Why Books Like Only Murders in the Building Are So Hard to Find
I used to do stand-up comedy in Shanghai. Not metaphorically — literal open mic nights in a city where half the audience barely spoke English and the other half was three beers deep and rooting for me to bomb. (I wrote about the whole unhinged chapter in my memoir audiobook, Where to Nest.)
Having performed standup five nights a week in Shanghai and LA before COVID grounded the live circuit and I pivoted to writing thrillers, I know exactly what it takes to land a joke between a body and a punchline.
But here’s the thing about comedy and the thriller genre: it’s all about timing. Comedy is about setting up a pattern and then surprising everyone with a joke. A jump scare is about setting up a pattern, and then nothing happens, so the audience thinks everything’s fine until terror strikes. That’s why it was so easy for Jordan Peele to cross over from sketch comedy improviser to horror director genius.
That same comedy-meets-danger alchemy is exactly why the Emmy-winning Hulu series Only Murders in the Building became such a phenomenon — renewed through a sixth season with 49 Emmy nominations and counting. Three people who have no business solving crimes become obsessed with a podcast about a murder in their building. The jokes are sharp. The mystery is real. And somehow, between the quips and the red herrings, you end up genuinely caring about these disaster humans.
But here’s the problem: the show isn’t based on a book. So if you’re hunting for books like Only Murders in the Building — novels that nail that same cocktail of humor, genuine mystery, and amateur-sleuth chaos — you have to know where to look.
I’ve got you. These are the eight best books like Only Murders in the Building — comedy-mystery novels with amateur sleuths, found-family energy, and twists that hit like a season finale.
Want a wry-voiced mystery with the same dark comedy energy?
Get the first few chapters of The Storm Reaper free — a Fire Island serial-killer investigation narrated by a sarcastic island cop with a cat named Purrmaid and a corkboard full of dead people. The lead detective has been a punchline in her own town for a decade. Will anyone take her seriously before the serial takes his next victim?
★★★★★
“I actually loved all the characters.”
— Mary, Goodreads Reviewer
10 Books Like Only Murders in the Building That Actually Deliver
1. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman (2020)
If you watched Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez bumble their way through murder investigations and thought, I want this but with more pensioners and biscuits, Richard Osman heard your prayer. And now it’s also a Netflix movie starring Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, and Ben Kingsley — so you can read it AND watch it.
Four retirees in a peaceful English village meet every Thursday to review cold case files. It’s a hobby. Like bridge, but with more forensic evidence. When a real murder lands in their laps — a property developer found dead, naturally — their theoretical skills get a field test.
What I love about this book is that every single character is absolutely quirky, so it’s genuinely hard to tell who the murderer is — not because everyone’s evil, but because everyone in this town is a little bit off. The British humor is on point. Elizabeth used to be a spy. Ibrahim’s a psychiatrist who can read people like Kindle Unlimited. Joyce keeps a diary that accidentally documents everything relevant. And Ron’s a former trade union leader who knows exactly where to apply pressure.
The Thursday Murder Club became a massive international bestseller for the same reason Only Murders in the Building became a cultural phenomenon: it takes people who society has written off — too old, too odd, too outside the power structure — and lets them be the smartest ones in the room. The humor is warm without ever being toothless. The mystery is legitimately twisty. And the found-family dynamic between these four will remind you of every reason you loved watching Charles, Oliver, and Mabel argue over murder boards.
Who it’s for: If you need a book club pick that makes everyone laugh AND argue about whodunit, this is your gateway drug. Also: if you think you’re above cozy mysteries, this book will humble you delightfully.
2. The Storm Reaper by Kristen Van Nest (2026)
Full disclosure: I wrote this one. I mentioned I was a stand-up comedian who turned thriller writer — well, The Storm Reaper is what happens when someone with a comedy brain writes a murder mystery. It’s a whodunit on Fire Island — a tiny barrier island off the coast of Long Island with no cars, one ferry, and four cops — where my protagonist Violet Crisp has been telling everyone for ten years that a serial killer is disguising murders as hurricane deaths. Nobody believed her. She was right.
