Detective Mysteries Humor

A collection of hundreds of Sherlock Holmes puns amassed over decades and stolen from a host of sources. The wordplay may be familiar, but the settings and characters are all original to the sources cited. The puns that have made it into the book are all Sherlockian narratives. Each is a tale describing events featuring Holmes characters, not simply a comment or an observation. We warn traditional Holmes fans up front, you will be annoyed and offended. If you are not, then the authors simply have not found your particular hangup - yet.

After getting caught hooking up with her best friend’s ex on the last day of junior year, Kendall starts senior year friendless and ostracized. She plans to keep her head down until she graduates. But after discovering her online identity has been hacked and she’s being framed for stealing from a dealer, Kendall is drawn into a tenuous partnership with the mastermind of a drug ring lurking in the shadows of her Brooklyn private school. If she wants to repair her tattered reputation and save her neck, she’ll have to decide who she really is - and own it.

When hordes of people descend on the picturesque village of Nasely for the annual celebration of its most famous resident, murder mystery writer Agnes Crabbe, events take a dark turn as the festival opens with a shocking death. Each year the residents are outnumbered by crowds dressed as Crabbe’s lady detective, Millicent Cutter. The weekend is never a mild-mannered affair as fan club rivalries bubble below the surface, but tensions reach new heights when a second Crabbe devotee is found murdered. Though the police are quick to arrive on the scene, the facts are tricky to ascertain as the witnesses, suspects and victim are all dressed as Miss Cutter.

Known for his comic sense, Earl Derr Biggers was one of the foremost writers of mystery and detective stories in this country. To his friends he was known for his comic sense. Seven Keys to Baldpate was his first novel and became extremely popular. In it, a famous author visits a closed summer resort at Baldpate Mountain in the middle of winter. He is looking for peace and quiet so that he can write his next book.

Chris Machin may think he's just a teacher, but the bottom feeders in Aberdeen squabbling over North Sea oil and gas contracts prefer to use his code-name - Sparrow. When his garden explodes he takes flight, unleashing various forms of Scottish mayhem. More complications are added by his ex girlfriend and a sociopathic policeman whose hobbies are violence, making arrests and, best of all, combining the two.

Imagine if Sherlock Holmes was a bear! Alternative universe mysteries for adult animal lovers that relate the exploits of super-sleuth Octavius Bear and his cohorts. Just for fun, this series swaps anthropomorphic animals for humans in a world very similar to our own 21st century. Earth minus homo sapiens.

Twin Peaks meets Pretty Little Liars in acclaimed author Maggie Thrash's new Strange Truth series. It's better to know the truth. At least sometimes. Halfway through Friday night's football game, beautiful cheerleader Brittany Montague - dressed as the giant Winship Wildcat mascot - hurls herself off a bridge into Atlanta's surging Chattahoochee River. Just like that, she's gone. Eight days later, Benny Flax and Virginia Leeds will be the only ones who know why.

Charity Deacon, private investigator, agrees to follow a client’s husband. Prove if he’s cheating or not, that’s the gig. It’s the "or not" that puts her on a collision course with the dangerous world of gangsters and human trafficking. To protect her client and the woman’s child safe, Charity must face down the biggest mob in Vancouver.

Working with the cops has always been a challenge for Charity Deacon. Too many rules get in the way of catching the bad guys. Now she’s been hired by the RCMP to help get an out-of-control mob boss off the streets.

When Charity Deacon witnesses a car crash, she can’t believe the police push her aside. Sure, she made some enemies on the force, but what happened to forgive and forget? Deep inside, something keeps pushing her to help, and it speaks louder than everyone she loves. For her first case as a PI, Charity searches for justice in the dark streets of Vancouver where missing prostitutes stay gone unless someone cares enough to risk their life to find them. From Vancouver to the south of France, Charity digs into secrets everyone wants to keep hidden.

