#Cosy Crime

[pawswithprose]

I think @sumire-no-nikki is right. I really love Agatha Christie

#books #book #bibliophile #bookish #agatha christie #hercule poirot #miss Marple #cosy crime #my book collection #bookworm #reading #Queen of crime #pawswithprose

[boernepedia]

Tatort Münster oder, wie ich es nenne,

#tatort münster #meme #german stuff #cosy crime

[justforbooks]

A farce, for heaven’s sake! Everyone knows farce is dead.” When a character says these lines on page eight of Janice Hallett’s latest whodunnit, The Christmas Appeal, we can practically see the author tipping us an outsized wink. Hallett, after all, is one of today’s foremost exponents of cerebral, knowing crime. A swift 180 pages later, Hallett has slain another victim and shown that farce was never really dead in the first place. Literary murder – especially the cosy sort – has always been comic. The real mystery is: why is it so popular now?

Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series, in which laughs, foibles and irony figure far more prominently than bloody murder, has topped the charts for four years running. The Crime Writers’ Association has just launched a new Whodunnit Dagger to honour the year’s best cosy, classic or quirky mystery. This Christmas, production company Mammoth Screen will bring us its latest Agatha Christie for BBC One, a reworking of Murder Is Easy that, like its predecessor Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, plays up the love and laughs – moving away from the grittier cynicism of its earlier adaptations.

But then, this is the production company that made Blandings – based on the PG Wodehouse Blandings Castle stories – and Agatha Raisin. The latter, an affectionate rendering of MC Beaton’s none-more-cosy crime capers, is a reminder that the genre has always been popular. Trace it back from SJ Bennett, whose sleuth of choice is Queen Elizabeth II, and Hallett, through Beaton and Simon Brett, with his wisecracking Charles Paris mysteries, and you find an unbroken link to the golden age of comic crime.

Christie herself wrote laughs aplenty, especially when it came to Poirot; her contemporary and fellow queen of crime, Ngaio Marsh, excelled at badinage. GK Chesterton’s Father Brown stories, written in the early 20th century, have a profound and gentle humour – or not so gentle in the barbed parody The Absence of Mr Glass, which pokes fun at Sherlock Holmes. Arthur Conan Doyle also made space for jokes amid the pea-soupers and arch villainy, not just in surreal escapades such as The Red-Headed League, but in the everyday interactions of Holmes and Watson. And there are links between the generations: as a producer on Radio 4’s classic adaptation of Dorothy L Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey series, Brett revisited the pinnacle of comic crime from the 1920s and 30s.

In Evelyn Waugh’s 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited, the aristocratic Catholic family at its centre turns in times of crisis, not to sermons, but to Father Brown stories. Read aloud by the matriarch, the scene is at once absurd, touching and completely understandable. Part of the solace stems from the benign humour of the tales, and that explains why comic crime is resurgent today – amid planetary and economic crises, that promise of escapism is more beguiling than ever. Especially at this time of year. From Hercule Poirot’s Christmas to PD James’s Mistletoe Murders, authors as well as readers have been drawn to fatal festivities.

We’re all familiar with gallows humour, the need to find laughter in the grimmest places. Yet the appeal of truly comic crime is less about professional detectives doing a grisly job than dilettantes playing a game. Literature has few laughing policemen, but an awful lot of quipping amateurs. Even Marsh gave her best one-liners not to handsome Inspector Alleyn but to her Watson figure, the journalist Nigel Bathgate.

Games, puzzles and mysteries are by definition playful. And it’s not just the sleuths who are playing. Reader is always pitted against author in a test of wits – can we solve the crime before the detective? Like every game, there are clear rules: detective author Ronald Knox set out his not entirely serious 10 commandments of fair play in 1929. This is what makes these stories such perfect escapism today: readers can lose themselves in the contest. Every true whodunnit is a work of metafiction, as the reader flits in and out of the story, constantly trying to estimate the author’s intelligence or honesty in setting trails and leaving clues.

For my money, today’s greatest exponent of playful detective fiction is Alex Pavesi, whose Eight Detectives is a gloriously original, intricate and often very funny series of practical jokes played on the reader. Dann McDorman’s new novel, West Heart Kill, as tricksy as they come, uses a jigsaw puzzle as cover art, while the cover of my own Helle & Death tips its hat to Cluedo. This playfulness puts us in the right mood, but the classic whodunnit has other weapons, many of which it shares with farce: plots like clockwork, exquisite choreography and perfect timing. Sayers’s Peter Wimsey has been called “Bertie Wooster with Jeeves’s brain”.

