Cozy Mysteries Like Castle: The Funniest Whodunits for Fans of Witty Crime

A Garden to Die For by T. Lockhaven (The Coffee House Sleuths #1) — If you want the closest thing to Castle's specific charm, start here. Michael West has just escaped a loveless marriage and a soul-crushing corporate job, bought an oceanfront home in the small North Carolina beach town of Lana Cove, and finally started writing his first mystery novel — when a body turns up in his backyard and he becomes the prime suspect. Teaming up with Ellie and Olivia, the owners of the Bitter Sweet Café, he sets out to clear his name. The publisher pitches it directly at Castle fans, and the comparison is earned: Michael is an aspiring mystery writer whose self-deprecating wit and knack for talking himself into trouble make him instantly likable. Fast-paced, funny, and warm-hearted. (2020.)

Murder with Peacocks by Donna Andrews (Meg Langslow #1) — If any cozy series has a claim to being the funniest, it's this one. Meg Langslow, a blacksmith with a large and boisterous Southern family, is roped into being maid of honor at three weddings in one summer — each bride dumping the planning on her — when a guest turns up dead. The series opener swept the Agatha, Anthony, and Barry Awards and won the Lefty Award for funniest mystery, and forty-odd books later Andrews is still landing the jokes. The humor comes as much from the good-natured chaos of Meg's family as from the mystery itself. (1999.)

Louisiana Longshot by Jana DeLeon (Miss Fortune #1) — A CIA assassin named Fortune Redding is forced to lay low in the tiny bayou town of Sinful, Louisiana, posing as a beauty-queen librarian — a role she is spectacularly unsuited for. She falls in with Ida Belle and Gertie, two deceptively sweet seniors with a talent for mayhem, and the three of them stumble into one murder after another. The fish-out-of-water premise and the scene-stealing senior sidekicks make this one of the most reliably laugh-out-loud series going, now more than thirty books deep. (2012.)

The Quiche of Death by M.C. Beaton (Agatha Raisin #1) — Agatha Raisin, a brash, abrasive London PR executive, retires early to a picture-postcard Cotswolds village and immediately fails to fit in. Desperate for acceptance, she enters a store-bought quiche in the local baking competition as her own — and the judge drops dead of poisoning. Agatha is gloriously non-heroic: vain, tactless, and self-serving, which is exactly what makes her so funny. The series runs to more than thirty books and inspired a popular TV adaptation. (1992.)

Murder on a Girls' Night Out by Anne George (Southern Sisters #1) — Two sisters in Birmingham, Alabama, who could not be more different: prim, sensible, retired schoolteacher Patricia Anne ("Mouse") and her big, brassy, many-times-married sister Mary Alice ("Sister"). When Mary Alice impulsively buys a rundown country-western bar and the previous owner turns up murdered in the wishing well, the two are pulled into the investigation — bickering affectionately the whole way. The sisterly sparring is the heart of the comedy, and it won the Agatha Award for best first mystery. (1996.)

Aunt Dimity's Death by Nancy Atherton (Aunt Dimity #1) — Lori Shepherd, a down-on-her-luck office temp in Boston, is stunned to learn that Aunt Dimity — whom she'd always believed was a character from her mother's bedtime stories — was a real woman, who has just died and left Lori a Cotswolds cottage. The catch: the cottage comes with Dimity's helpful ghost, who communicates through a journal. Gentler and more whimsical than the others on this list, with charm and wit rather than belly laughs, it's the perfect wind-down read. The series now runs to more than twenty books. (1992.)