But the reason it belongs on this list isn’t just the mystery — it’s the tone. The Storm Reaper has the same cocktail that makes Only Murders work: a dead-serious murder investigation happening alongside the quirky, opinionated small town characters you can only find living in and around New York City (Fire Island is off the coast of Long Island). Violet lives on a sailboat with a cat named Purrmaid and a corkboard of cold cases she can’t let go of. She bought her own forensics kit on her personal credit card because her department’s budget is held together with duct tape and expired grant money. It’s the kind of book where someone might be the killer — but first, drinks at the only bar.
Who it’s for: If you love Only Murders in the Building because it proves comedy and real stakes aren’t mutually exclusive — and you want that energy in a beach-read thriller with a feminist edge — this is your next binge.
3. Finlay Donovan Is Killing It by Elle Cosimano (2021)
Finlay Donovan is a divorced mom of two, a struggling thriller writer with an overdue manuscript, and — as of a spectacularly misunderstood conversation at Panera — a suspected contract killer. When someone overhears her pitching her novel’s plot to her literary agent and mistakes it for a hit job offer, Finlay accidentally accepts a contract to murder a stranger’s husband. For fifty thousand dollars. While potty-training a toddler.
I need you to understand: this book is unhinged in the best possible way. Finlay Donovan Is Killing It has the same energy as Mabel Mora deciding she’s qualified to investigate a murder because she listens to true crime podcasts. The confidence is delusional. The stakes are real. And the comedy comes from the gap between “I am in way over my head” and “but I’m going to figure this out anyway.” Cosimano was named a People magazine pick and the New York Public Library named it one of their Best Books of 2021 — and every bit of that recognition is deserved.
Also, the Russian mafia gets involved. Because of course they do.
Who it’s for: If you’ve ever described yourself as “barely holding it together” and meant it as a compliment, this is your book. The chaos is the point.
4. Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson (2022)
The title is not a metaphor. Not a joke. Not an exaggeration. Ernest Cunningham — our narrator, a guy who writes books about how to write books — tells you upfront: every single member of his family has killed someone. Including him.
The setup is golden-age Agatha Christie if Christie had a dark sense of humor and a therapist: the Cunningham family reunion at a remote Australian ski resort. Blizzard hits. Body drops. Everyone’s snowed in, and the killer is definitely at the breakfast buffet. Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone is a whodunit that plays with the conventions of the genre the way Only Murders in the Building plays with true crime podcasting — with love, with intelligence, and with an absurd number of red herrings.
What makes Stevenson’s book exceptional is the meta-narrative. Ernest directly addresses the reader. He promises to play fair — following Knox’s Decalogue (the ten rules of detective fiction) — and then proceeds to misdirect you so elegantly that you’ll feel outsmarted and grateful for it. The Washington Post called it a triumph of the genre, and I’d argue it’s the most Only Murders-coded novel on this list. Found family? Check. Unlikely detective? Check. Comedy that makes the darkness bearable? Double check.
Who it’s for: If you paused Only Murders in the Building to explain the narrative structure to someone who didn’t ask, this book was written for your specific brain.
5. Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto (2021)
Meddy Chan accidentally kills her blind date. (Look, he had it coming.) In a panic, she calls her mother, who calls her aunties, and within the hour, four Chinese-Indonesian women in their fifties and sixties have formulated a body disposal plan that would make a cartel jealous. The problem? The corpse ends up in a cooler that gets shipped to a luxury island resort where Meddy’s family is working a massive wedding. Alive guests everywhere. Dead guy in the kitchen.
Dial A for Aunties won the Comedy Women in Print Prize, and if you’ve ever watched Only Murders in the Building and wished the investigating team included someone’s terrifyingly competent grandmother, this is the book that grants your wish. Sutanto writes family dynamics the way Only Murders writes friendship — as something messy, infuriating, and ultimately the only thing that can save you when there’s a body you need to hide.
The cultural specificity is what elevates this from “funny mystery” to something genuinely special. Meddy’s family doesn’t just love her — they love her in Mandarin and Hokkien, with guilt trips and dumplings and the kind of unconditional ride-or-die energy that transcends language. I lived in China for three years and I can tell you: the family dynamics in this book are so accurate it physically hurts.
Who it’s for: If your love language is “my family would absolutely help me hide a body,” start here.
6. Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto (2023)
Yes, another Sutanto. No, I will not apologize. When someone is this good at writing comedy-mysteries with ferociously lovable older women, you put them on the list twice.
