Good extremely funny murder mysteries
King Tut's Private Eye
This jolly mystery, billing itself as the very first murder mystery, is
quite educational about the world of Tutankhamen. The private eye is actually
named Eye, and he's King Tut's Grand Visier. Tut charges him to investigate
the death of Tut's father, but without using the usual methods, i.e. torture.
Unable to round up the usual suspects, Eye is forced to think in high gear,
deduce cleverly, all the while avoiding fighting intrigue in and around
the temple which could cause a precititous fall from power. And he only
has eight days to produce results, or it's curtains for sure.
Helen of Troy also makes an appearance as a slave girl, and is slated to
appear in the sequel, which I'm definitely looking forward to.
If you have an interest in ancient Egypt you should visit the mighty
Amazon.com and
buy
this book
Murder at the MLA
The Chicago cop investigating a death at the Modern Language Association
meetings in the Parker House and some other downtown Chicago hotels could
use some help in understanding the whole peculiar world of academic litcrit.
What makes these people tick, anyway? And what might make them kill?
Fortunately he finds an assistant in a lovely, kind, and well-dressed assistant
professor of English. Of courses, she COULD be a SUSPECT, but they have
many happy conversations over meals during the course of the meetings as
one after another eminent participant in the meetings is bumped off.
The portraits of some of the MLA characters are extremely amusing and no
doubt true to life. In one particularly funny scene, the murderer pretends
to point out Jacques Derrida from the 10th floor hotel balcony, and then...
whoops! Don't worry, though. You still don't know who it is.
Highly recommended, particularly as a gift for your academic friends. Drop
by Amazon.com and
buy
this book
Twenty Blue Devils
Aaron Elkins
This is not the first of the adventures of Gideon Oliver, 'The Skeleton
Detective', in various exotic locales throughout the world, but it's certainly
one of the funniest. Professor Oliver is a physical anthropologist, mild-mannered
author of the best-selling 'A structuro-functional approach to hominid phylogeny,'
and expert on human skeletal remains. In Twenty Blue Devils he finds himself
in Tahiti looking into a family disappearance for his wife, Julie, a beautiful
and extremely capable park ranger.
It seems that no matter where Gideon goes, a mystery skeleton turns up.
Who was it? How old were they? What sex? And not least of all, how did they
die? Who killed them?
Gideon's dialogues with his friend and sidekick John Lau of the FBI are
something to write home about, and although quite scientific, skeletal evidence
can also be quite ambiguous. Well-written, descriptive and upbeat (except
of course for the murder(s) ), this one had me fooled several times.
I highly recommend you visit Amazon.com
and
buy this book for yourself (paper)
or perhaps
purchase it as a gift for a friend (hardback) .