What is a COZY Mystery? A cozy mystery has been described as a “fun read that engages the mind”. They are commonly a series of books with an amateur sleuth that is tied to a fictional community such as Jessica Fletcher’s Cabot Cove in the Murder She Wrote series. These books are usually written from the first person or close 3rd person point of view. They commonly have side-kicks—sometimes pets as side-kicks. They come in a series because cozy readers like to keep coming back to the same characters. There is a victim and usually three or four plausible suspects.

As a cozy writer, you can’t kill someone in a real place or town, and you can’t kill pets or children. There is minimal violence, sex, or obscenities. Harvard University can’t be used for anything for some reason. And justice prevails in the end.

The plot is basically a puzzle that comes together piece by piece. The protagonist guides or pushes the action and, although level headed is not fantastically brilliant.

It always amazes me how many people can be murdered in small quiet towns like Cabot Cove or the English counties of Midsomer or South Devon where the Coroner TV series is set.

These books are often derogatorily referred to as “pot-boilers” or “penny-dreadfuls”. Series are commonly themed around food, clothing, holidays, or clubs. Although many of the titles are “cute”, like Brewed Awakening from Cleo Coyle, Absence of Mallets from Kate Carlisle, or To Helvetica and Back from Paige Shelton, there are a surprising number of writers like Agatha Christie, Elizabeth George, Ngaio Marsh, and Dorothy L. Sayers who are included in the lists of cozy authors. Authors like Maddie Day produce a first draft in six weeks, and publish three or more books a year.

Can a Cozy Mystery be considered a serious novel? I dislike the slots and genres that writers are dropped into. Amazon classifies a novel like The Overstory by Richard Powers as “Genre Fiction” to avoid the classification conundrum. I suppose it makes it easier for marketing, and cozy mysteries are solid sellers.

Let me know if you read cozies and who you like and what you like about them. I would appreciate the input.