Vera Wong is a sixty-year-old tea shop owner in San Francisco’s Chinatown who finds a dead body in her shop one morning. Does she call the police? Eventually. But first, she tampers with the crime scene (steals the evidence), decides the murderer is definitely one of her regular customers, and begins luring suspects back to her shop with the promise of excellent tea and unsolicited life advice. She also starts cooking for them. Feeding them. Mothering them into submission. It’s terrifying and adorable.
Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers is what would happen if your nosiest aunt decided to become a detective — and was somehow better at it than the actual police. The Only Murders in the Building parallels are almost too perfect: a self-appointed investigator with zero credentials but absolute conviction, a motley crew of suspects who become a surrogate family, and a mystery that’s genuinely satisfying to solve. Vera is the kind of character who would absolutely have her own podcast. She’d call it Vera Knows Best. It would get ten million downloads.
Who it’s for: If you’ve ever wished someone would just aggressively care about your wellbeing while also solving a murder, Vera is your woman.
Want more comedic mysteries written by a viral standup comic?
Get the first few chapters of The Storm Reaper free — a Fire Island whodunit where the suspects are locals the lead detective has known her whole life and believe it’s an island folklore ghost to blame for anyone who goes missing. Can she crack the case before the next hurricane hits?
“The Storm Reaper was a fast paced easy read that kept pulling you in with the”
— Tarina Kofoed, Goodreads Reviewer
7. The Maid by Nita Prose (2022)
Molly Gray is a hotel maid at the Regency Grand who loves her job with a devotion most people reserve for golden retrievers or the first cup of coffee. She thrives on order, on routine, on the satisfaction of a perfectly turned-down bed. Social cues? Less her strong suit. When she discovers a wealthy guest dead in his room, Molly becomes the prime suspect — partly because she was the one who found the body, and partly because her “unusual demeanor” reads as suspicious to everyone who doesn’t bother to actually know her.
The Maid is a #1 New York Times bestseller and it shares Only Murders in the Building’s most underrated quality: the radical argument that the “weird” people — the ones society dismisses, underestimates, and misreads — are often the ones who see most clearly. Molly is not a detective. She’s a maid. But she notices things that everyone else overlooks, because paying attention to details is literally her job. Nita Prose writes her with such tenderness and precision that you’ll want to wrap her in a protective blanket while simultaneously cheering as she outwits people twice her social standing.
The mystery itself is a proper whodunit — think Clue meets Eleanor Oliphant — but it’s the character work that makes this one stick. If Charles-Haden Savage ever met Molly Gray, they’d immediately bond over being misunderstood by literally everyone.
Who it’s for: If you fell for books like Gone Girl but you want something warmer — where the twist is that the oddball protagonist is actually the hero — this is it.
8. The Appeal by Janice Hallett (2022)
Here’s where things get structurally weird — in the best way. The Appeal contains zero traditional narration. No “she walked into the room.” No scene-setting paragraphs. The entire novel is told through emails, text messages, letters, and transcripts. Two junior lawyers are given a box of communications related to a community theater group where someone died on the eve of opening night, and they have to figure out who killed whom.
If you love how Only Murders in the Building uses the podcast-within-a-show structure to play with narrative perspective, Hallett takes that concept and goes nuclear. You’re literally reading the raw evidence. Every email could be a lie. Every text could be a clue. And the community theater setting — with its petty rivalries, fundraising scandals, and deeply theatrical personalities — is comedy gold. A child has cancer, money is being raised, everyone’s rehearsing an Arthur Miller play, and then someone ends up dead. The amateur dramatics are both literal and figurative.
Who it’s for: If you’re the friend who pauses a show to say “WAIT — did you catch what they just said? Go back,” this book is your natural habitat. Also ideal for anyone who’s ever been in a group chat that escalated beyond all reason.
9. A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson (2019)
Pippa Fitz-Amobi is seventeen, academically overachieving, and absolutely certain that the wrong person was blamed for the murder of popular girl Andie Bell in her small town five years ago. Her senior school project? Prove it. She’s essentially a Gen Z version of the Only Murders trio — no authority, no training, just a true-crime-podcast brain and the stubborn conviction that the official story doesn’t add up.