The most important comic quality of both murder mystery and farce, however, is the meticulous arranging of cause, effect and misunderstanding. The detection of a murderer involves paying minute attention to what people say and do. The reader is given privileged access into the lives of others, replete with dramatic irony and a degree of omniscience. And what could possibly be funnier than the everyday idiosyncrasies of human beings?

The Christmas Appeal is packed with hypocrites and exhibitionists. Mrs Ruddle, in Sayers’s Busman’s Honeymoon, is a world-class gossip. As for the sleuths themselves, from Holmes, to Poirot, to Torben Helle, the more seriously they take themselves, the sillier they become. Snoop on anyone for long enough, and their habits, sayings, priorities start to become hilarious.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

#just for books #cosy crime #book review

[robertashford]

#manor #english manor #cottage #rural life #vintage life #cosy crime #cosycrime

[tudorblogger]

‘Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers’ by Jesse Sutanto

Genre: Adult Fiction – Cosy Crime Published: 2023 Format: eBook Rating: ★★★★ I loved this book; I’d seen some great reviews of it, and it didn’t disappoint. Vera Wong was such a funny character. I don’t really know a lot about Chinese culture, but I do know that their elders are very respected and revered. Vera takes charge of discovering a murderer when a man is found dead inside her teashop…

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#Book #Book Review #Cosy Crime #Crime #Fiction #jesse sutanto #Murder #Murder Mystery #Mystery #Novel #Review #unsolicited advice for murderers #vera wong

[fraugoethe]

Begehrte Mützen aus Amsterdam

Die Hausbootdetektei – Tödlicher Stoff von Amy Achterop Amsterdam. Arie, der Chef der Hausbootdetektei, versucht, ein gesünderes Leben zu führen und hat sich zum Intervallfasten überreden lassen. Um nicht seinem Hunger nachzugeben, geht er nachts spazieren. Dabei stolpert er vor seinem Anlegeplatz über eine Leiche. Der Mann ist von einem Müllwagen überfahren worden. Tags darauf sucht die Tochter…

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#Amsterdam #Cosy Crime #Hausbootdetektei

[clairekreads]

Cover Reveal! Fatal Fungus by Wenark Green @rararesources #coverreveal #fatalfungus

Today I’m sharing (belatedly) the cover for the new cosy mystery from writing couple Wenark Green, Fatal Fungus. It’s out in less that two months so hopefully you can be reading it out on a warm summer’s day! Continue reading Cover Reveal! Fatal Fungus by Wenark Green @rararesources #coverreveal #fatalfungus

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#cosy crime #cover reveal #murder mystery #Rachel&039;s Random Resources #Wenark Green

[splashes-into-books]

#CoverReveal for Fatal Fungus by Wenark Green

One great bake-off. Twelve golden pies. Two lovable, dogged amateur sleuths back in stride. #CoverReveal for Fatal Fungus by Wenark Green @rararesources

One great bake-off. Twelve golden pies. Two lovable, dogged amateur sleuths back in stride. On a crisp, autumn evening, in quaint Bogus Hole, the village committee proposes a pie-and-buy charity auction to celebrate the first anniversary of Sycamore Medical Practice. Twelve bakes will make the coveted gingham table for a doctor-only bidding war, thus setting the scene for a memorable day. The…

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#Cosy crime #Cover reveal #Deadly Dough #Rachel&039;s Random Resources #Series #Wenark Green #Windy and Darling

[briefbookreviewsuk]

Brief Book Review - The Queen Of Poisons by Robert Thorogood

A Brief Book Review of The Queen Of Poisons by Robert Thorogood.

Released as a hardback in the United Kingdom by HP on 18th January 2024.

It's another outing for Suzie , Becks and Judith a.k.a. The Marlow Murder Club. This time out the Mayor of Marlow , Geoffrey Lushington is poisoned with aconite - the Queen of Poisons . Can Suzie , Becks and Judith track down the killer of a guy that everybody liked ? Another great "cosy crime" tale from Robert Thorogood.

