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Saturday, May 23, 2015

Cosy Mysteries

A few years back, I devoured cosy mysteries. Carolyn G Hart's Death on Demand series, Joan Hess's Murder in Maggody, Margaret Maron's books -- all of them! There were ones with a harder edge, like Dana Stabenow's Alaskan mysteries. And ones which played up the cutesy humour, like Donna Andrews.

And then, suddenly, I stopped reading them. I can't even put a finger on why. From haunting the library for the latest releases, abruptly I didn't care.

I have some favourites that I re-read, like Marion Babson's classic British cosies, but generally the cutesy cosies and I have parted ways, and frankly, now that I think about it, I miss them.

I miss the gentle humour and sense of family or community that they celebrated. I miss the clear sense of right and wrong, and evil being punished. I even miss the puzzle solving (although for some, the puzzle was never very puzzling).

All of which leads me to the point of this post ... I think cosy mysteries are set for a resurgence, but in a slightly different guise. I think they're going to have a paranormal edge.

Mystery solving elves sound good to me :)

2 comments:

  1. Quite a lot of paranormal cozies out now! Ghosts and witches mostly but I would SO read about crime fighting fairies!
    Some authors : Rose Pressey, Alice Kimberly, Heather Blake (or Heather Webber ... I can't recall which is the name she uses for the paranormally ones).
    Oh heck. Now I want to find/read/blog them all. Dangit.

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  2. Karen, thank you! Books for my TBR :) It's like "wish, and the books are there"

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