How to be Funny in a Murder Mystery

By Bill Gormley

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How funny should a murder mystery be? Must you choose between funny and scary? Is it possible to combine comedy and tragedy in one piece of work?

Many mystery writers opt for one over the other. By sanitizing violence and downplaying death, “cozy” writers achieve a light, frothy consistency high in humor, low in dread. By expunging light-hearted moments and heightening the drama as much as possible, “suspense” writers achieve a grim, scary consistency high in fear, low in fun. 

Though I enjoy many mysteries that tilt strongly one way or the other, I generally prefer a balanced approach – some fear and some humor, some tension and some relief. But how to go about it? Is there a right way and a wrong way to blend humor and suspense?  

For starters, let’s agree that it would be bad form for police to joke about someone’s death when informing a loved one. It would be equally bad form for a writer to interrupt someone’s expression of grief with a burp, a fart, or a double entendre. Some things just aren’t done and shouldn’t be done. As Johnny Carson liked to say, never joke about Abraham Lincoln.

On the other hand, a funny sequence after the grim work at the scene of the crime can be a welcome relief to investigators and readers alike. That’s where good writing and good timing pay off.

Consider Janet Evanovich’s irrepressible Grandma Mazur, whose zest for visiting funeral homes is legendary. In addition to hogging the best seat in the house and cramming her purse full of cookies, she’s notorious for opening closed caskets: “I just don’t like when they have a closed casket. I think it’s a gyp. How do you know if there’s anyone in there?” 

 We shake our heads and chuckle at Grandma Mazur’s antics because she is not testing the boundaries. For her, the boundaries simply don’t exist. We can overlook her sins because she doesn’t know they are sins. 

So, can we agree that funny scenes are worth doing when we can pull it off? If so, how do we do it?  How do we inject humor into a murder mystery without creating a jarring mix of moods? 

Here are five suggestions:

SUGGESTION # 1 – CREATE QUIRKY CHARACTERS. They enrich our daily lives. Why shouldn’t they enrich our stories? A barber who offers to remove a mole while trimming someone’s hair. A beautician whose chihuahua jumps on customers’ laps. A neighbor who plays more tricks on trick-or-treaters than they play on him. An auto repair man who can’t drive.

Thieves and grifters are especially good bets. According to the gospel of Elmore Leonard, your average criminal hatches schemes that are doomed to failure. That’s comic gold if you know what to do with it. Leonard devotes as much time to the bad guys as to the good guys and somehow manages to get inside their clueless heads. With empathy and humor, he portrays individuals who see themselves as pursuing the American dream, albeit without guardrails or constraints.

In Maximum Bob, for example, an ex-con, Dr. Tommy, hires another ex-con, Elvin, to assassinate the super-strict judge who sentenced him. His boyfriend Hector points out that Elvin is more of a bungler than a burglar. Why hire him? “Listen, he could be lucky and do it. You know why? He doesn’t see what could stop him.” Like Hector, Elvin’s nephew, Dale, is skeptical and asks his uncle if he’s really up to the job.

Elvin: You’re working with a pro here. I’ve done it. 

Dale: And you went to prison. 

Elvin: Hey, that’s something else entirely. We set this up right, it’ll work slick.

It’s fun knowing that Elvin is hurtling into the abyss with almost no chance of succeeding.

Criminals with scruples can also be amusing. In Hanging the Devil, Tim Maleeny introduces us to some savvy Russian thugs who join an alliance of misfits to steal paintings from a museum. Their front is a store that sells Russian nesting dolls, including an assortment of Mary Poppins characters. Mary herself is topless, but she’s discreetly wearing an apron. “We have standards,” Sergey explains. “This is a family business.” 

Notice the juxtaposition here. Grand theft and murder? All in a day’s work. Offending sensitive customers with a nude doll? Unthinkable.

SUGGESTION # 2 – CREATE WITTY CHARACTERS. A character with a sharp tongue or a dry wit is a gift that keeps on giving. The character can be likable or not, eccentric or not. The key is that the character can deliver zingers with the best of them. 

Take Ruth Zardo – one of Louise Penny’s characters in the tiny village of Three Pines, in Quebec. A crotchety, potty-mouthed poet, Ruth insults anyone and everyone, even friends, like painter Clara Morrow. 

