cozies: Do You read them? Do You like them?

[Randy Johnson]

There seems to be a lot of bashing of cozies around the internet today. I don't read them much anymore because all my favorite authors are no longer living and I haven't gotten into the newer ones. My favorites in the past were Nero Wolfe, Ellery Queen , Perry Mason, and The Saint. I still have a number in each series to read and are constantly looking for the missing volumes. Does anyone out there read cozies anymore? As well as some of the tougher crime novels? Let's hear from you.

[Nikitta]

What's cozies? I know that I can Google it, but every time I try to find out a definition of a specific genre via Google, I just get fuzzy answer that don't agree very well with each other, so I'll just ask where I heard the expression first, which is here.

[Randy Johnson]

My definition of cozies are mystery stories that don't have a lot of blood and violence. They may have a murder or two, but they don't dwell on the harder side of crime. Some of them these days involve food and recipes(I don't read them myself so I can't be sure. Agatha Christie's mysteries would be cozies. Some put Sherlock Holmes in that genre. Today's crime novels, at least some of them, dig into the seamier side of life.

[theophylact]

If you want to read an inverse cozy, try Jo Walton's Farthing. Starts as a typical English country-house murder, with typical English upper-class twits -- and progresses to an utterly bleak alternate-history political horror story.

[Cynthia Dalton]

I read almost everything,so of course cozies are included although they're not my favorites. Many of the recent ones are rather weak. I do enjoy Susan Albert-Wittig and Diane Mott Davidson, I think because the protagonists seem more real than many other authors. With series there is the problem of why would anyone live someplace where there are so many murders though.

[Nikitta]

My definition of cozies are mystery stories that don't have a lot of blood and violence. They may have a murder or two, but they don't dwell on the harder side of crime. Some of them these days involve food and recipes(I don't read them myself so I can't be sure. Agatha Christie's mysteries would be cozies. Some put Sherlock Holmes in that genre. Today's crime novels, at least some of them, dig into the seamier side of life.

Thanks for that definition. I looked for definitions of mystery and crime fiction in Wikipedia to find out what on earth the difference is between them. There seems to be a lot of overlapping there, but generally that kind of stories don't appeal to me, so I'd imagine that cozies wouldn't either.

I guess that's my answer for the question originally asked.

[PixelFish]

I rather liked Farthing, and second it as a good read. (The sequel is out soon.)

I'm a big Agatha Christie fan. My favourites are the Secret at Chimneys and the Man in the Brown Suit.

[LawrenceSchimel]

I'm a big Agatha Christie fan. My favourites are the Secret at Chimneys and the Man in the Brown Suit.

THE MAN IN THE BROWN SUIT is great. Reminded me a lot of Mary Stewart's non-Arthurian work (I read the Stewarts before the Christie, although they were published in the opposite order).