The Humor of Joyce Porter

 The Humor of Joyce Porter

 

Joyce Porter is reported to have said ,“Personally, I wouldn’t read a funny detective story if you paid me.”  While many English mystery authors may put some humorous dialogue here and there in their works, and others may have a silly scene here and there, there are very few mysteries from the British Golden Age that leave the reader the laughing from beginning to end.

 

Porter’s books work because she finds worthy targets for her humor.  She never treats death as a laughing matter, as she has too much fun poking fun at living people.  Hypocrites, bullies, fools, and the generally nasty are all grist for her mill.  Most of the Dover novels feature a stable of suspects, the best of which have one terrible flaw that is magnified beyond the usual proportions in order to create a grotesque and laughable caricature, a monster embodying the flaws of humanity.  Porter then ridicules these people, like lecherous old men, self-obsessed and domineering women who rule their hometowns through intimidation, shiftless young people, and so forth.  Of course some perfectly nice people are presented as comic characters, whose pure hearts can’t disguise the fact that they are ridiculous in their overzealousness to help, or because their well-meaning cluelessness causes all manner of problems.

 

Of course, the heart of the humor comes from her central characters, like the slovenly and sluggish Dover, a man whose repulsiveness, boorishness, and selfishness are played up in a way that you’d never want to meet him in real life (and you’d go to any length to keep him out of your bathroom), but he’s always fun to read about because his hijinks are so amazingly over the top.  Likewise, the Hon Con means well, but she puts so much thoughtless enthusiasm in all of her investigations that her failure to think situations through and her physical recklessness means that she invariably leaves a trail of destruction in her wake.

 

Joyce Porter’s humor isn’t about the wacky farce of impossible comic situations.  It’s about taking a relentless look at the flaws that mar humanity… and chuckling at them.

 

 

–Chris Chan

 

 

Chris Chan’s first book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” was released on August 27^th from MX Publishing, and is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website, as well as at Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping there).  It is also available in a Kindle edition.