by Nancy J. Cohen
Malice Domestic, a conference for cozy mystery fans, defines cozies as “mysteries which contain no explicit sex or excessive gore or violence.”
If you’re a mystery fan and you want to hear about murders, turn on the evening news. Here you’ll learn about the despicable things people do to other people. As you may already know, we are our own worst enemies. Why, then, would we want to read about these horrible acts as a form of entertainment?
Cozy mysteries, unlike other crime novels, leave the gory details offstage. The focus of these stories is on the relationships among the characters. The heroes are real people, ordinary citizens like you or I, not a superhero singlehandedly aiming to take down a global terrorist ring or a villain bent on world domination.
The sleuth is your friendly librarian or hairdresser or knitting circle partner caught up in events beyond her control. Yet she has the courage, resourcefulness, and guts that many of us lack, and she is driven to learn the truth. We admire those qualities within her that we wish we possessed, and we live vicariously through her attempts to unravel the mystery.
The crimes in cozies are motivated by emotions we all share: jealousy, greed, envy, revenge. They’re what I call the negative motivators. Usually the victim is someone who’s offended the bad guy, or someone who usurped what he believes to be rightfully is, or just someone who got in the way of his distorted ambitions. These are people we can understand, because we all harbor those feelings inside. We can suppress them, however, and let the good within us predominate.
Meanwhile, the victim may be someone we love to hate. Lots of people have reason to want this fictional person dead. Who has the strongest motive, the means, and the opportunity? Therein lies the puzzle at the heart of a cozy. We are armchair detectives as we uncover clues along with the amateur sleuth.
As mentioned above, relationships are the focus of these stories instead of forensics details. In a recent Entertainment Weekly interview, Patricia Cornwall said “I think we’re at a real shift in what we want from crime fiction. I have seen in my own work that I have had to focus more on characters and their relationships as opposed to writing a procedural.” Well, duh. This is what we cozy writers do all the time. We write about amateur sleuths who use their people skills to interview subjects, track down clues, and unmask the killer. Figuring out the interrelationships among the characters is what makes these stories so enjoyable to plot. We can create juicy personal secrets and relate them to the murder in some way.
Cozy mysteries also feature distinctive settings. My Bad Hair Day series stars hairstylist Marla Shore, who owns the Cut ‘N Dye salon in sunny Palm Haven, Florida. Many of my humorous stories include issues important to Floridians along with the goings-on in a busy salon. Other authors focus on crafts or cooking or shopkeeping. Stories are set in small towns with a unique ambience. It’s fun to read about these places and the folks who inhabit them. They serve as a microcosm of the bigger world. Through sensory details imparted by the author, we feel as though we’re there in this charming location.
Aside from setting and characters, the tone of a cozy sets these stories apart from other crime fiction. Often humorous and light, they offer an escape from reality. We can chuckle in the face of death and destruction because we know at the finish is a HEA (Happy Ever After) ending. Justice will be served. The villain will be caught. All is well with the world, unlike in real life. This sense of unreality, of fantasy, is another reason why I like to read cozies. I don’t want to read about the horrors in the daily news. In a cozy, people around the sleuth drop dead with regularity, but they’re often someone you dislike. The sleuth always unmasks the killer. Readers of this genre accept the conventions and cherish them.
Thus the reasons why I like cozies are multiple: the tone, the setting, and the characters blend into a story that keeps you guessing until you close the last page with a smile on your face.
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Shear Murder
Who knew weddings could be murder? Hairstylist Marla Shore is weeks away from becoming a bride herself when she walks down the aisle as a bridesmaid at her friend Jill’s ceremony. Things take a turn for the worse when the matron of honor ends up dead, the cake knife in her chest. Now what will they use to cut the cake?
Nancy J. Cohen is an award-winning author who writes romance and mysteries. Her popular Bad Hair Day series features hairdresser Marla Shore, who solves crimes with wit and style under the sultry Florida sun. Several titles in this series have made the IMBA bestseller list, while Nancy’s imaginative sci-fi romances have garnered rave reviews. Her latest book, and tenth in her mystery series, is Shear Murder from Five Star. Coming next is Warrior Prince, book one in The Drift Lords series, from The Wild Rose Press. Active in the writing community and a featured speaker at libraries and conferences, Nancy is listed in Contemporary Authors, Poets & Writers, and Who’s Who in U.S. Writers, Editors, & Poets.
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