Writer of cosy mysteries, Isabella Muir, is the Chindi Authors’ Author of the Week! To celebrate this, and the lead up to Agatha Christie’s birthday, she is taking part in a series of blog posts about her own Sussex Crime series. 

Welcome to my blog, Isabella, it is great to have you, and I am looking forward to finding out more about you and your work, as you explain what makes a cosy mystery.

Over to Isabella …

In this lead up to the birthday of that great Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, I have been exploring what makes for a cosy mystery. It seems that the term ‘cosy’ was first coined in the late 20th century when various writers produced work in an attempt to re-create the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.

When I investigate Wikipedia I discover that my Sussex Crime series fits perfectly into the genre, even though when I wrote the first in the series, The Tapestry Bag, I hadn’t ever considered the genre and knew little about it. I hadn’t planned to write a cosy mystery, but it seems that my young amateur sleuth, Janie Juke, fits the bill just perfectly. Let’s take a look at some of the suggested criteria and see why…

The detectives in such stories are nearly always amateurs, and are frequently women. These characters are typically well educated, intuitive, and hold jobs that bring them into constant contact with other residents of their community and the surrounding region (eg, caterer, innkeeper, librarian, teacher, dog trainer, shop owner, reporter).

We first meet amateur sleuth, Janie Juke, when she has taken on the job of a librarian responsible for a mobile library van. The Sussex Crime series is set in the late 1960s in Sussex, when mobile libraries were a popular feature in most towns. As Janie travels around the seaside resort of Tamarisk Bay she is at the very heart of the community and is happy to lend an ear to anyone who wants to chat!

Like other amateur detectives, they typically have a contact on the police force who can give them access to important information about the case at hand, but the contact is typically a spouse, lover, friend, or family member rather than a former colleague. Dismissed by the authorities in general as nosy busybodies, particularly if they are middle-aged or elderly women, the detectives in cosy mysteries are thus left free to eavesdrop, gather clues, and use their native intelligence and intuitive “feel” for the social dynamics of the community to solve the crime.

Janie’s father, Philip, spent a brief time as a detective before he had an accident, which has left him blind.  Father and daughter have a very close relationship, which means that Philip acts as a perfect sounding board as Janie tries to gather clues and solve the crime. In the first book of the series, The Tapestry Bag, Janie uses her intuition and is really feeling her way.  She successfully solves the crime and as a result is approached to take on a new case in the second book in the series, Lost Property, when someone is prepared to pay her.  Quite a development.

The murderers in cosies are typically neither psychopaths nor serial killers, and, once unmasked, are usually taken into custody without violence. They are generally members of the community where the murder occurs and able to hide in plain sight, and their motives—greed, jealousy, revenge—are often rooted in events years, or even generations, old. The murderers are typically rational and often highly articulate, enabling them to explain, or elaborate on, their motives after their unmasking.

There will be no  spoilers here (!) but suffice it to say that the criminal in each of the books in the Sussex Crime series manage to ‘hide in plain’ sight.  Just as the suggested explanation above, their motives are certainly ‘greed, jealousy, revenge’ and I think that when the reader listens to the criminals explaining their motives they will agree that they appear very rational – maybe too rational!

The cosy mystery usually takes place in a town, village, or other community small (or otherwise insular) enough to make it believable that all the principal characters know, and may well have long-standing social relationships with, each other. The amateur detective is usually a gregarious, well-liked individual who is able to get the community members to talk freely about each other.

Janie Juke was born and brought up in Tamarisk Bay, a sleepy seaside resort in Sussex.  Her father has always lived there too.  As a result, the Juke family know all the locals and Janie has the chance to enlist the help of friends and neighbours when it comes to solving the crimes. In the second book in the series, Lost Property, Janie teams up with friend and young journalist, Libby Frobisher, and between them they ferret out clues and manage to get people talking to and about each other, which eventually leads them to solving the mystery.

Cosy mystery series frequently have a prominent thematic element introduced by the detective’s job, pet or hobby.

What could be better as a hobby for a librarian than reading books!  But not just any books.  In The Tapestry Bag readers discover that Janie Juke has a hero and that hero is Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot! Extracts from The Mysterious Affair at Styles introduce each chapter and Janie frequently tries to approach the case with Poirot in mind.

In this extract from The Tapestry Bag Janie’s father, Philip, prompts his daughter to tap into all she has learned from her reading…

“‘Do you know what I think?’ he said. ‘Take it back to basics. Blank out anything you know about her and start again. Be thorough, make lists.’

‘Are you teasing me now?’ Dad and Greg were forever teasing me about my inability to follow a system. Like I say, I am the least likely person to be a librarian, or an amateur detective, come to that.

‘There’s something else you can do.’

I waited.

‘Make use of all those Agatha Christie novels you’ve read and re-read since you were a little‘un.’

‘What do you mean ‘make use’?’

‘Search for patterns, clues, that’s what Poirot does.’

‘Nice idea, but that’s fiction. This is real.’

‘It won’t hurt to try.’

Dad’s advice for me to start from scratch inspired me to get organised. His suggestion about Agatha’s Poirot made me smile, but when I thought about it a bit more I realised it might just help. A few weeks earlier I’d started re-reading The Mysterious Affair at Styles, so I decided to scour the book to see if I could glean any tips from the wonderful Poirot and his sidekick, Hastings.”

Isabella continues…

This blog post is one of a series, which leads up to Agatha Christie’s birthday and national #cozymysteryday on 15^thSeptember. To find out more about the great Queen of Crime and help to celebrate Agatha Christie’s birthday, then look out for the other blog posts in the series: Agatha Christie and Isabella Muir | Agatha Christie – a child of her time | Agatha Christie and the sixties  |  The good, the bad and the ugly |  Investigating the past  |  Agatha Christie and Janie Juke

As a present to you, on Agatha’s behalf, I am pleased to announce that the first book in my Sussex Crime series – The Tapestry Bag– will be available on Kindle for just £0.99p for one week only – grab it while you can!

And there’s more! Receive the FREE Sussex Crime novella, Divided we Fall when you sign up to receive Isabella’s newsletter, with cozy mystery news and views, special offers and so much more. Just click here.xx

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog Isabella. I wish you every success with being Author of the Week, and hope you enjoy Agatha Christie’s birthday celebrations.

Isabella Muir is the author of the Sussex Crime Mysteryseries: BOOK 1: THE TAPESTRY BAG | BOOK 2: LOST PROPERTY | BOOK 3: THE INVISIBLE CASE | Her latest novel is:THE FORGOTTEN CHILDREN

Discover more about Isabella and her work via: Twitter | Facebook | website | Goodreads