Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Greenwich Killing Time | 1986 | Kinky Friedman | Buy |
| 2 | A Case of Lone Star | 1987 | Kinky Friedman | Buy |
| 3 | When the Cat’s Away | 1988 | Kinky Friedman | Buy |
| 4 | Frequent Flyer | 1989 | Kinky Friedman | Buy |
| 5 | More Kinky Friedman | 1993 | Kinky Friedman | N/A |
| 6 | Musical Chairs | 1991 | Kinky Friedman | Buy |
| 7 | Elvis, Jesus and Coca Cola | 1993 | Kinky Friedman | Buy |
| 8 | Armadillos & Old Lace | 1994 | Kinky Friedman | Buy |
| 9 | Even More Kinky | 2000 | Kinky Friedman | N/A |
| 10 | God Bless John Wayne | 1995 | Kinky Friedman | Buy |
| 11 | The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover | 1996 | Kinky Friedman | Buy |
| 12 | Roadkill | 1998 | Kinky Friedman | Buy |
| 13 | Blast from the Past | 1998 | Kinky Friedman | Buy |
| 14 | Spanking Watson | 1999 | Kinky Friedman | Buy |
| 15 | The Mile High Club | 2000 | Kinky Friedman | Buy |
| 16 | Curse of the Missing Puppet Head | 2001 | Kinky Friedman | Buy |
| 17 | Steppin’ on a Rainbow | 2001 | Kinky Friedman | Buy |
| 18 | Meanwhile Back at the Ranch | 2002 | Kinky Friedman | Buy |
| 19 | Kill Two Birds & Get Stoned | 2003 | Kinky Friedman | Buy |
| 20 | The Prisoner of Vandam Street | 2004 | Kinky Friedman | Buy |
| 21 | Ten Little New Yorkers | 2005 | Kinky Friedman | Buy |
| 22 | The Christmas Pig | 2006 | Kinky Friedman | Buy |
The Kinky Friedman mystery series began with Greenwich Killing Time in 1986 and ran for two decades through The Christmas Pig in 2006. Each book features a fictionalized version of Kinky Friedman, a former country music singer living in a Greenwich Village loft, who gets pulled into murder investigations. His supporting cast includes real-life friends reimagined as fictional characters, and the tone is consistently irreverent.
The mysteries themselves are fairly light. Friedman’s books are driven by the narrator’s voice, which is packed with wisecracks, cigar smoke, and observations about life in New York. Titles like Elvis, Jesus and Coca Cola and Kill Two Birds & Get Stoned give a good sense of the series’ humor. There are also two omnibus collections (More Kinky Friedman and Even More Kinky) that compile earlier entries.