Saturday, October 13: New York Minute
MAKE ME LAUGH!
by Angela Zeman
Someone asked recently, are “cozy” series selling less these days? Are they? Despite a lack of reliable statistics, I do seem to find ever-increasing numbers of new ones—new to me anyway—for which I am humbly grateful. Some days you feel like a nut, know what I mean?
On the morning of this writing, I scanned the Times and found four particularly nasty “family” murders (husbands, wives, babies). I retreated to the Science Section—not always a safe move. Diagrammed effects of E. coli on a digestive tract—do we need to know this? The last few weeks have been harsh. I dumped current events and fled to fiction. Val McDermid and John Connolly, I love you but you’ll have to wait. I am so completely ready for a cozy.
Cozy stories reputedly contain no overt violence, graphic gore, and/or graphic sex. Although I wouldn’t record it in Wikipedia, that definition sounds right enough. Some offerings contain what I would consider a sci-fi attitude towards pets, but I won’t quibble.
I especially enjoy “period” cozies, for instance Lindsey Davis’ series about Marcus Didius Falco—although my husband, an authoritative bookman, lists Falco as a “PI,” albeit an ancient Roman one. But this is my article, not his. Elizabeth Peters (Barbara Mertz) writes about Amelia Peabody, a fierce feminist archeologist, with entertaining gusto.
John Mortimer’s “Rumpole” always makes me happy. Also late beloved greats, well represented by A. Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, G. K. Chesterton, and Rex Stout…okay, maybe not all cozy writers, but they never cause nightmares, doesn’t that count?
Jerrilyn Farmer writes with a rare clarity and style, making her inventive ‘catering’ books rise, like cream, to the top. Her Flaming Luau of Death made me laugh out loud. One earlier book had the Pope emerge from a bathroom stall to politely exit a crime scene. I read that passage aloud to my entire family. Years ago, as a new member of the Chicago branch of MWA, I will never foget meeting Dorothy Cannell before the publication of her first book, the incomparable Thin Woman. With no idea how popular she would soon become, Dorothy pulled the proposed cover of the book from her tote bag to show me. Funny lady, with a wit that sneaks up on you and pulls the knots from your shoulders.
Yes, some of the writers or titles mentioned are not the most recent, but they are so memorable that I’m smiling as I write this. Smiling is good. These writers, and others unfairly left out, occupy honored places on my bookshelves.
But on that day when I crashed, when current events finally took me down, I prodded deeper in the stacks. I needed a SERIOUSLY fun cozy. And what to my wondering eyes should appear? Joan Hess’s O Little Town of Maggody. If it’s not a classic, it should be. Published in 1993. Whoever questions the power of the written word should check out the country song lyrics threading through the prose. No music included, but I can hear the tune in my head as I read.
And lest ye think that Joan’s Maggody, population 755, relates in no way to reality, let me tell you about my Aunt Virgie, a hairdresser in Heath, Kentucky. Now, Heath merited the attention of few roadmaps, but it could be found. It bellied-up neatly to East Paducah, a larger tract of civilization which in turned closely nudged Paducah itself. Everybody’s heard of Paducah. Aunt Virgie practiced her art in the back yard of her little house. My uncle Phil had built her the shoppe out of cinder blocks. The interior was painted in her favorite color, violet—as was her own hair, and also the bathroom in their house.
When my mother took me to visit Uncle Phil, who was her brother—known to her as “Brother”—and Aunt Virgie, I spent much time hiding, fearful of Aunt Virgie’s styling repertoire. (My mother, ever bargain-minded, considered any free haircut a good haircut—for me, not herself.) Aunt Virgie often and loudly despaired of me ever catching a man, flat-chested as I was (at eleven.) She’d put her hands on the back of her hips and shake her Aqua Net cemented, violet curls in sorrow over my misfortune.
Maggody lives. Joan Hess—not only a storyteller, but a historian.
Cozy writers deserve kudos from the mental health community for service beyond the imagination of most of us.
British cozies remain my first love, and one by one, you ticked my favorite authors. (I think Elizabeth Peters is American, but her characters are British Empire.) To your list, I’d have added Ellis Peters, who mastered plotting in a way I’d love to emulate.
Falco is a PI, but the stories are about his family, his mishaps, plumbers, and the Roman Empire. I want to hug Lindsey Davis– I mean crush her to my manly chest. (Sorry, that’s so un-British!)
Rumpole cracks me up. Reportedly, John Mortimer was mystified to learn that Americans loved his character. It didn’t hurt that Leo McKern played the title character; we all should be so fortunate.
To your definition of cozy, I’d add that they’re ‘small’. By that, I mean they don’t sprawl across world capitols (Falco, as usual, appears to be an exception), multiple generations, or involve casts of hundreds. Their focus is tight, sometimes one village, one family, one house, or even one room. In that regard, cozies and shorts have a lot in common.
Leo McKern couldn’t be more perfect. My husband and I are currently re-watching the Brother Cadfael episodes, starring Derek Jacobi, another casting triumph.
Lindsey Davis, in a speech at a convention one year, mentioned letters she gets from readers “correcting” details in her portrayal of Falco’s era. With cool aplomb she announced for the benefit of those critics–“I’M RIGHT.”
Barry is right — Falco is P.I. fiction, not cozy. The most defining characteristic of the cozy, even more important than the absence of on-stage violence, is that the detective be an amateur, i.e., Miss Marple and not Hercule Poirot. I would not remotely describe the Rumpole stories as cozies, either, because they frankly defy categorization — most of them aren’t even mysteries. Come on — the domestic lives of detectives are certainly not confined to the cozy label.
Likewise with Amelia Peabody and Brother Cadfael, whose exploits I would describe as mystery adventure stories rather than as cozies.
But you’re dead on the money with the now legendary Joan Hess and the fabulously talented Jerrilyn Farmer (despite her inclusion of some rather explicit sex, which usually disqualifies work from the cozy umbrella). I might also throw in Joanne Fluke for good measure.
The best definition I ever heard was that in a cosy people get killed but no one gets hurt.
I have always loved Leo McKern (remember him in the movie Help! as the high priest? Remember him as the key No. 2 in The Prisoner? As Cromwell in Man For All Seasons?) so I expected to love Rumpole and I did. (Surely my character Shanks owes him something.)
McKern wrote a memoir called Just Resting. You will not be surprised to know that he was very different (especially politically) from Rumpole. The book is quite interesting – he lost his eye in an industrial accident as a teenager, for example.
If all the mystery world were divided into toughs and cozies and I were forced to choose one camp or the other, I would have to declare myself a cozy. But the problem I have with many (even most) of the books now labelled cozy is the lack of a fair-play puzzle plot.
Speaking of definitions of “cozy,” I noticed that recently various yahoo writer groups have been discussing parameters for mystery subgenres. It’s a discussion that arises with regularity. An eternal wrangle.
James Lincoln Warren calls Amelia Peabody and Brother Cadfael stories “mystery adventure.” That’s a new phrase to me, but it sounds sensible.
Years ago Barry and I drew a literal tree (by request) for the Philadelphia Inquirer as a simplistic graphic portrayal of mystery subgenres and their off-shoots, layering the branches to suggest a rough time-line. The Inquirer couldn’t fit the tree to the page, so somebody re-arranged the branches, to bizarre results.
I would consider one non-historical progenitor of “mystery adventure” stories Margery Allingham’s early Albert Campion mysteries, filled as they are with derring-do, but which are usually classified under the rubric of “Traditional British” along with Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Josephine Tey, etc.