6
FROM THE SHELF
APRIL 13�20, 2022
CHECKING OUT THE
WORLD OF BOOKS
Recommendations: Mystery novels that are also funny
By Moira Macdonald
The Seattle Times
ger, a First Lady/Secret Service
romance, a wildlife wrangler and
a lot of hungry pythons.
I
t’s a tall order to ask for a
mystery novel that’s also funny,
like wanting a dog who can both
fetch and mix a cocktail. But such
things do exist (the novels, not
the dog, though surely you’ll tell
me if I’m mistaken), and a number
of you responded to my call for
recommendations for a crime
fi ction novel that made you laugh
out loud. I wasn’t at all surprised
by the title most often cited: “The
Thursday Murder Club,” by Rich-
ard Osman, came out in 2020
and brightened many a pandemic
Sunday afternoon. The tale of
four seniors in a pastoral and
excessively llama-laden British
retirement village who attempt
to solve a real-life crime, it’s very
funny and the characters are a
treat. They return for a 2021 se-
quel, “The Man Who Died Twice.”
Other books getting multiple
votes were:
SPENCER QUINN’S CHET
AND BERNIE MYSTERIES
A lot of readers chimed in
for this 12-book series, about a
COLIN COTTERILL’S DR.
SIRI PAIBOUN SERIES
This 15-book series is set in
1980s Laos, with its main char-
acter a doctor who becomes
National Coroner, inheriting an
incompetent boss and quirky
staff . Cotterill, an English Austra-
lian author, recently concluded
the series with “The Delightful
Life of a Suicide Pilot.”
JANET EVANOVICH’S
STEPHANIE PLUM SERIES
Penguin Random House
detective agency run by Ber-
nie, who is a person, and Chet,
who is a dog. (But can he make
cocktails?) The titles all play on
famous novel or movie titles; my
favorite is “A Fistful of Collars.”
”SQUEEZE ME” BY CARL
HIAASEN
Hiaasen’s name came up fairly
often, mostly next to this 2020
bestseller about a dead dowa-
Evanovich’s series about a
New Jersey bounty hunter has
spawned 21 novels, several
novellas and one not-very-good
Katherine Heigl movie. A reader
described this one as “the ‘I Love
Lucy’ of detective series.”
And here are the rest:
• “The House on Vesper Sands”
by Paraic O’Donnell (I loved
this one)
• Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce
series
• Vaseem Khan’s Baby Ganesh
t
sco oo u k n s on a ly)
i
d
0% d b ing
Agency series
• J.D. Robb’s “In Death” series
• Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone
series
• Kinky Friedman’s mysteries
• Craig Johnson’s Sheriff
Longmire series
• Anne George’s Southern
Sisters series
• Lynne Truss’ Constable
Twitten series
• “Her Royal Spyness” by Rhys
Bowen
• Christopher Fowler’s Bryant
and May series
• Qiu Xiaolong’s Inspector Chen
Cao series
• Joe Ide’s IQ series
• Donald Westlake’s books
I’m quite enjoying all this
crime-fi ction crowdsourcing!
Here’s one for next month, and
thinking about “The House on
Vesper Sands” gave me the idea:
Tell me your favorite mystery
book or series set in the past.
To start us off , here’s a timely
recommendation. Naomi Hira-
hara’s 2021 novel “Clark and Divi-
sion” takes place in 1944 Chica-
go, among a Japanese American
family just moved to the city after
their release from incarceration.
(Last month marked the 80th
anniversary of Executive Order
9066, in which President Franklin
D. Roosevelt ordered all Japanese
Americans on the West Coast
evacuated from their homes and
forced into incarceration camps.)
Twenty-year-old Aki Ito, grieving
the loss of her older sister Rose,
turns amateur detective on the
unfamiliar Chicago streets, where
young people seemed to rule. Did
beautiful, determined Rose die by
suicide, or was it murder?
Hirahara, an Edgar Award-
winning author of several previ-
ous mystery series, crafts a tight
plot, a palpable sense of place
and a touching heroine — there’s
an innocence to the narration un-
derlining that Aki is indeed very
young, dealing both with grief
and the disorientation of being
out in the world again after years
of confi nement. “It felt so good
to be ignored,” muses Aki, of the
Chicago sidewalks. “Nothing you
did went unnoticed in Manzanar.”
It’s both an engrossing crime
novel and a meaningful history
lesson. Fiction’s one way, Hira-
hara reminds us, to remember.
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