Comedy Thrillers are extremely difficult to sell at the moment.
Apart from the question, have they ever been easy to sell, it leaves another question. Why the hell did I spend twenty years writing a book that no one would want to publish? It's like opening a health food shop in Scotland (apologies to the Scots) or holding a beauty contest in Norfolk (apologies to any East Anglians).
What was I thinking?
In the modern world of squeezed finance and safe bets, you probably can't blame publishers for not wanting to take a risk. It doesn't benefit society or advance literature to release hordes of biographies of middle ranking celebs, but it does preserve publishers. After all they're a business, they want to make money. We can only hope they'll take risks again one day. There's going to be a very big backlog/queue when they do.
Re-writing Spies, lies and pies as either a (a) Non-funny Thriller would involve too much work and be, well just another thriller. Similarly (b) writing as just a comedy would need me to somehow become a recognised comedian, and at my age I think I'm past it. Plus, I'm not funny either as East Anglians and regular visitors to this blog are well aware of.
So. What to do? Give up. Write New book 2, which is a thriller with a few funny lines, market it as a thriller and see if I have any better luck.
If that gets rejected?
Smashwords and Lula would seem to be the final answer.
Probably the last pie picture. It's got a cat in it though, so it's not all bad.