After receiving a devastating review of her latest paintings – small miniatures described as “trite, derivative, and banal,” Clara needs some cheering up. But that’s not Ruth’s way: “The good thing is, nobody will see your crap. Who goes to an exhibition of miniatures? Why in the world would you agree to contribute to a group show of tiny oil paintings? It’s what bored society women in the 1700s painted.” 

A village of Ruth Zardos would be exasperating. But other residents of Three Pines, including Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, are so unfailingly nice that Ruth is paradoxically a welcome breath of foul air.

If Ruth Zardo has a rival for curmudgeon of the decade, it might be Jackson Lamb, the disheveled, ill-mannered, mean-spirited man who runs Slough House in Mick Herron’s Slow Horses series. The premise is that disgraced and incompetent MI5 agents who can’t be fired are assigned to a sort of “rubber room” where they are occasionally asked to perform difficult assignments that they are well beyond their means. 

When Lamb berates a member of his crew, he is blunt, vulgar, and cruel. He has a grudging respect for his chief deputy, Catherine Standish, but even she gets treated caustically, as in Dead Lions:

Lamb: You’ve got a theory, haven’t you?

Standish: Yes, I …

Lamb: I didn’t say I wanted to hear it.

Lamb is funniest when sparring with an equal, like “Lady Di” Taverner, Deputy Director-General of MI5. When Taverner complains about her boss, Lamb commiserates and offers to help: “I know some people. I could have her whacked.” He’s kidding, right? Yes. Probably.

Adrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy is kinder and gentler than Jackson Lamb, but just as funny. A detective sergeant in Ireland during The Troubles, Duffy wise-cracks his way through murder and mayhem. When a man is found dead in his car, with two ugly gunshot wounds, his right hand neatly severed at the wrist, Duffy’s boss, Chief Inspector Brennan, wants to know what Duffy makes of it.

Brennan: Well?

Duffy: It’s my belief, sir, that this was no ordinary car accident.

Brennan: Why is it that every eejit in the CID thinks they’re a bloody comedian?

Duffy: Probably to cover up some deep insecurity, sir.

As the plot thickens, we learn that Duffy is more than just a wisenheimer. He is clever, resourceful, and empathetic. As Anjili Babbar notes, Duffy is even ethical in his own way. But his quips make for a jolly ride into a world of chaos and horror.

SUGGESTION # 3 – DEVISE FUNNY SITUATIONS. Put your characters in an awkward situation and watch them squirm. 

In Notorious Nineteen, bail bondswoman Stephanie Plum and her pal Lula get a hot tip – a man who jumped bail has been spotted at a nude beach. On arriving at their destination, Stephanie and Lula confirm with the attendant that the scofflaw is there. There’s only one problem:  they have to take off their clothes to apprehend him. How embarrassing! Not surprisingly, Janet Evanovich, a master comedienne, makes the most of it.

A subtler approach might be to borrow from the fable where one of the mice must bell the cat but none is willing to put his tail on the line. Let’s say Character A wants to burgle an apartment but won’t do it himself for fear of getting caught. He commissions a reluctant Character B to do it. Character B, no chump, says yes but secretly arranges for Character C to do it, and so forth. What’s fun about this is that multiple refusals create multiple opportunities for something to go wrong.

If you handle it right, as Brad Parks does in Faces of the Gone, a dangerous situation can be funny. Carter Ross, investigative reporter for a Newark newspaper, secures an invite to meet with some gang members but is told that he must smoke weed with them to prove that he is not a cop. Blindfolded, he is taken to their hideaway where they produce some first-class weed, which Ross promptly smokes. Ross suspects that the gang members are drug dealers, but they indignantly deny this, showing him their warehouse, which contains boxes and boxes of … bootleg movies! Ross returns unharmed to his office, “as high as the Himalayas.” There, he unexpectedly runs into … his executive editor. An old-school gentleman, Harold Brodie is horrified that his star reporter has been smoking dope. Tempted to lie but not clear-headed enough to do so, Ross spits out a garbled version of what happened to his incredulous boss.

Brodie: So … you smoked marijuana with some sources to get them to trust you?

Ross: Well, actually, so they wouldn’t shoot me. But yes.

Brodie: That’s fantastic! Very well done, my boy. You did what you had to do to get the story.

What’s sweet about this sequence is that Ross faces a serious threat to his career, after having barely survived a threat to his life. We’re as surprised as Ross is when his boss decides that getting high was exactly the right thing to do. Ross has snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

SUGGESTION # 4 – CREATE A PARALLEL UNIVERSE. A great way to avoid an ill-fitting mix of moods as investigators try to solve a murder is to create a relatively serene parallel universe. In this parallel universe, your characters’ private lives are a source of merriment and amusement, a safe haven for the reader. 

