I have to put in a quick advertisement (say it with a British accent...) for the four mysteries by Sarah Caudwell, featuring that incomparable Oxford don, Hilary Tamar.
Only two of the four are available so far as e-books:
The Sirens Sang of Murder, and
The Sibyl in Her Grave. I check every couple of weeks, hoping with all my fingers and toes crossed to see one or both of the others available as e-books also.
This is probably the only mystery series which I read and re-read and re-read, and still can't read with anyone else around because I literally laugh out loud, even on my umpteenth reading.
To me they have a similar feel as PG Wodehouse (for the humour), or maybe a bit of similar feel to the Ruth Dudley Edwards series mentioned earlier in this thread. This sample captures for me the essence of the series pretty well. It's Hilary narrating near the beginning of the first book in the series,
Thus Was Adonis Murdered:
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On my first day in London I made an early start. Reaching the Public Record Office not much after ten, I soon secured the papers needed for my research and settled in my place. I became, as is the way of the scholar, so deeply absorbed as to lose all consciousness of my surroundings or of the passage of time. When at last I came to myself, it was almost eleven and I was quite exhausted: I knew I could not prudently continue without refreshment.
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Caudwell also keeps readers on their toes with lots of classical allusions, as you might guess from the titles, which are all based on various mythological characters and places (Sirens, Hades, Sibyl, Adonis). This quote is from
The Shortest Way to Hades, when a couple of the characters are visiting the Akheron, a river thought in classical days to have its source in Hades:
Quote:
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The crew read to me, as we were rowed along between banks of willow trees, from Book XI of the Odyssey, which describes the voyage of Odysseus into the Underworld. With a following wind and some rather vague sailing directions from Circe, it seems to have taken him only twenty-four hours; but one of his men still managed to arrive before him, having fallen when drunk from the roof of Circe's palace and so found a much shorter way to Hades.
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It's very definitely a love-it-or-hate-it series.
Anyway, Caudwell is (or was - sadly, she's now deceased) the only mystery writer whom I truly and simply idolize. If you like that sort of British humour, you can give two of them a try as e-books now. Both of the e-book titles are widely available at all the big e-book stores, and at many of the smaller e-book stores too.