough on his radar, but when some flash (tattoo artwork) stolen from him resurfaces in California, he can't help himself. His efforts to reclaim it set him on a dangerous path, dragging along his delightfully eccentric colleagues.

In this short story from his Getting Even collection, Woody Allen takes an in-depth look at the Mafia, detailing heretofore unknown facts about the Cosa Nostra, from their aliases (and aliases' aliases), to how little they spend on office supplies in a given year.

After failing at being a cop and a not-so private investigator, Frank Jones is known as Double O 12, or 12 Gauge. Now a US international agent, his chaos continues to Paris and Moscow.

A town full of mystery and intrigue. Corrupt politicians. An out-of-control police force. A wealthy family who controls everything. Criminal merchants, drug trafficking, and violence. Other than that, a pretty nice place to visit.

Hannah Mills, local photographer, is struggling for work and to pay her rent. Great-aunt Dorothy comes to the rescue from beyond the grave after she leaves Hannah a first phase Indian Chief Navajo blanket, a very rare item worth at least a million dollars. That kind of money would set Hannah up for life. But, before she can take it to auction, her niece is kidnapped and a ransom demanded - the blanket. Hannah has to go to France to get her niece back, but she has no money to get there until she robs a bank.

Joe Brody is just your average Dostoevsky-reading, Harvard-expelled strip-club bouncer who has a highly classified military history and whose best friend from Catholic school happens to be head mafioso Gio Caprisi. FBI agent Donna Zamora, the best shot in her class at Quantico, is a single mother stuck at a desk manning the hotline. Their storylines intersect over a tip from a cokehead that leads to a crackdown on Gio's strip joint in Queens and Joe's arrest - just one piece of a city-wide sweep aimed at flushing out anyone who might have a lead on the most-wanted terrorists....

Alan Newberg, a staid title-company lawyer in the middle of a divorce, escapes to the French Riviera in an effort to reinvent himself. Instead, he catches a case of careful what you ask for when his soon-to-be-ex wife freezes his bank accounts. Without access to money, Newberg gets a job working for a crazy American ex-pat from Texas who owns a questionable vehicle-for-hire business that is at war with a local mob-run cab company. The ever-growing predicament leads to Alan being framed for murder and forces him to run the gauntlet of French criminal justice.

Magical Crimes is a fun CSI with magic and "a little something else" story. The little something else being two foot long and lurking in the hero’s trousers. But don’t worry, the penis in this story is used purely for the purpose God intended - humour and crimefighting - not lustful titillation. Seb Kemp is a psychic profiler with a problem. After a night out drinking some men wake up with an unexpected tattoo. Seb woke up with a floor-length boinkwurst and no memory of how, when, or where it happened.

It's downbeat Dublin in the late 1980s. Temple Bar, bedsits, and dole queues. Fred, a loser adrift in the world, and Maggie, a fiercely intelligent and complicated writer, are brought together through circumstances they think they can handle, whereas they are totally out of their depth. In this first part of a planned trilogy, the key ingredients are that the "Butterfly Effect" of two seemingly fringe characters in their society turn out to trigger changes far beyond their plans or wishes.

Tre donne. La protagonista, il suo ex marito, sua madre. L'ingenua, il bello e la perfida. La madre, algida e chicchissima donna d'affari, traffica coi narcos messicani, finché l'ignara figlia Jole, ex ballerina del Crazy Horse, mentre mamma è in Messico, trova un cadavere senza testa nel suo appartamento e l'ex marito – ora felicemente Corinna – l'aiuta a sbarazzarsene, ma così facendo finiscono tutt'e due nelle grinfie dei criminali, che le rapiscono e le portano a Mexico City, dal boss dei boss Xavier, detto "la Tumba", amante segreto dell'anziana madre.

En este ensayo, narrado como novela negra, un detective es contratado para dilucidar, con todas las evidencias de rigor, cuál es la primera novela de este género en Sonora, si Juan Justino Judicial, de Gerardo Cornejo, o La madriguera de los Cobra, de Alonso Vidal.

Midnight Rider Productions is a dark-web nightmare machine, headed by the one man who years ago drove Darby to hide in the seamy environs of Old Town and make his life there. But Darby left his own mark back in the day, and the shadowy head of production has a grudge to settle. Rider has found him at long last and plans to make an example of him.

Time is up in Old Town. As the pace of gentrification reaches frenzy in Portland, Oregon, Darby Holland’s beloved tattoo parlor, Lucky Supreme, is destroyed by a bomb that ripped through an entire city block. Only a warning call from his favorite prostitute saved his life. Developers have been like wolves at the door of Dmitri (the drunken landlord) for the past few years, but this is different.

A palm reader notifies Lord Arthur that murder is in his future. But not his murder - he’s the murderer. This really throws a wrench into his wedding plans, for Lord Arthur is soon to be married to the most beautiful lady in London. In fact he loves her so much, he decides to postpone the wedding until his business is done. Now, for a tasteful homicide....

Verbal abusers are highly intelligent people who tend to tell their victims what they want to hear in a caring way that allows the abuser to hide the true meaning of the message.

Summer 1989: Gunther Fahnstiel, once a tough cop who wasn't averse to taking a little side money from a certain madam, has just escaped the dementia ward of his Wichita nursing home. He's not exactly sure where he wants to go, but wherever it is, it has to do with the bag full of cash belonging to the man he accidentally backed over with his RV in 1979. During his search, Gunther begins to relive the violent fallout of that madam's sex lottery 40 years ago. As Gunther's memories unravel, his past and present will collide in a devastating reckoning.

Eine halbe Stunde vor der Hochzeit ihrer Cousine Emma finden Carlina und Emma ihren Großvater tot in seiner Wohnung in der Altstadt von Florenz. Carlina merkt schnell, dass Emma nicht bereit ist, ihre Hochzeit wegen des plötzlichen Todesfalls abzusagen - ein natürlicher Tod liegt ja auch nahe. Also lässt sich Carlina überreden, ihren toten Opa in seinem Bett zu verstecken und jedem zu erzählen, dass er sich nicht gut genug fühlte, um an der Hochzeit teilzunehmen.

Charmante Dilettanten: Monsieur Lipaires Gauner-Truppe träumt vom großen Coup an der Côte d'Azur – doch irgendwas geht immer schief. Ein Rätsel, das zum Familienschatz einer südfranzösischen Adelsdynastie führt, versteckt im Kanallabyrinth der malerischen Küstenstadt Port Grimaud? Das klingt zu formidable, um wahr zu sein. Gelegenheitsgauner Guillaume Lipaire sieht endlich seine Chance, schnell an viel Geld zu kommen. Er versammelt ein ungewöhnliches Team um sich, das ihm dabei helfen soll, das Rätsel zu lösen.