Which is the problem with a lot of recommendations I get for humorous mysteries. If I’m lucky, it takes as many as three chapters into the latest "you'll laugh until it hurts" before I realize that one weak smile is going to be about it. I used to think it was me, because I'd see books I thought were decidedly unfunny praised all over various forums. But then a couple years back when I reviewed the first book in his Double Feature series, Some Like it Hot-Buttered, our own Jeff Cohen helped me figure it out. (No, that’s not the blatant brown-nosing it looks like, honest. He really did.)
Jeff’s hero, Elliott Freed, loves comedy so much he’s put all his money into creating a movie theater dedicated to it. But he hates the jokes friends continually email him, because comedy and jokes aren’t the same thing and he’s just not all that into jokes. To paraphrase my own review of Jeff’s book, comedy is about wit and humor, while jokes are contrived stories to set up a punch line.
Comedy and jokes aren't the same thing... epiphany time. The next time a new, much praised humorous mystery left me grumbling rather than laughing—and wondering why—I realized that same division was the problem here. Yes I know it should be obvious, but you think of jokes as, well, jokes. Short set up / punchline pairs that stand on their own. You might read a character telling a joke, but you don't naturally think of jokes as part of the structure of a novel. But that was indeed what too many of the newer comic mysteries seemed to be built from. Instead of real comedy and humor based in absurd situations or wit that is an organic part of the story, they rely on jokes and jokey set ups for the laughs. In the worse cases, the story becomes little more than a strong to hold together a bunch of build ups to various punch lines. And in the absolute worst cases, those were all too predictable punch lines—there was a series of travel based mysteries written a few years ago which everyone swore I would love, because it had mystery and comedy and travel, all of which I do love. But the humor was based on stereotypes that were trite even then, with punchlines you could see coming three pages before they arrived.
What got me thinking about this again was the pleasure in a few recent reads—two by modern authors, one a Golden Age classic—that get it right. Genuine comedy and humor rather than jokes.
I mentioned Donna Andrews and Swan for the Money last week. While I don’t love all her books equally (there are two I absolutely adore—Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon and We’ll Always Have Parrots—with The Penguin Who Knew Too Much only slightly below, and the rest ranging across a couple of tiers below that), I love how she does them. The humor is situational, built from the sort of people who might be your family and neighbors doing absolutely outrageous and absurd things as if they were totally commonplace, or having such things happen to them. The humor is in the situation, with nary a punchline in sight. Take the Tennessee Belted Fainting Goats I also mentioned last time… now consider what it would be like to chase an intruder through a field filled with goats who stiffen and keel over without warning when even slightly alarmed or excited. Go ahead and laugh, I saw that grin.
The humor is heightened by a beautiful foil in smart and sensible heroine Meg, a calm, tolerant but appreciative audience who treats most of the madness around her as normal. Which of course in her world it all is; it's our kind of normalcy that would be really weird.
The other recent book isn’t a mystery, although there are puzzles aplenty inside. Gail Carriger has a new alternate history comedy of manners out, titled Soulless (first in The Parasol Protectorate). Her heroine is even more phlegmatic, and while there are some silly situations, the humor here is more in the language and the style of it all. Not jokes, but witty banter and language that stylishly provides some wonderfully absurd juxtapositions while taking things to their logical absurdities. Think witty Regency style romance (although the setting is Victorian) meets new style urban fantasy. Werewolves and vampires and teacakes, oh my!! For example, when classic prim and proper spinster Alexia is attacked by a vampire, rather than wailing and falling into a helpless swoon, she sharply chides him on his manners (they haven’t even been introduced!) while feeling more upset about the treacle tart she'd been looking forward to—now ruined—than the attack itself. Her scientifically inquisitive approach to personal discovery about relations between the sexes is an absolute riot. The entire book is simply a hoot, full of wicked fun that stands a couple of genres on their ears through the author's wonderful ear for using language to maximum comic effect.
The classic combines wit and situational humor—Edmund Crispin’s The Moving Toyshop—which I recently re-read. I love Crispin and wish he’d written more, although I've never had good luck recommending him to others. There’s wit in the banter between characters, such as a silly characters in literature bar game, while the story also has some wonderful situational humor, such as the "University steeplechase” pursuit of a suspect and its water filled ending. Genuine laugh until it hurts stuff if you've any appreciation for the absurd.