Ben, wandering hungry through the foggy back alleys of Limehouse, is spooked by news of an old man murdered in Hammersmith - and runs! He crosses a plank, slips through an iron door, and goes to sea with the coal. But so does the man who did the murder...and a very pretty lady who did not. On the way the Atlanta loses a stowaway, a pickpocket, a murderer, a supercrook, a wealthy passenger, the third officer and a lifeboat. And that is how Ben gets to Spain....

Ben the tramp's uncanny knack of running into trouble is unsurpassed in the final crime thriller written for him by J. Jefferson Farjeon. On a grey afternoon he was destined never to forget, Ben sat down on a park seat and proceeded to think, not of cabbages and kings but of numbers, lucky and unlucky. But it wasn't Ben's lucky day, or that of the nondescript-looking stranger sitting at the other end of the bench - murdered before his very eyes!

Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed and face a brave, new world! Cut-rate detective Joel Wilder and his alien cronies are back, as Wilder reluctantly accepts the assignment to locate a missing scientist and his mysterious invention. What begins as a hopeless mess only becomes worse when Gel cheerfully enlists Cairo Bombazi, Wilder's arch-rival, to "help" with the investigation.

Resourceful Bingo Riggs and his partner, Handsome Kusak, are in the sucker-bait business, snapping candid pics of tourists off Central Park. Their fly-by-night enterprise can be irresistible to souvenir lovers, but with one camera in a pawnshop and their developing room in the bathtub of a two-room dump near Hell’s Kitchen, their venture is wretchedly underexposed - until they stumble upon an insurance fraud scheme between the allegedly dead eccentric Mr. S. S. Pigeon and his business partner and beneficiary.

This is a new edition of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic mystery, The Hound of the Baskervilles. It’s the same story. Mostly. That is, it contains the same characters, the same action, and much of the same dialogue. What’s different? Well, it’s a little shorter, a little leaner, a little less verbose in some sections. But the chief difference is that it’s now narrated by a dog. A greyhound, in fact, named Septimus. In this new edition, he tells his story of how he became “The Greyhound of the Baskervilles.”

Thus begins Mycroft Holmes’s valiant, if irregular, attempt to chronicle his doings. Rediscovered in 1976 and now fully translated from an obscure code, Mycroft’s diaries reveal that a brother’s lot is not always a happy one, especially when that brother happens to be London’s only consulting detective. In this humorous look at the world of Sherlock Holmes through Mycroft’s eyes, one question always remains: will Sherlock ever get a proper job?

Two American travelers have been killed—one with poison, the other with a knife through the heart—and the only clues at the scene are a woman’s wedding ring and the German word for “vengeance” written in blood. The military surgeon Dr. John Watson is brought in to investigate, along with his clever, arrogant new roommate, Sherlock Holmes.

In 1880s Vigàta, a stranger comes to town to open a pharmacy. Fofò turns out to be the son of a man made legendary for having a magic garden stocked with plants, fruits, and vegetables that could cure any ailment - a man who was found murdered years ago. Fofò escaped but has now reappeared looking to make his fortune and soon finds himself mixed up in the dealings of a philandering local marchese set on producing an heir.

Who are the "men in the garden"? Was Chipping Norton really once the center of the universe? What part do dodgy knees have to play? Just who are Johnny Norfolk and Johnny Stevens? What is W.A.S.T.E.? What connects the Cotswolds, Venice, East Molesey and Lyme Regis? Why would anyone pay to see Ophelia get Your Gun? And just what is the appropriate response to virtually everything?

One postman! Two postmen! Three postmen! All murdered! John J. Malone sticks his nose into the case of the dead postmen and picks up a crack on the head, an Australian beer hound, and six redheaded twins. It all begins when he takes on a new client, Rodney Fairfaxx. Rodney was tabbed for the postmen murders because he hadn’t received a letter from a dead girl for more than 30 years. Malone doesn’t think that this is enough reason to kill, but he can’t prove it.