Definitions of the Cozy Mystery

A spirited discussion on the Short Mystery Fiction Society list led to several short or longer definitions of the beloved cozy mystery. I collected most of them, and list them here. Some are tongue-in-cheek, some are serious, but all give insight into the genre. I've omitted the writers whose definitions are quoted and edited lightly.

 

A cozy mystery is one in which the blood is dry before it hits the page.

They are a place for the reader to escape, a place the reader will like being. The language used is soft, not harsh, the people are those the reader would like as neighbors, and the killer has a very good reason--at least in their own head--for doing the deed. That pleasant place where order will be restored.

 

A cozy is a mystery in which someone gets killed but no one gets hurt.

 

I think of the word cozies as mysteries to which the word "cozy" applies in two ways.

First, cozy in the sense of comfortable. They're not disturbing to read. Violence happens offstage, sex is only suggested, the language is mild.

Second, cozy in the sense of close and contained. The story takes place in a community of limited size, such as a small town and there is only a handful of suspects.

Life as it should be with a little excitement added in (murder).

 

There’s a lot of hairsplitting over the definition of a cozy and the difference between cozies and traditional mysteries.  The lines are definitely blurred. Basically a cozy has no on-page sex or violence, with little or no profanity (preferably none). They often take place in a small town. I never heard the bit about no one getting hurt. Traditional mysteries are grittier and perhaps more realistic. I would put Agatha Christie’s Jane Marple in the cozy category. Sayers more traditional.

 

I would also note that cozies have a strong element of female empowerment. The protagonists are busy making a life for themselves, often a new life after a tragedy, and often against the odds. They run businesses and libraries and community theaters, and sometimes families. Their world is disrupted, and they do everything it takes to put it back together. They get sugar done. 

 

"Cozy" is essentially synonymous with "traditional mystery."

 

I do want to say that although the cozy genre is very heavily weighted towards female protagonists, there are some authors who have done a great job making male protagonists work in a cozy as well. I’m thinking about M.K. Wren’s Conan Flagg series, Jack Ewing’s Primed for Murder, Stephen Humphrey Bogart’s R.J. Brooks mysteries, Matt Witten’s Jacob Burns mysteries and many more.

 

Cozies have nothing in them that will upset *anybody,* even the most strict reader.

For traditional mysteries, the most important thing is the puzzle. 
The level of action and danger varies, and we don't always like the protagonist that much, but the puzzle needs to hang together. The reader gets intellectual satisfaction from the solution of the puzzle.

For cozies, the most important thing is that the reader feels that the protagonist is a friend, and they feel comfortable in their company. 

Cozies can have some mild action, and some danger, and they have a puzzle, but all of that is subordinated to creating an emotional bond between the protagonist and the reader.
The reader gets emotional satisfaction from having spent an enjoyable few hours in the company of their friend.

 

A cozy is a book you can read before going to sleep at night, and still be able to go to sleep at night.

Both cozies and traditionals: no excessive, graphic, gratuitous sex or violence on the page, plus very little or, preferably, no “expletive deleted” words. Usually a small-town setting. Emphasis on backstory, character development, whydunit as well as whodunit.

Difference between cozies and traditionals: in a cozy, the sleuth is always an amateur, generally female. In a traditional, it is a professional, sometimes a police officer, but more often a private investigator, and more often male. 

Christie’s Poirot books are traditional; Miss Marple books are cozies. 

 

Someone dies, no one gets hurt.

There’s a lot of hairsplitting over the definition of a cozy and the
difference between cozies and traditional mysteries.  The lines are
definitely blurred. Basically a cozy has no on-page sex or violence, with
little or no profanity (preferably none). They often take place in a small
town. I never heard the bit about no one getting hurt. Traditional
mysteries are grittier and perhaps more realistic. I would put Agatha
Christie’s Jane Marple in the cozy category. Sayers more traditional.

Taking Out the Errors and Filling in the Blanks

I’ve been working on the second book in a new series that I’m hoping my agent will sell. She has the first book, and I have an eighty-thousand-word draft of the second. That’s a fairly long draft, but as I read it over I can see I’ve missed a few things.