Here's hoping we see more of the situational comedy and wit that once used to dominate humor in mysteries. And until we do, my heartfelt thanks to a handful of newer authors like Donna Andrews and Gail Carriger and Jeff himself, who help keep my funny bone nicely polished.
Jeff’s hero, Elliott Freed, loves comedy so much he’s put all his money into creating a movie theater dedicated to it. But he hates the jokes friends continually email him, because comedy and jokes aren’t the same thing and he’s just not all that into jokes. To paraphrase my own review of Jeff’s book, comedy is about wit and humor, while jokes are contrived stories to set up a punch line.
Comedy and jokes aren't the same thing... epiphany time. The next time a new, much praised humorous mystery left me grumbling rather than laughing—and wondering why—I realized that same division was the problem here. Yes I know it should be obvious, but you think of jokes as, well, jokes. Short set up / punchline pairs that stand on their own. You might read a character telling a joke, but you don't naturally think of jokes as part of the structure of a novel. But that was indeed what too many of the newer comic mysteries seemed to be built from. Instead of real comedy and humor based in absurd situations or wit that is an organic part of the story, they rely on jokes and jokey set ups for the laughs. In the worse cases, the story becomes little more than a strong to hold together a bunch of build ups to various punch lines. And in the absolute worst cases, those were all too predictable punch lines—there was a series of travel based mysteries written a few years ago which everyone swore I would love, because it had mystery and comedy and travel, all of which I do love. But the humor was based on stereotypes that were trite even then, with punchlines you could see coming three pages before they arrived.
What got me thinking about this again was the pleasure in a few recent reads—two by modern authors, one a Golden Age classic—that get it right. Genuine comedy and humor rather than jokes.
I mentioned Donna Andrews and Swan for the Money last week. While I don’t love all her books equally (there are two I absolutely adore—Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon and We’ll Always Have Parrots—with The Penguin Who Knew Too Much only slightly below, and the rest ranging across a couple of tiers below that), I love how she does them. The humor is situational, built from the sort of people who might be your family and neighbors doing absolutely outrageous and absurd things as if they were totally commonplace, or having such things happen to them. The humor is in the situation, with nary a punchline in sight. Take the Tennessee Belted Fainting Goats I also mentioned last time… now consider what it would be like to chase an intruder through a field filled with goats who stiffen and keel over without warning when even slightly alarmed or excited. Go ahead and laugh, I saw that grin.
The humor is heightened by a beautiful foil in smart and sensible heroine Meg, a calm, tolerant but appreciative audience who treats most of the madness around her as normal. Which of course in her world it all is; it's our kind of normalcy that would be really weird.
The other recent book isn’t a mystery, although there are puzzles aplenty inside. Gail Carriger has a new alternate history comedy of manners out, titled Soulless (first in The Parasol Protectorate). Her heroine is even more phlegmatic, and while there are some silly situations, the humor here is more in the language and the style of it all. Not jokes, but witty banter and language that stylishly provides some wonderfully absurd juxtapositions while taking things to their logical absurdities. Think witty Regency style romance (although the setting is Victorian) meets new style urban fantasy. Werewolves and vampires and teacakes, oh my!! For example, when classic prim and proper spinster Alexia is attacked by a vampire, rather than wailing and falling into a helpless swoon, she sharply chides him on his manners (they haven’t even been introduced!) while feeling more upset about the treacle tart she'd been looking forward to—now ruined—than the attack itself. Her scientifically inquisitive approach to personal discovery about relations between the sexes is an absolute riot. The entire book is simply a hoot, full of wicked fun that stands a couple of genres on their ears through the author's wonderful ear for using language to maximum comic effect.
The classic combines wit and situational humor—Edmund Crispin’s The Moving Toyshop—which I recently re-read. I love Crispin and wish he’d written more, although I've never had good luck recommending him to others. There’s wit in the banter between characters, such as a silly characters in literature bar game, while the story also has some wonderful situational humor, such as the "University steeplechase” pursuit of a suspect and its water filled ending. Genuine laugh until it hurts stuff if you've any appreciation for the absurd.
Here's hoping we see more of the situational comedy and wit that once used to dominate humor in mysteries. And until we do, my heartfelt thanks to a handful of newer authors like Donna Andrews and Gail Carriger and Jeff himself, who help keep my funny bone nicely polished.
