Sunday, July 06, 2025

Five top laugh-out-loud mysteries

Jo Firestone is a comedian and writer best known for her work on After Midnight with Taylor Tomlinson, ZIWE, and Joe Pera Talks With You. You can watch her most recent comedy special, Good Timing, currently streaming on Peacock. She can be heard hosting the long-running podcast, Dr. Gameshow, with comedian Manolo Moreno. She is also the co-author of two card games: Punderdome: A Card Game for Pun Lovers and Fruits.

Her debut murder mystery novel is Murder on Sex Island.

At CrimeReads Firestone tagged five favorite laugh-out-loud mysteries, including:
I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai

This woman, Bodie Kane, returns to her old prep school to teach a true crime podcasting class and ultimately uncover a decades-old murder from her time there as a student. The writing is dark and funny and the twists are very unexpected. Makkai manages to satirize the true crime genre in full, skewering both its fans and its creators. As I read this one, I think I said out loud, “THIS IS DELICIOUS!”
Read about another title on Firestone's list.

I Have Some Questions For You is among Jacqueline Faber's seven top thrillers about the role of the witness, Kat Davis's top ten feminist crime novels subverting the Dead Girl trope, Elise Juska’s eight best campus novels ever written, Nicole Hackett's six top mysteries about motherhood and crime, Brittany Bunzey's ten books that take you inside their characters’ heads, Anne Burt's four top recent titles with social justice themes, and Heather Darwent's nine best campus thrillers.

--Marshal Zeringue