The story concerns one of the heroine’s cousins and his wife. This is his second wife, and he has two children, a son by his first wife, now deceased, and a daughter by his second wife. I’ve set up the story with a reasonable number of suspects, developed and set out clues, explored the characters so that readers can see their motivations if not their guilt, and explored the setting and its influence on people’s behavior. In the end I have what I think is a sound confrontation scene, a few surprises, and, of course, changes in the protagonist’s life. What have I missed?

I missed the obvious. The teenage son is pivotal to the crime and its aftermath, though he is never a suspect. He is mentioned by the parents, the high school principal, the town librarian, and some other characters. He comes up in conversation, and he triggers some significant developments. So what have I missed? The protagonist never talks to him.

The protagonist is Felicity O’Brien, who owns a farm in a small community in a very rural part of New England. She talks to just about everyone, but somehow I managed to get her through this entire crime story without ever having her talk to one of the key players. I’ve set out to rectify the omission, with several scenes lined up at crucial points in the story.

I don’t think I’m the only one who falls into this trap. Indeed, Agatha Christie used the omission of the obvious as a clue (and the title) of one of her mysteries, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (1934). I can’t speak for other writers, but I know that I sometimes focus so closely on what’s happening on the page that I miss details (and bigger things too) I should be including—location, time of day, day of the week, name of the character I’m writing about, and a number of other details. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was famous for changing his character’s eye color.

Correcting these errors is the work of the near-final draft and a good beta editor. But let’s face it. It is impossible to be both human and a perfect writer. But it is possible to look for errors and omissions and correct them. You can take this too far, and be obsessed about the text and miss the story itself, but overall, every writer should want the text to be as clean and as complete as possible.

When I began working on the scenes for the teenage son, I discovered other parts of the story I could strengthen. One change suggested others, and once again I followed them through the story. My task now is to fill in the blanks I’ve created, and make sure every detail is present and makes sense.

For a longer discussion of errors in books, you may enjoy this article on editors who also make mistakes: http://penultimateword.com/editing-blogs/when-editors-make-mistakes/

Books and the People Who Love Them

I have lots of reasons for loving physical books—the feel of the pages between my fingers, the variety of fonts, the smell of the paper and the glue in the binding, the way they look lined up on a shelf. I love all sorts of libraries—big and little.

On Saturday I went to the opening of the Maud/Olson Library in Gloucester, a huge effort undertaken by Ralph Maud to bring together all the works the poet Charles Olson was known to have owned, referred to, or read. The library operates under the auspices of the Gloucester Writers Center. For the moment, the books are organized alphabetically by title, so E.E. Cummings and Agatha Christie are half a shelf apart (perhaps the only time in public too). There are other wonderful juxtapositions but I mention the library this morning as I write because after several years of writing fiction I stood in a library packed with serious nonfiction, including many titles I had known and worked with. It was like coming home. http://www.gloucesterwriters.org

My library is similar to a garden. I add plants and weed out others. I trim and move and replace. We began years ago with pansies and now we have roses and the pansies are relegated to pots on the porch, where they thrive. I can’t say my library is a true rose garden, but both garden and library are works in progress.

My thoughts on books today are prompted in part by an appeal I came across for donations to

the Greenville High School/Indian Valley Academy, a tiny town in Greenville, CA, with a tiny school and a library that hasn’t been able to loan books for a few years, and had no money to buy any new ones either. They’re hoping to change that. I mention this because as I read through the article I got more and more excited about finding someone who wanted books.

Books seem to have become both expensive and disposable, turning into a mass of clutter the minute you carry them out of the store. I donate to the library book sale every year, and usually buy as many as I donate. But the library has trouble recycling the books to other sellers at the end of their sale. We have a huge second-hand bookstore in our area, but most online sellers are picky about what they will take. So when I saw the appeal for books (and yes, suitable for a school but not textbooks) I was excited, delighted, and went searching for titles to send. Someone out there wants (yes, WANTS) books.

The person making the request asked only for one book from anyone reading the piece, but I’m sending at least four and maybe more. I’m so happy to send them where they’ll be valued.

To read more, go here. The article is about two-thirds down in the list. And as I turn my attention to photographs to illustrate this piece, I think about how easy it is to make me happy (or anyone else who loves books).

The two books of my own I'm sending are mystery novels that I think will be appropriate for high-school students because my friends' children read them. I'm sending Last Call for Justice and Come About for Murder. In addition, I'm sending two memoirs by young women and some nonfiction about the West.

