. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”
This week, I’m expressing thanks for cozy mysteries.
“Whaaaat?” you say? “Julie, don’t you have a degree in English literature? Aren’t you a professional editor with fifteen years’ experience in scholarly publishing? Aren’t you just a little above mass-market, easy-reading, often-sadly-edited, formulaic, shallow, etc., etc. novels? What used to be called ‘dime-store’ novels? The successors to, say, Harlequin romances?” (Insert retching sounds here.)
Well, I’m coming out of the closet. It turns out I’m not above it. And I have my reasons.
First, I started reading these when Mom had gotten shingles and her vision was messed up. One of her great pleasures these days is devouring these cozy mysteries. (We can’t keep up with her in buying ones she hasn’t read yet. And yes, she says she remembers all the stories, so it’s not like she can reread them and like it.)
So while she was at rehab places, she was already in the dumps because she wasn’t at home. And naturally, we all strive to keep her happy, or failing that, contented. So I found her current book next to her chair at home, brought it with me to her room at Columbia Post-Acute, and read to her, starting a little before where her bookmark was. (This is quality time between us, see?)
It was kind of funny to pick up reading at the midpoint of the mystery novel. Who’s who? Why is everyone looking for whatever-it-is? Whatever does ice cream have to do with this—it’s in the title, right? And why are recipes added in here and there, the way a bad romance novel has sex scenes gratuitously sprinkled throughout the story?
As I read to her, I occasionally interjected: “OH! Mom, I think HE is the killer! He’s GOTTA be! Don’t you think?” Mom would just look at me, smile, and shrug. She’s read enough of these, she can probably figure out who “dunnit” by the time the murder occurs, usually by the end of the fourth chapter.
Anyhow, after we finished that one and started on another, Mom graduated from the rehab place and went home with her books. She got glasses that corrected her off-kilter vision, and since then, she’s reading books herself. (I might be misremembering: she’s been in and out of the hospital and rehab places, I might have read other books to her here and there. It’s hard to keep track of them. They’re like bunnies.)
Actually, I know more than a few professional manuscript editors who like to read mysteries (not necessarily cozies, however). I think it’s that the pace and the content—the puzzle—exercises a part of one’s mind that allows the editor to temporarily bypass the part that notices the sylistic inconsistencies, infelicities of grammar, typographical errors, misused homonyms, and so on. You just kind of gallop through a page-turner. You can enjoy reading again, as long as the book lasts.
I also like it that these sorts of books blot out whatever else is on your mind. Like what's going on in politics. How Mom is refusing to do what she needs to do to help Dad and allow me to keep a job. This form of escape is quite nice when you’re having trouble getting to sleep. I read until the type turns different colors or starts to wiggle around, and my eyes close, and the book folds shut on my hand. Blissful sleep.
Honestly, I haven't cared about mystery novels since I quit reading Nancy Drew books in about fourth grade. What's the point? After my preteen sci-fi craze, I quickly started devouring self-help books and nonfiction natural history books. But I kind of like these cozy mysteries.
Sue and I recently reread Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, the one that parodies the “horrid” Gothic novels of her day. In it, although she pokes fun at people devouring stuff like Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho (Sue and I read that too, and laughed at it even as it drew us in), she also mounts a spirited defense of the novel as a literary form. In the early 1800s, mysteries and such were viewed as primarily women’s reading, and lightweight, worthless, even degrading stuff. But in such books, Austen pointed out, “the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.” Look, they are fun to read, and the best novelists have the ability to make their characters and plots seem absolutely real. It’s magic.
Mass-market cozy mysteries hardly contain the “best-chosen language,” or (superlatively) the “liveliest effusions of wit and humour,” but they do usually contain some well-crafted dialogue with a good ear for common speech, and the characters in them often are well-rounded and interesting. (Okay, a lot of them have characters that are flat “types,” but many of the books are in the first person, and at least the interior dialogue of the heroine is interesting and relatable.)
These books transport you, too. They all have a certain setting, such as a cheese shop in Sonoma, a candy shop in Ohio’s Amish country, a bicycle shop on Cape Cod, and a Granadian-immigrant family bakery in New York City’s Little Caribbean. I don’t think any are set in a grim apartment complex in a boring Midwest or southern city about a person who, say, edits online content, or works at Walmart for a living.
There are rules about cozy mysteries: no truly gruesome details, torture, or deaths; no slaughter of the innocents (all the victims are generally people who had it coming to them, so there are usually multiple suspects); no explicit sex scenes; the protagonist is almost always a female who is some kind of small business owner living her dream; male friends are platonic friends; male love interests typically don’t do more to advance the plot than be fantastically supportive (“you’ve had a rough day, honey; come home, I’ll make dinner, we’ll have a glass of wine, and I’ll rub your shoulders while we snuggle on the sofa and discuss the clues and suspects, and whatever else is on your mind”). The boyfriends don’t always “save the day”; when cornered or captured, the heroine saves herself through her own wits, cunning, and physical capabilities. There is actually a kind of feminist vision at work here.
You can see why these are so popular: it’s like grown-up Nancy Drew, minus insipid Ned Nickerson and Carson Drew rescuing Nancy and her chums. Don’t you wish you could own a popular breakfast/brunch diner–slash–vintage cookware shop in scenic Brown County, Indiana, and have all your workers and customers be your dear friends and neighbors? Don’t you wish you had so many dear friends and neighbors? Wouldn’t you like having a super-handsome boyfriend who doesn’t get jealous of your success and in fact helps you in all kinds of ways, anticipating your needs? Huh?
The first cozy mysteries I read were the “Spice Isle Bakery” series by Olivia Matthews (Patricia Sargeant), which has a flawed, insecure, self-deprecating protagonist and a family so well characterized they seem truly to live and breathe. The spunky, outspoken granny speaks in Granadian dialect, which is fun. As a culinary cozy, it necessarily includes lots of descriptions of foods and their delicious scents (in this case, Caribbean foods like currant rolls, coconut bread, curry and jerk chicken, and callaloo; and the bakery is always scented with nutmeg, cinnamon, coconut, and butter). And yes, there are recipes.
The series ended with three volumes, but I found I sincerely wanted more. More, more, more!
I’m trying not to descend into the same bottomless well that my mom is in, where she’s reading just about any cozy mystery she can find, that she hasn’t already read. I’m sticking to a few well-established publishers, because I don’t think I could tolerate self-published, poorly edited stuff. I’m also sticking with authors I’ve already read . . . like the ones in these pictures.
So, cheers to cozy mysteries!
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