Cozy mysteries are a
mystery subgenre where the hero is usually an amateur who is placed in a
situation which leads them to try to solve the mystery. Putting an amateur in
the place of a professional detective helps us believe that anyone can be a hero
and anyone can make a difference. Cozies can be and often are fun and light. Often
cozies have less sex and violence than a regular mystery or the sex and
violence is treated more lightly. Lots of cozies take place in small towns or
in a very specific setting (examples would be where the head chef at the White
House solves mysteries, or where the local antique dealer seems to always be
involved in solving crimes). Cozies opened up the Mystery genre to readers who
couldn’t deal with the violence of many mysteries. There are many cozy mystery
authors and every month sees new additions come out. The next two months are no
exception.
Reading right now:
Ellie
Alexander’s latest is the third book in her Sloan Krause series (“Beyond a
Reasonable Stout”). When a city councilman running for mayor on a platform to
close the local breweries is found killed, brew master Sloan Krause agrees to
help her friend who is suspected of the murder and soon discovers that the victim
was blackmailing townspeople to get their votes. In the first book in this
series, we found Sloan Krause leaving her husband over his infidelity and
finding a new place in life. By this third novel, she has settled into her job
as brew master and into the life of Leavenworth, Washington.
Rita Mae Brown has been writing
since the 1970s. “Scarlet Fever” is the 12th book in her Jane Arnold
series. Sister Jane Arnold is master of the hunt club and finds herself
investigating when one of the more dashing members of the Hunt is found dead in
an antique store with a stolen ring in his pocket.
Anne Canadeo’s “Hounds of
the Basket Stitch” is the third book in the Black Sheep & Co. mystery
series. When two sisters living in a remote area of Plum Harbor are attacked
and neither has any recollection of what happened, the Black Sheep knitters
decide to investigate.
Laura Childs writing with
Terry Farley Moran presents the 16th book in the Scrapbooking series
(“Mumbo Gumbo Murder”). New Orleans scrapbooking shop-owner Carmella
investigates when she finds a friend’s body in his antique shop.
Joanne Fluke’s “The
Chocolate Shark Shenanigans” isn’t just a great title, but also the 17th
book in her Chocoholic mystery series. Chocolatier Lee and her husband Joe are
looking over an old house they plan to buy, fix up, and sell when they come
across the body of a small-time developer who was also interested in buying the
house in a case that goes back to Joe’s schooldays when he was part of a gang
of five boys who hung out in the basement of the house.
G.A. McKevitt’s second
book in her Granny Reid mystery series is called “Murder in the Corn Maze.”
Savannah Reid’s case begins when she is taken to a corn maze at the antebellum
mansion of a local judge, and she and her grandmother find a long-dead corpse
still in its Sunday best in a mystery with distinctive characters and an
insightful look at Southern culture.
Other
Mysterious Things:
Cozy mysteries aren’t
just popular books, but can also appear on television. “Murder She Wrote” was a
very long running television program and the books are still being written. The
first “Murder She Wrote” novels were written by James Anderson. By 1989 the
series was being written by Donald Bain who wrote 47 books in the series until
his death when Jon Land took over the series. Now Jessica Fletcher and Jon Land’s
Murder She Wrote series continues with “A Time for Murder” which is the 51st
book in the series. In the latest novel, Jessica returns to the high school
where she taught for a former colleague’s retirement party, but the colleague
is murdered in a way that hearkens back to the very first murder Jessica
investigated when she was a young teacher, the death of the school’s principal.
