Getting Serious About Humor: More Humor With Mystery

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I picked up The Mystery of the Crooked Man by Tom Spencer while browsing at a library, and I'm blogging about it now because I really need to get it back there. One of the book's blurbs described it as "riotously funny," and while I wouldn't go that far, main character Agatha Dorn is extremely drole in a bitter way that I enjoyed very much. 

In my inept study of humor writing I have found very few truly funny works of fiction. They tend to involve wry point-of-view characters and how they perceive what is happening in the story. Perhaps what I should learn from this is that humor in fiction is usually about character, not situation or plot.

Of another humorous mystery, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson, I said, among other things, that the narrator's inner life contributed to the humor. The same is true of the main character in The Mystery of the Crooked Man. Agatha might argue that she doesn't have much of an inner life or much of a life at all, which ends up being far funnier than you'd think it should be.

Of course, any readers of mysteries, or at least any readers of a certain age who have been reading mysteries for a long time, are going to raise their brows at a main character named Agatha in a mystery novel. Agatha Christie has become as famous for being Agatha Christie, Mystery Author, as she is for being Agatha Christie the author of mysteries, if you follow my thought there. She's sort of transcended her work. 

Now that I think of it, you probably don't need to be a reader of mysteries to know who Agatha Christie is and to note the use of that unusual first name in a book. 

Here is an interesting bit from the The Mystery of the Crooked Man that casual readers may not get and is not a spoiler: Agatha Dorn is a museum archivist who is a specialist on an author from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction named Gladden Green. Gladden Green had a real mystery in her life, because she disappeared for a few days while at the height of her career and later turned up in a hotel. This all right out of the real life of Agatha Christie. In case I haven't been clear, Agatha Dorn is a specialist on a character modeled on Agatha Christie. And get this...Gladden Green's husband's name is Archie. Agatha Christie's husband at the time she disappeared was also named Archie. She got another one later.

Now, of course, none of this is particularly funny, but it is fun. Also, is it metafiction? I've never been one hundred percent clear on what that is. 

I'm obsessing.

I must say that I felt this book dragged a little in the middle in terms of plot and mystery. But then it came roaring back with one of the best mystery endings I can recall. I didn't see it coming, but it made perfect sense.

I don't know how Agatha Dorn can come back for another mystery, but I'm definitely onboard if she does.