Comedy Crime Fiction

Depressed, lonely, and tired of life, George Thring leaves work one night but never makes it home. Before he knows it, he's driven over 200 miles in the wrong direction and finds himself in a strange little town, in the middle of nowhere, during their annual Elvis Presley appreciation festival. As he stumbles from one mishap to another, George meets the woman of his dreams, unwittingly aids in a bank robbery, and finds himself pursued by both the police and a gang of angry criminals.

You won't remember Mr Heming. He showed you round your comfortable home, before you took the plunge and bought it. But all these years later, he still has the key. That's absurd, you laugh. Of all the many hundreds of houses he has sold, why would he still have the key to mine? The answer to that is, he has the keys to them all.

Blotto and Twinks are off on another adventure - and this time they're bound for the Alpine village of Luzvimmen in Switzerland, where Blotto participates in racing the prestigious and very fast Croissant Run, though someone seems determined to sabotage his chances. Twinks, on the other hand, is on a mission to rescue her friend's sister from the sinister finishing school she is trapped in - the Convent of the Sacred Icicle.

It's '86, the era of Pop Rocks, Jelly shoes, and big hair bands. Rachael O'Brien's freshman plan seems simple: Attend a southern college away from her hometown of Canton, Ohio, earn a degree, party, and meet cute guys-hopefully acing the latter two. But being threatened by a jealous She-Devil, avoiding the advances of a 30-something redneck, and discovering an art fraud scheme mess with her "to do" list.

In the seaport city of New London, Connecticut, newcomer Connor Raposo has just witnessed a gruesome motorcycle accident on Bank Street. At least he thinks it was an accident. But then he sees a familiar man - who else would wear an Elvis pompadour in this day and age? - lurking around the crime scene. Where does Connor know him from? And why does everyone he knows keep showing up dead?

A vigilante is stalking the streets of Kansas City administering his own brand of justice when the justice system fails. Criminals are being executed right under the noses of the police department. In Lady Justice and the Vigilante, a new recruit to the City Retiree Action Patrol steps up to help Walt and Ox bring to an end his reign of terror. But not everyone wants the vigilante stopped.

The night after her father's funeral, Claire meets Lucas in a bar. Lucas doesn't know it, but it's not a chance meeting. One thoughtless mistyped email has put him in the crosshairs of an extremely put-out serial killer. But before they make eye contact, before Claire lets him buy her a drink, even before she takes him home and carves him up into little pieces, something about that night is very wrong. Because someone is watching Claire. Someone who is about to discover her murderous little hobby.

Early in July, Northern Nevada’s senior Internal Revenue Service agent, Ronald Soranden - disliked by every agent in the Reno IRS office - vanished without a trace. In September, he makes a dramatic reappearance, of sorts. His skull - stripped clean and white - is dropped through the slashed top of a Mustang convertible. The vehicle belongs to Lucy Landry, PI Mortimer Angel’s gorgeous young assistant now working with him on a seemingly unrelated embezzlement case. But Mort is a former IRS field agent in Reno.

Björn Diemel will reden: sowohl über die Einschulung seiner Tochter als auch über das Tantra-Seminar, das er aus Versehen mit seiner Ex-Frau besucht hat. Leider hat ein Unbekannter Björns Achtsamkeitstrainer, Joschka Breitner, krankenhausreif geprügelt – bei dem Versuch, dessen Tagebuch an sich zu bringen. Björn entwendet kurzerhand selbst die Aufzeichnungen seines Therapeuten und macht sich auf die Suche nach dem Täter.

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.

If stealing a half million dollars from the Mafia is a bad idea, then using the money to pay off a homicidal Russian loan shark is an insane idea. Elliot Becker realizes this a little too late as his well-intentioned South Florida real estate scam starts to fall to pieces. He needs a Plan B - and he needs it now - because when Ponzi schemes fail, they tend to fail fast. Complicating matters is Logan Treverrow, an aspiring sculptor and newly-returned veteran from Afghanistan trying to figure out who took out a $200,000 loan in his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s name.

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.

A madcap new novel from the one-of-a-kind author of The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden. It's never too late to start again. And again. It's always awkward when five thousand kronor goes missing. When it happens at a certain grotty hotel in South Stockholm, it's particularly awkward because the money belongs to the hitman currently staying in room seven.

After 30 years at St Oswald's Grammar in North Yorkshire, Latin master Roy Straitley has seen all kinds of boys come and go. Each class has its clowns, its rebels, its underdogs, its 'Brodie' boys who, whilst of course he doesn't have favourites, hold a special place in an old teacher's heart. But every so often there's a boy who doesn't fit the mould. A troublemaker. A boy with hidden shadows inside.

Nobody is more surprised than Billy when he finds himself bleeding out onto his new linoleum floor, a kitchen knife in his chest. Rose, his wife, and Born2Rock, her lover, are leaving for a night on the town. They're sure he'll be dead in no time. So is he. With the help of Consuela, the house keeper, Billy makes it to the hospital. After a short stint in the ICU, he returns to the scene of the crime, home, where he takes up residence in the attic. From this vantage point, Billy watches and waits and plots his revenge.

Eddie Morales finds his lowly R&D life completely upended when his Boise-based biotech firm dispatches him to Puerto Malogrado, a tiny but tumultuous country in South America where the international media is accusing their experimental potatoes of causing a bizarre medical crisis. Eddie unwillingly arrives in South America only to find his plans for a quick resolution thwarted when he gets caught between the two sides of an impending revolution, each hoping to capitalize on the potato scandal in order to seize power.

It was my father’s arrest that brought me here, although you could certainly say that I took the scenic route. Here is rehab, where Ben - the only son of a rich South Dublin banker - is piecing together the shattered remains of his life. Abruptly cut off, at the age of 27, from a life of heedless privilege, Ben flounders through a world of drugs and dead-end jobs, his self-esteem at rock bottom. Even his once-adoring girlfriend, Clio, is at the end of her tether. Then Ben runs into an old school friend who wants to cut him in on a scam.

Medium Dead is a fun urban fantasy chronicling the crime fighting adventures of Brenda - a reluctant medium - and Brian - a vigilante demon with an impish sense of humour. Think Stephanie Plum with magic and a dash of Carl Hiaasen. Brenda Steele is smart, funny and out of her depth. A Vigilante Demon called Brian wants her to find murdered spirits and help him track down their killers. But Brian doesn't just catch criminals, he likes to play with them first, and make the punishment fit the crime.

Sherlock Holmes is an unparalleled genius. Warlock Holmes is an idiot. A font of arcane power, certainly. But he's brilliantly dim. Frankly, he couldn't deduce his way out of a paper bag. The only thing he has really got going for him are the might of a thousand demons and his stalwart companion. Thankfully, Dr. Watson is always there to aid him through the treacherous shoals of Victorian propriety and save him from a gruesome death every now and again.

From Emmy Award-winning author David Quantick, All My Colors is a darkly comic novel about a man who remembers a book that may not exist, with dire consequences. A bizarre, mind-bending story at the intersection of Richard Bachman, Charlie Kaufman, and Franz Kafka.