When the weather outside is . . .

As a writer I think a lot about setting. This includes more than location. It includes weather and anything else that can affect how the sleuth and other characters go about their day. The sleuth is investigating and the suspects are eluding. A writer might use rain to compound the sleuth's misery, or a heat wave to complicate the collection and care of evidence. But the blizzards we have endured in the Northeast this past week has reminded me that there are some weather events that I have avoided as a writer.

A blizzard is used to good effect in Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. In a less well known mystery, P.M. Hubbard turns a river in the countryside into a formidable character, in The Quiet River. In both stories the weather has to be acknowledged and dealt with. 

In For the Love of Parvati, the third Anita Ray mystery, Anita and her Auntie Meena are isolated in a rural estate during the monsoon. Anita is greatly relieved when the rain stops and she can get out for a walk.

The problem with real wintry weather, as opposed to a heat wave or monsoon, is that it brings the usual daily life to a halt. At midnight in our area neighbors are out shoveling or snow-blowing, the light from street lamps amplified by the white snowfall. In the morning, neighbors fill side streets shoveling and cleaning up, stopping to chat with folks they rarely have time to visit with.

Throughout this time, we have no sidewalks, no parking, and struggling public transportation. Fortunately, we didn't lose power in our area. This is the perfect setting for a country house murder, but nearly impossible for the kind of investigation that requires the sleuth to be out and about, visiting offices to gather information, contriving to run into people in a bar or at a party, or following a suspect to work or lunch. In extreme weather, surveillance can be impossible, and most sleuths take the day off, along with their creators.

As I look out the window at the snowdrifts rising to the windowsill I turn my thoughts to the Anita Ray mystery I'm composing. I've written eight thousands words this week, an average amount, and have said little about the weather. But that will change. It's time to feel the heat.

Defining Features of a Series

A successful mystery series is a package of several features: recurring characters, vivid setting, titles,

and types of stories. We followed Miss Jane Marple through a number of villages and stately homes while she chatted with the vicar, a spinster, a young married couple, a colonel back from the colonies, and more of the same. Christie’s titles for all her books varied but she did have a series of nursery rhyme titles, most of which featured Poirot.

Peter Lovesey introduced Sergeant Cribb in a series of historical mysteries that introduced the reader to fads and facts of the late nineteenth century, such as indoor pedestrian races, bare-knuckle fighting, and music halls. The world of the contemporary sleuth Superintendent Peter Diamond is different. Lovesey sets the series in and around Bath, and draws in references to Jane Austen and other literary figures, in contrast to his detective Diamond, who alienates just about everybody, drinks too much, and dislikes the way technology is taking over old-fashioned police work.

These are the kinds of mysteries I read avidly and the ones that come to mind when I wanted to start a new series, after the Mellingham series set in New England. I already had some of this material published in short stories and thought a lot about setting, titles, and plots.

I had a recurring character, Anita Ray, an Indian American photographer living in India at her aunt’s hotel, who had already appeared in a number of short stories published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and Level Best Books anthologies. The setting would remain South India, along the coast, and the tone would be mostly light with examination of some serious issues along the way.

The setting, in and around Auntie Meena’s hotel, meant some of the recurring characters would be hotel workers with problems of their own, conveniently, and other workers at the resort. But setting also becomes a character in that it becomes a place the readers know well. To help with this part of the series I have two maps, one of the hotel and the rooms on each floor and a second one of the resort area, with lanes and other hotels indicated briefly.

One way to reinforce the boundaries of the series is through titles. The Sherlock Holmes short stories often begin with “The Adventure of . . . ” and the Inspector Ghote mysteries by H.R.F. Keating often have the detective’s name in the title, such as Inspector Ghote Hunts the Peacock.

For the Anita Ray series I decided to use a phrase with a Hindu name, either of a deity or figure from mythology, in every title.  The first in the series is Under the Eye of Kali, followed by The Wrath of Shiva and For the Love of Parvati. Each title indicates setting and something of the nature of the story. My work in progress is titled When Krishna Calls.

The setting of a hotel and Anita’s photography gallery ensure that a wide variety of people will walk into the series—foreigners and Indians alike. And Anita’s membership in an Indian family means she has a large number of relatives spread throughout the state and the country, if necessary, for the story line.