It all started Sunday night as I watched The Moving Finger, an Agatha Christie Miss Marple mystery, on PBS. The current incarnation of Marple is not a strict one, meaning they tend to play fast and loose with certain elements about the characters while still managing to do a pretty good job with the mystery itself. What bugged me the most, though, was that I was fairly sure the murderer on the show wasn’t the one in the book. So, I had to check.

I was wrong but sure enough one thing lead to another and I ended up rereading the book. Wasn’t hard because it’s only about 180 pages, more or less. I’d forgotten how humorous her cozy mysteries are as she plays with the quirky inhabitants of this village or that hamlet. I enjoyed it so much that I ended up digging out another one of Miss Marple’s adventures. This time one of the best, A Murder is Announced. I’m in the middle of it now and really enjoying it too. Or maybe it’s the break from romance. Don’t know. Do know that I love Christie at her best however and she could dissert those peaceful and quiet (yeah, right) little villages with surgical precision.  

Okay, a little admission here, I really don’t want to be a writer but I’ve always thought, strangely enough considering that I’m such an avid romance fan, that if I did make a serious attempt at it, a cozy mystery is what I’d probably end up writing. I even have the prototype in mind for the matchmaking lady detective based on a very old friend of my mother’s. That sweet woman was downright scary in a “never missed anything” kind of way. ;p

So, it occurs to me that maybe I should check out the modern crop of cozy mysteries. Only I have no idea where to start looking. Suggestions?

8 Comments

  1. Thanks for the recs, Devon. I’ll definitely check them out. 😀

  3. Oh I used to read a lot of cozies. Now if I read a mystery, it’s usually historical. Anyway, Dorothy Cannell is great. I also enjoy Carolyn Hart, I believe “Death on Demand” is the first one. I also like Leslie Meier’s books (Lucy Stone Detective). And I liked the first couple by Carolyn Haines, but her love life was getting kind of annoyingly entangled. One of my favorites ever was a series about a Texas Lawyer by DR Meredith, but she stopped and they seem to be out of print. All had titles that started with “Murder by…” Good luck finding something!

  4. Thanks for the recs, gals.

    Marg, I believe I’ve head of the Flower Shop Mysteries and thought I’d like to try them but I can’t remember where. Maybe on a blog somwhere, but I tend to think my sister reads them. I’ll have to check.

    Nicole, oh, I gotta check out The Thin Woman series. I love the Thin Man movies so much I hunted up a copy of the Thin Man book. You know, it wasn’t bad at all for the era it was written in. And the ex ran across the complete Thin Man DVD collection just the other day and actually called to see if I wanted it. I was like, duh! (Which reminds me, I still have to pay him back for those. ;p)

  5. Well, not really new, but you might try the Mrs. Pollifax series by Gilman and the series that starts with The Thin Woman by Dorothy Cannell. Most of my cozies lately seem to be cat mysteries, so might not be up your alley.

  6. For modern cozies, I enjoy the early books in Joanne Flukes Hannah Swensen series, and Kate Collins Flower Shop Mysteries.

  7. I love Poirot and usually enjoy Miss Marple but it’s actually her oddball short story mysteries that are my true favorites, I think. THE MYSTERIOUS MR. QUIN comes to mind. Don’t enjoy Tupence and Tommy’s long book all that much but I love their original short story collection PARTNERS IN CRIME so much I used that for a long time on my original site as the title of a list of TV detective couples.

  8. I loooooove Agatha Christie! She is one of my fave writers and I swear I must have read every Poirot book at least twice growing up. He is my fave. I never got much into Marple or Tupence and Tommy. lol

    But I love, love, love Poirot! Mehehehe

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