Check out my review :

#books #books and literature #books and reading #booksbooksbooks #book recommendations #brief book reviews #currently reading #new books #book review #robert thorogood #cosy crime #Youtube

[coloursofunison]

I do love a cover reveal, and what better than two from Louise Marley and her new copy crime series #AnEnglishVillageMurder #CoverReveal

I do love a cover reveal, and what better than two from Louise Marley and her new copy crime series #AnEnglishVillageMurder #CoverReveal @rararesources @louisemarley @LouiseMarleyAuthor @Stormbooks_co

Here’s the blurb Murder at Raven’s Edge (An English Village Mystery Book 1) When Milla Graham returns to her childhood home of Raven’s Edge after eighteen long years away, she finds the perfect English village looks much the same – all rose-covered cottages, nosy neighbours, and quaint teashops full of scones and gossip. But her nostalgic visit takes a dark turn when the body of a local woman…

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#Amazon #Blog Tour #cosy crime #Cosy Mystery #Louise Marley #Murder at Ravenswood House #New Release #Rachel&039;s Random Resources

[iancumminsauthor]

Popular Fiction Writing Genres

Calling all self-publishing authors...

There are many genres that I shall ignore for the moment. I want to share a writer's experience with other writers struggling to promote their books.

I've published four books in four different genres: - An Accidental Salesman, a memoir - The Wrong Briefcase, realistic fiction - My Time Again, time travel mystery - Social Murderer, whodunnit murder-mystery

Memoirs are largely purchased by people the writer has known or has met (mostly, I'm sure, to see if they are in it!). Realistic fiction is difficult to promote as it's a search term that is rarely used. Time Travel has proven to be a very popular genre, the easiest to promote so far. Murder-mystery is a very competitive marketplace containing most of the top-selling authors, therefore it's a difficult skull to crack.

Paperback vs e-book sales are interesting, too. Kindle unlimited is popular and, together with e-book sales, far outweigh sales of physical copies, in my experience as a self-published author. Some of the benefits of e-books are: they are usually cheaper, they take up far less space than a shelf full of paperbacks and, best of all, small type isn't a problem - just make it bigger! Of course, paperbacks can be donated to charity shops or can remain on your shelves for your lifetime - and you don't 'lose' your book collection if something happens to your kindle or reading device.

Of the many books that I've sold on Amazon, only a fraction of readers have left 'stars' and comments but I'm pleased to say that all my books average around 4 stars except the one that's just been published and recently made available. I'm hoping there will be a plethora of stars twinkling on the page after Christmas presents have been exchanged and, hopefully, enjoyed.

#writers tips #book genres #time travel #murder mystery #cosy crime #cozycrime #memoir #whodunnit #realistic fiction #book promotion #paperback #kindle ebooks

[sparklycupcakegladiator]

Düstere Geheimnisse in der Upper Class

Dieser Text kann Werbung enthalten Die Geschichte: Miss Amanda Delagore ist aufgewühlt und unkonzentriert. Ihre Freundin aus Kindertagen, die, so wie sie auch, im Londoner West End in einem Haushalt arbeitet, ist seit einigen Tagen verschwunden. Weggelaufen kann sie nicht sein. Sie ist glücklich verheiratet und hat eine kleine Tochter. Eigentlich könnte das Schicksal der jungen Frau Lady Lydia…

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#Cosy Crime #dp verlag #Krimi #Roman #Spannung

[bumblebee-cottage]

#black and white #portrait #black and white portrait #miss marple #margaret rutherford #actress #cosy crime #crime stories #crime

[robertashford]

#countryside #manor #english manor #castle #vintage #rural life #landleben #cosycrime #cosy crime

[motherbookerblog]

Book Review - Cassandra Darke by Posy Simmonds

⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4 out of 5. There are plenty of celebrity novels being published these days and, most of the time, they end up being disappointed. I pick up a book written by someone that I’m a fan of and I instantly regret it. That’s not the case with Richard Osman. He genuinely seems to care about writing good books and spending time on developing characters. His novels are one of the few…

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#book blogging #book review #books #cosy crime #crime #Crime novels #crime thriller #female characters #Murder mystery #review #Richard Osman #The Thursday Murder Club

[fraugoethe]

Auszeit auf Amrum

Harpunentod von Sophie Tammen Amrum. Gaby Scholle sucht eigentlich nur Erholung auf Amrum. Die Auszeit sollte vor allem von ihrem Mann Rolf und seiner Idee, in Rente zu gehen, sein. Als Polizeisekretärin beim K11 in Wiesbaden wollte sie noch einige Jahre bleiben. So fährt sie mit Labradoodle-Hündin Dolores in den Norden. Bereits auf der Fähre lernt sie eine nette Frau in ihrem Alter kennen und…

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#Cosy Crime #Gaby Scholle #Krimiserie #Nordsee