Cozies

Best of: Cozies 2022

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So many cozies – so little time!  Reading cozies for my Mystery Scene column has been a real joy, and an extra joy was that the column focused on my favorite of formats, the mass market paperback.  A long ago customer, a pilot during WWII, told me he learned to love Agatha Christie during the war as he was able to stick a paperback in his back pocket.  This format is slowly being squeezed out, but to me it’s the best way to have a little rectangle of affordable, portable happiness always on tap.  Hopefully this list will give you a place to start (not ALL on this list are mass markets, but most of them are). Dive in!   read more

Phyllis M. Betz: Reading the Cozy Mystery: Critical Essays on an Underappreciated Subgenre

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This review comes to us courtesy of Jonathan Wilkins, a poet and cozy aficionado.  I’m delighted that the cozy mystery is being taken seriously – as it should be!  For more on cozies, you can read my essay here. 

For most of us our introduction to the crime fiction genre was through the cozy mystery, and at last we have a critical approach to that almost ignored genre. Ignored because it has not been taken seriously in the past.  The advent of Nordic Noir and now Domestic Noir seems to have pushed it further back. Time for the cozy crime to fight back and show its value to the literary world. read more

Cozy round up 2020

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“Cozies certainly provide solace from many of the dark edges of the actual world.” — Edith Maxwell in Mystery Scene

I read a lot, and I read lots of cozies, partly thanks to my column in Mystery Scene.  There I am restricted to reviewing mass market paperback originals, and I am generously showered with advance reading copies.  I sort through them by reading the premise and a bit of the beginning.  If the writing doesn’t hit me quite right, I skip that one, and check out another one.  And while I certainly read many, many cozies, I am in no way claiming to have read even a comprehensive number of the books in this sub genre published this year.  For that kind of scope, I highly recommend checking out Dru’s Book Musings, which is a comprehensive review blog of all things cozy.  In addition, Dru has guest posts from authors and publishes a guide to what’s coming out, sometimes weekly. read more

A Little Comfort Reading

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As we’re all stuck at home, a little (or a lot) of comfort reading is in order.  Not a re-reader?  I’ve included some newer books, and hopefully there are some authors here that are new to you as a reader.  A great resource, should you want to read whole series in order (and why not?), is Fantastic Fiction.  There you can find authors with their series listed in chronological order.  If you want to delve deeper, check out Stop, You’re Killing Me, and drill down to finding a series by occupation, location, time period or character name.  See what awards your favorite writers have won.  These two sites are essential to any reader. read more