First, a confession: For years, I thought little of “cozy” mysteries. Crime fiction was supposed to reflect reality and society in all of its darkness and discomfort. Murders committed offstage, almost tastefully? Puns in the titles? An emphasis on lightheartedness, small stakes and gentle humor? These weren’t serious books for a serious person like me.
Read that last sentence with the appropriate eye roll, because that’s how I wrote it. Entering middle age made me realize that marinating in perpetual darkness wasn’t doing me any good. I feel better when I temper that darkness with witty stories that highlighted community and care.
If you’re never dipped into the joyful glory of a cozy mystery, here’s where to start.
I want a charming mystery with sparkling prose
Thus Was Adonis Murdered
by Sarah Caudwell (1981)
Caudwell’s four books featuring a group of young London lawyers and their mentor, the Oxford professor Hilary Tamar, may be the platonic ideal of a good mystery series: intelligent and elegantly mannered, filled with sparkling prose, pithy dialogue and characters making terrible choices. Start at the beginning with “Thus Was Adonis Murdered,” ostensibly about a murder in Venice, and prepare to be utterly charmed.
If you’ve read it and loved it, try … Emma Lathen’s John Putnam Thatcher series or Jane Haddam’s Gregor Demarkian books.
I’d like some modern-day Miss Marples
The Thursday Murder Club
by Richard Osman (2020)
Joyce, Elizabeth, Ron and Ibrahim are so beloved after four best sellers (there’s a fifth on the way, as well as a movie adaptation) that it can be easy to forget what a revelation they were when Osman’s debut novel came out. The friends, all residents of Coopers Chase Retirement Village, prefer police reports and autopsy photos to knitting and jigsaw puzzles. They apply themselves to solving cold cases because “they didn’t like to think there were guilty people still happily going about their business, sitting in their gardens, doing a Sudoku, knowing they had got away with murder.”
This series — offbeat, engaging, funny and deeply humane — made me rediscover my love of mysteries, and it can do the same for you, too.
If you’ve read it and loved it, try … “Murder at Gulls Nest,” by Jess Kidd; M.C. Beaton’s Agatha Raisin series; or Janice Hallett’s stand-alone novels.
I’m allergic to anything cutesy
Strangled Prose
by Joan Hess (1986)
Reading a Joan Hess novel is about as astringent an experience as it gets: battery acid-level humor, wicked descriptions of small-town life and no one — absolutely no one — spared. Her Maggody series is great fun, but I’m partial to the one featuring the bookstore owner Claire Molloy, who starts her sleuthing adventures after hosting a party for the romance novelist Azalea Twilight (real name: Mildred Twiller), who is killed the same night. Naturally, the list of suspects encompasses practically everybody in town.
If you’ve read it and loved it, try … Amanda Cross’s academic mysteries or Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Armand Gamache books.
Is there such a thing as a cozy spy novel?
The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax
by Dorothy Gilman (1966)
On a whim, and because no one seems to care what she does with her life, Emily Pollifax, a plucky widow, decides to join the C.IA. Then her first assignment, a simple courier job in Mexico City, becomes unexpectedly dangerous, ultimately landing her in an Albanian prison. Mrs. Pollifax proves her mettle: “It wasn’t that she had so much character, thought Mrs. Pollifax, but rather that always in her life she had found it difficult to submit. The list of her small rebellions was endless. Surely there was room for one more?” Just imagine James Bond as a grandma.
If you’ve read it and loved it, try … Martin Walker’s Bruno, Chief of Police series; the Amelia Peabody books, by Elizabeth Peters; or “Murder Takes a Vacation,” by Laura Lippman.
Historical mysteries are my jam
The Bangalore Detectives Club
by Harini Nagendra
The first book in an effervescent series set in 1920s Bangalore stars 19-year-old Kaveri Murthy, a math nerd and Sherlock Holmes lover who is settling into an arranged marriage even though she longs to continue her education. When a murder happens on the grounds of a luxurious party she and her husband are attending, Kaveri impulsively decides to play detective — and discovers she’s very good at it.
If you’ve read it and loved it, try … Sujata Massey’s Perveen Mistry series (set in Bombay in the 1920s) or the Maisie Dobbs books by Jacqueline Winspear (set in London between the World Wars).
Give me a mouthwateringly delicious read
Aunty Lee’s Delights
by Ovidia Yu (2013)
The culture and culinary delights of Singapore come alive in Yu’s novel. Rosie “Aunty” Lee, something of a busybody, has shrugged off widowhood to open her own restaurant. But when she gets drawn into a local murder investigation, it soon becomes clear she has a real talent for sleuthing — not just because of her innate inquisitiveness, but because she plies people with mouthwatering home-cooked treats when she needs information from them. Guaranteed to make you hungry!
