Reading the Cozy Mystery: Critical Essays on an Underappreciated Subgenre

by Phyllis M. Betz (Editor)

Overview

With their intimate settings, subdued action and likeable characters, cozy mysteries are rarely seen as anything more than light entertainment. The cozy, a subgenre of crime fiction, has been historically misunderstood and often overlooked as the subject of serious study. This anthology brings together a groundbreaking collection of essays that examine the cozy mystery from a range of critical viewpoints.

The authors engage with the standard classification of a cozy, the characters who appear in its pages, the environment where the crime occurs and how these elements reveal the cozy story's complexity in surprising ways. Essays analyze cozy mysteries to argue that Agatha Christie is actually not a cozy writer; that Columbo fits the mold of the cozy detective; and that the stories' portrayals of settings like the quaint English village reveal a more complicated society than meets the eye.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476677279
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Publication date:	03/09/2021
Pages:	236
Sales rank:	1,003,469
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.47(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Phyllis M. Betz is a professor emerita of English from La Salle University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She lives in Burlington, New Jersey.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vi

Introduction: A Cat. A Craft. A Cookie. A Cozy. Phyllis M. Betz 1

Contemporary Cozy Mysteries, Agatha Christie and the 1990s: Six Steps Toward a Definition Marty S. Knepper 17

The Cozy from the Margins: The Archetypes of Home and Heroism from Inside and Outside the Modern Cozy Susan Rowland 49

Counterpointing the Cozy: Louise Penny's Three Pines Paula T. Connolly 65

Is the Cozy a Tailor-Made Style for Historical Crime Set in the 1920s and 1930s? Jennifer S. Palmer 79

Displaced Controversies: The Paradoxes of the Cozy Setting Phyllis M. Betz 94

This Cozy England: England and Englishness in Cozy Mystery Series Susan K. Martin Kylie Mirmohamadi 113

Extending Cozy Boundaries Kathryn Heltne Swanson 130

The Body in the Library: The Library in the Cozy Mystery Mary P. Freier 144

Aurora Teagarden, the Cozy and the Southern Goth Jessica Gildersleeve 156

Clara and Solange: Two Very Modern Detectives in a Very Cozy World Jon Wilkins 169

A Likeable Man: Columbo as Cozy Detective Stephen Cloutier 188

The Best of Both Worlds: Being Cozy and Hard-Boiled in Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe Sally Beresford-Sheridan 204

About the Contributors 225

Index 227