How cozies deliver justice, community, and warmth amidst a backdrop of murder, especially during turbulent times.
I grew up in Northwestern Indiana and lived three blocks from a branch library. My best friend and I spent a great deal of time in that small neighborhood library. When I was young, I read everything from romance to science fiction and fantasy. But, one day I stumbled across The Murder of Roger Akroyd by Agatha Christie. Nearly a half-century later, I still recall the feeling of awe and surprise when I got to the end. I couldn’t wait to get back to the library to read more books like that. The librarian gave me another Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None, and my 12-year-old brain was gone. At the time, I had no idea that there were different types of mysteries. All I knew was that I wanted to read more of these books where I wasn’t afraid of the evil villain or upset by the gory details, and my brain was engaged in trying to figure out the puzzle of Whodunit.
Romance is consistently the top-selling genre, but Crime/Mystery is one of the next bestselling genres and encompasses a vast variety of subgenres. On one end of the spectrum, there are teens like Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys and talking pets solving mysteries (Yep. That’s a thing). On the opposite end are gory Hannibal Lecter-type serial killers who would give Freddie Krueger nightmares (LOL-see what I did there). The common denominator is that there is a crime that needs to be resolved.
Unlike most genre fiction, Mystery/Crime isn’t some obscure concept requiring a PhD in Astrophysics, an active imagination and a belief in magic, or even a willingness to believe in Happily Ever After. Sadly, mysteries have been around since dinosaurs disappeared from the earth. Asteroid impact? Climate change? Evolution? Or was there something else that brought dinosaurs to extinction but no other animals? Millions of years later, it’s still a mystery.
Despite the optimistic prophesies of science fiction books and programs like Star Trek, humanity has not evolved to the point where people of all races live together in peace and harmony and murder no longer exists. Humans have still failed to control their primal instincts and have resorted to violence and murder to solve their problems since Cain slew Abel. If anything, murder and death has become much more prevalent thanks to books, cameras, videos, livestreaming, and social media. We are inundated by graphic images and details of horrific events from everywhere in the world in real time.
When I was getting my MFA from Seton Hill University’s Writing Popular Fiction Program, I read many articles that criticized genre fiction. One of the biggest criticisms was that unlike literary fiction, genre or popular fiction is “escapist fiction.” Mysteries/Crime fiction often involve murders. However, if murder is commonplace and everywhere and you’re reading about a murder, how is this an escape?
I write cozy mysteries. When I tell people I write cozies, I get some interesting physical reactions. Usually, there’s a head tilt, a furrowed brow, or a half smile. Sometimes, I even get all three. All are signs that the person I’m talking to has no idea what a cozy mystery is. That’s when I go into my prepared spiel. “Have you ever watched Murder, She Wrote?” Young or old, the response is almost always a head nod thanks to cable and the marvels of syndicated television. The protagonist of a cozy mystery is often a female. J.B. Fletcher is an amateur sleuth. She’s not a detective or even a police consultant. Jessica is a retired English teacher. Cozies don’t have bad language. Well, not really bad (no F-bombs).
Cozies don’t have graphic sex or violence. I don’t even want to think about JB Fletcher in a sexual situation. It’s a murder, so there is violence, but there isn’t a lot of blood, guts, or gore in a cozy mystery. In Murder, She Wrote, Jessica Fletcher ‘stumbles across’ a dead body. That’s when she uses her intelligence, acute perception, and her curiosity to figure out Whodunit. The focus is on sifting through the clues, ignoring the red herrings (false clues) and following through. Finally, and most importantly, in a cozy, justice always prevails. That’s not something that always happens in real life.
If you’ve seen the news lately, there’s corruption, social unrest, war, senseless shootings of innocent people, and lots of chaos and uncertainty. Genre fiction provides an escape from a reality which could, in the last 5 years, be categorized as horrific. Cozies take that escape a step further. In a cozy, readers aren’t faced with the gruesome, gory realities of a crime which may or may not be solved. They are never made to experience the frustration of criminals escaping justice. Whether the cozy is set on the shores of Lake Michigan or in the quaint English village of St. Mary Mead, cozy readers know that the sleuth will unravel the mystery and figure out Whodunit, and justice will prevail. And, if you’re lucky enough to read a culinary cozy, there may even be a recipe for Bourbon Apple Cider Cake.