Inspector Salvo Montalbano, who lives in a small coastal village in Sicily imagined by Andre Camilleri, has a rich private life that includes an on-again off-again romance with his girlfriend, Olivia, who lives in Genoa. The running gag is that when Olivia is eager to see Montalbano, he is not eager to see her, and vice versa. This makes for stormy, sometimes angry, but often funny telephone exchanges. 

Given Olivia’s sensitivity to slights, real and imagined, Montalbano is understandably concerned when his maid accidentally shrinks his sweater to a child’s size. The sweater was a special gift from Olivia. Uh-oh. Montalbano’s first impulse is to hide the diminished sweater in his armoire. But Olivia is nosy. His next thought is to bury it in the sand outside his home. But, with his luck, it will reappear at low tide. Desperate, he tears the troublesome garment apart with a knife and his bare hands until it is no longer recognizable. Is this progress? We won’t know for sure until Olivia’s next visit! 

When she is not busy solving crimes in Lafayette, Louisiana, Danielle Arceneaux’s Glory Broussard has a steady gig. Every Sunday, just after Mass at St. Agnes Catholic Church, she is a popular bookie, working out of a corner table at the local coffee shop. Like Grandma Mazur, Glory B fails to see why this is a problem. As she explains to her daughter, Delphine, this is a “fresh start” following her divorce.

Delphine: Mom, running a criminal enterprise is not exactly a fresh start.

Glory: This ain’t no criminal enterprise. I am a small-business owner. A risk-management consultant … I am an entrepreneur working in a collaborative workspace.

Glory’s conversations with Delphine are both funny and touching. The two Black women are poles apart in their personal habits, but their bond is deep and enduring. And they’ve learned to compromise. For example, Glory reluctantly agrees to Delphine’s suggestion that they visit a backwater voodoo priestess, in hope of identifying a murder: “Let’s go before Jesus strikes us down and swallows us up in this sinkhole trailer park, on account of placing another god before him.” The mother and daughter bend and stretch in ways that are amusing and touching to watch.

SUGGESTION # 5 – BRING ON THE ANIMALS! Pets and barnyard animals are cute and adorable, so why not invite them to join the cast? A watchdog who goes nuts over squirrels but ignores actual burglars. A goat who eats evidence. A K-9 officer who is better at detecting T-bone steaks than illegal drugs. Animals worked splendidly for Verdi in Aida and for Puccini in La Boheme. They can work for you too.

John Grisham knows the comic value of animals. In each of his Theo Boone Kid Detective mysteries, a retired judge, Sergio Yeck, presides over a pet dispute in a makeshift “Animal Court.” Theo, the 13-year-old son of two lawyers and a legal eagle himself, represents the defense – a dog, a rabbit, a parrot, or an otter, usually owned by a friend. The scenes are hilarious, and the judge is unfailingly Solomonic in his decisions. These chapters are the high points of every book. 

Which raises an interesting question: where to locate the Animal Court scene within the overall narrative? Usually, Grisham situates his Animal Court chapter at the midpoint or later. You don’t want to peak too soon.

I hope it’s clear from my examples that humor is not just about funny characters or funny situations. It’s about the right characters in the right situations.

When a woman who can’t swim falls from a boat into a lake during a late-night storm, that’s flat-out scary. But consider, as Carl Hiaasen did, an unscrupulous biologist who fears that his wife will blow the whistle on him. He invites her to join him on an ocean cruise and pushes her overboard, which sets the stage for a funny twist – the wife, a good swimmer, breaststrokes her way to safety and plots a sweet revenge against her murderous husband.  

A better swimmer in the storm and you lose your suspense. A poorer swimmer on the cruise and you lose your comedy. The trick is to have the right person in the right situation.

I should add that comedy and suspense can be compartmentalized to some degree. For example, Grandma Mazur’s corpses are seldom the victims of foul play. The pageantry of Janet Evanovich’s funeral homes and the pageantry of her murders operate on parallel tracks. The laugh track and the fear track are sequential, not simultaneous.

So, don’t lose sight of the big picture when you are writing your murder mystery. But have some fun along the way. If you do, your reward will be an occasional belly laugh from your readers. And what could be better than that?