This is a weekly column devoted to mystery fiction and related material, but — free of charge — I’d like to throw in a deeply important life lesson: Be lucky enough to live your days with great friends.

Full disclosure: More than a quarter century ago, I met America’s coolest author and have been blessed with Elmore Leonard’s friendship ever since. Since he is arguably one of the three nicest people on the planet, I can’t have an unbiased view of his book, but, as you may have noticed, he doesn’t need a personal relationship to get good reviews.

A couple of years ago, we were chatting about a book he was planning to write about German prisoners of war who were sent to a detention camp in Okmulgee, Okla. His working title was the politically incorrect “Krauts,” so when the talk came around to naming his characters, which is crucial for Mr. Leonard, I humbly (okay, shamelessly) suggested that I had an authentic German-sounding name, so why not use mine. I was kind of going for “Otto” but he liked the whole thing, which is how I (or rather my name) came to be a character in his hilarious new novel “Up in Honey’s Room” (Morrow, 304 pages, $25.95).

It’s the story of two of these prisoners, Jurgen Schrenk and Otto Penzler, both members of the Waffen SS (the warriors, not the thugs who simply rounded up people for concentration camps) in the Afrika Korps, who escape from the camp. They get as far as Detroit, expecting to see the bombed out city that Nazi propaganda had assured them is what they would find, only to be mightily disappointed. Here they hook up with a dazzlingly inept bunch of misfits who think they have formed a Nazi spy ring. The hero of Mr. Leonard’s previous book, “The Hot Kid,” U.S. Marshal Carlos Webster, is sent to track down the clever escapees and bring them back.

Most of the German POWs aren’t unhappy about being in the detention camp, since they get to sit out the war with nobody shooting at them while getting a warm bed and three meals a day. Being German, however, small groups break out every once in a while, merely to prove that they can, and they are quickly recaptured.

The detention camps are historically true, by the way, with about 350,000 members of the German military machine having been captured and sent to America. They neither lost nor surrendered, they claimed; they merely ran out of gas. Jurgen and Otto hope to stay out of custody while making serious money in the Black Market for meat and then stay in America when the war eventually ends. They are hidden by the Germanborn Walter Schoen, described as “the dullest man God ever made.” He happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to Heinrich Himmler and tells people that he is his twin brother, separated at birth.

Until she abruptly left him, Schoen was married for a year to Honey Deal, another of the smart-mouthed, quick-witted, fearless, and sexy women that have played major roles in Mr. Leonard’s novels for such a long time. When Webster comes after Jurgen and Otto, the bright-eyed Honey decides to go after the charismatic Webster, leaving modesty as her only unused feminine wile.

As she flirts with the handsome lawman without enjoying much success, Honey taunts him a little. “You don’t care to have fun with women other than your wife,” she says. “Not if I can help it,” he answers.

Walter, with his delusions of adequacy, decides to win Honey back by concocting a major contribution to the German war effort, a plot so looney even his little group of spies and would-be saboteurs doesn’t take it seriously.

Mr. Leonard, although known for his tough-guy books and hardedged dialogue, brings a quality to his work that few others who have ever published in that milieu could consistently manage: He empathizes with his characters. It is not easy to love some of these folks, such as the professional spy and full-time lush Vera Mezwa; her cross-dressing lover and houseboy Bohdan; and the humor-challenged butcher Walter. Yet they appear as objects of pity or scorn or bemusement, not hatred.

It would be a mistake to regard this as one of Mr. Leonard’s most tightly constructed novels — not exactly what he’s known for anyway — but it surely must rank among his funniest.

Not since “Springtime for Hitler” have Nazis and their sympathizers seemed as harmless or comical.

Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached at otto penzler@mysteriousbookshop.com.