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder has sold over 10 million copies worldwide and spawned a Netflix adaptation — and the reason is the same reason Only Murders in the Building works: Pip treats the murder investigation with the kind of obsessive, methodical energy that only an amateur can bring. Professionals have procedures. Amateurs have personal investment. The tension between “this is a school project” and “someone might actually be a murderer” creates a propulsive, compulsive reading experience.
The humor here is drier than the others on this list — more sardonic teenage wit than slapstick — but Pip’s voice is magnetic. She’s the kind of protagonist who color-codes her murder suspects and also genuinely worries about her college applications. The psychological thriller beach reads crowd will love her.
Who it’s for: If you got into true crime via Serial, if you’ve ever built a spreadsheet to track a show’s clues, if you need a book that
10. Perfect Modern Wife by Kristen Van Nest (Yes, Mine)
Full disclosure: I wrote this one. As I mentioned, I started my career in comedy, performing standup and improv 5 nights a week first in Shanghai and then in Los Angeles. When COVID hit, I was no longer able to perform on stage so I turned to writing and never looked back. Thus, all my thriller novels have a tad of humor. In fact, my editor is always like, “We need to take this joke out right here because this scene is supposed to be scary!”
So my love of humor means all my thrillers have jokes. And I’m currently giving away my first thriller novel, Perfect Modern Wife, which is currently optioned and being turned into a film. Laura Donovan, an Author and writer for Business Insider, described this book as a “Hilarious yet important satire examining sneaky insidious ways society controls women.”
Who it’s for: If you watch Only Murders in the Building and wish the comedy was a little meaner and the marriage was a lot scarier, this is your free entry point into my thriller universe.
Read Next
If you loved this list of books like Only Murders in Building, you’ll want our deep dive into books like Gone Girl — 8 ruthless psychological thrillers for readers who can’t trust anyone.
Want the first chapters of a wry small-town whodunit free?
Get the first few chapters of The Storm Reaper free — written by a viral standup comic. A Fire Island detective who’s known every suspect since pre-K is closing in on the killer, but what does she lose when she finally proves it’s one of her own?
★★★★★
“Absolutely gripping plot that I couldn”
— Melinda Smith, Goodreads Reviewer
FAQ: Books Like Only Murders in the Building
What makes a book “like Only Murders in the Building”?
The magic formula is: amateur sleuths + genuine mystery + comedy that doesn’t undermine the stakes. The best books like Only Murders in Building combine humor and suspense without sacrificing either — the jokes are real, the danger is real, and the characters are people you’d actually want to hang out with between murders. Found-family dynamics and a setting that becomes its own character (the Arconia, a retirement village, a tea shop) are bonus points. It’s the exact formula I chased in my own The Storm Reaper: a Fire Island whodunit with four overwhelmed small-town cops, real stakes, and jokes my editor keeps trying to cut.
Are these books cozy mysteries?
Some lean cozy (The Thursday Murder Club, Vera Wong), some lean thriller (A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone), and some defy categorization entirely (The Appeal). What they all share is the comedy-mystery DNA that makes Only Murders in the Building work. If you want something darker, try our gaslighting thriller books list.
Which book on this list is the closest match to Only Murders in the Building?
The Thursday Murder Club is the obvious answer — retirees solving crimes with wit and warmth, Osman’s humor is very Steve Martin energy. But Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone might be the spiritual closest, because it plays with the mystery genre the same way Only Murders plays with true crime. For the “Mabel energy” — young, sharp, a little bit dangerous — go with A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. (Full disclosure — I put my own The Storm Reaper at #2 on this list because it hits that same amateur-sleuth-plus-comedy note, just with a Fire Island body count.)
Do any of these have sequels or series?
Most of them. The Thursday Murder Club has four sequels (and counting). Finlay Donovan has three sequels. A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is a trilogy plus a novella. Dial A for Aunties has a sequel (Four Aunties and a Wedding). If you want to fall into a series the way you fall into an Only Murders season, you’ve got options. The Storm Reaper is Book 1 of my Violet Crisp series, if you want to get in early.
I want something darker — less cozy, more thriller. What should I read?
If you want the comedy-mystery balance but dialed toward the dark end, start with Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone or Perfect Modern Wife. For full-throttle dark without the comedy safety net, check our feminist horror novels list or books like Strange Darling.
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