If you’ve read it and loved it, try … “The Kamogawa Food Detectives,” by Hisashi Kashiwai, or “Catering To Nobody,” by Diane Mott Davidson.
Talk to me about the cozy cats
The Cat Who Could Read Backwards
by Lilian Jackson Braun (1966)
Braun, a longtime Detroit Free Press editor, wasn’t the first to write cat mysteries, but she was the first to turn them into a best-selling franchise. “The Cat Who Could Read Backwards” introduced the Michigan newspaperman Jim Qwilleran and Koko, the siamese cat he inherited after the murder of its former owner, a ridiculously pretentious art critic. Both it and the subsequent two books are acerbic, funny, well-crafted mysteries rooted firmly in “medium-boiled” territory, and in Braun’s newspaper experience. (The rest of the “The Cat Who …” books, published after a two-decade hiatus, aren’t as strong.)
If you’ve read it and loved it, try … “The Cat Saw Murder,” by D.B. Olsen, or Jennifer J. Chow’s Mimi Lee series.
How about a book where the animals are the detectives?
Three Bags Full
by Leonie Swann; translated by Anthea Bell (2005)
This book about a flock of sheep trying to solve the murder of their shepherd, George, is a delightful, improbable gift. How will the sheep alert the humans in the Irish town of Glennkill to what they’ve learned about the prospective killer? Will readers actually believe in their ovine crime-solving abilities? Not only does Swann pull both these literary tricks off, but she also delivers a hopeful meditation on community and solidarity. The sequel, “Big Bad Wool,” is every bit as delightful.
If you’ve read it and loved it, try … Juneau Black’s Shady Hollow books or the Chet & Bernie series, by Spencer Quinn.
I love a punny title
Vinyl Resting Place
by Olivia Blacke (2022)
Blacke is a mystery-writing veteran with multiple series, but I’ve got a soft spot for her cozy forays — especially this one, the first of a three-book cycle set at a family-owned Texas record shop. Now operated by the sisters Juni, Maggie and Tansy, the store’s set for its grand reopening when oops, a body falls out of the supply closet, and their uncle vanishes without warning. Blacke keeps everything spinning as nimbly as a D.J.
If you’ve read it and loved it, try … “The Big Rewind,” by Libby Cudmore; Elle Cosimano’s Finlay Donovan series; or Kellye Garrett’s Hollywood Homicide books.
I’d like a cozy with a paranormal tinge
Grave Reservations
by Cherie Priest (2021)
Leda Foley, who’s trying to get her travel agency off the ground, wishes that her psychic abilities were a little less, well, erratic. When she rebooks a flight for the Seattle police detective Grady Merritt at the last minute, he demands answers after the original plane explodes on the tarmac. “I changed your flight because I did know something was wrong — but I swear to you, I didn’t know what it was,” she tells him. “I might’ve been vibing off the cosmic certainty of the plane crashing.” That convinces him: Leda’s his perfect crime-solving sidekick.
If you’ve read it and loved it, try … “The Frame-Up,” by Gwenda Bond, or the Aunt Dimity series, by Nancy Atherton.
I want to feel like I’m part of a tight-knit community
Arsenic and Adobo
by Mia P. Manansala (2021)
After a disastrous breakup, Lila Macapagal comes home to help run her family’s Filipino restaurant, Tita Rosie’s Kitchen. When her food critic ex-boyfriend shows up and promptly drops dead into a bowl of ginataang bilo-bilo, naturally Lila becomes the police’s prime suspect. The mystery here is a winning one, but what makes this book stand out are the ways Manansala draws the ties between food, friends, family and love.
If you’ve read it and loved it, try … Abby Collette’s Ice Cream Parlor series or the Vera Wong books, by Jesse Q. Sutanto.
I like quirky, unexpected sleuths
The Maid
by Nita Prose (2022)
Molly Gray has always found people, with their messy emotions and illogical behaviors, confusing. Her job as a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel brings her unfettered joy — there’s nothing she likes more than restoring order to a chaotic guest room — until she discovers the hotel’s most prized guest dead in his suite and ends up the prime suspect. More than just a mystery, this is an affecting tale that shines a warm light on loneliness, invisibility, friendship and what it means to be happy.
If you’ve read it and loved it, try … the Flavia de Luce series, by Alan Bradley, or the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novels, by Alexander McCall Smith
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