This week I’ve found myself distracted by wrestling with this conundrum: how can a crime be cosy?
Yes, my current book is proving particularly troublesome. And yes, this problem is a nice distraction from tearing my hair out. But it’s not entirely irrelevant to my work in progress. I discovered this when a kind friend asked about my book, when we bumped into each other at the cheese counter.
Now, you don’t launch into a breakdown of the plot in those circumstances, do you? (I’m editing. The plot might still change.) So you reach for a short answer that will give a flavour of what you’re doing.
A single sentence on my hero’s journey? Um – he does a lot of things but his real journey is in his head. Not really one-sentence material.
So I tried to think of an appropriate shorthand description of the book’s genre. And I couldn’t. Not on the spur of the moment. Mystery? In places yes but…. Historical? Certainly but not in a periwig and snuff sort of way, which is how my interlocutor would have interpreted it.
All I could manage was that it wasn’t really a romance this time.
“Ah. Cosy crime?” he suggested helpfully.
To my shame, and flailing wildly, I said “Up to a point,” and quickly asked about his grandchildren.
Cosy into Crime Doesn’t Go
It has bothered me ever since because, as a reader, I really mistrust the Cosy Crime identification. It sounds dismissive. And that’s not fair to the huge variety, drama and delight that some of these books deliver.
I have several friends who write crime novels marketed as “cosy”. Some have started recently. Some have been writing it for many years. And several of them dislike the term ferociously. I have never really understood how the term came into existence.
The first meaning of crime is “an action or lack of action which is punishable by law.” Etymologically it comes from the Latin “crimen” meaning judgement or offence. The second and most widely understood meaning is even harsher: “an action or activity considered to be evil, shameful, or wrong.”
Cosy, on the other hand means: “giving a feeling of comfort, warmth, and relaxation.”
Show me the crime that does that, and I’ll say you’re a con man’s dream ticket. There is no Venn diagram on which cosy and crime overlap. Nevertheless, it is a label that publishers and booksellers use widely.
Clearly it’s nonsense as a definition. As a descriptor of several disparate qualities to be found in a single book it is imperfect. I have not yet found two analysts who agree what are the essential and/or incidental qualities which are embraced by the term.
Librarians (librarians are my heroes) have given it a go though they use the word “mystery” rather than “crime” which smooths my ruffled feathers somewhat.
Wikipedia tries too, contrasting it with what it calls hardboiled fiction. It doesn’t offer as many possible constituent parts as the Librarians, basically saying what cosy crime doesn’t contain i.e. that nasty stuff like sex and violence which is all off the page.
So that’s what is says on the label – cosy crime is soft boiled, won’t give you nightmares. Compelling? Not so much.
Soft Boiled for Sissies?
I haven’t been able to date the first use of the term. I don’t think I was aware of it until well into this century. Wikipedia, quoting Novel Suspects , says it was coined in the late 20th Century when some writers tried to emulate the novels of the Golden Age of detective fiction, as an antidote to the rise of tougher stuff, particularly in America.
There is an inference that I draw here which may not be justified. But I feel it very strongly: that cosy crime is the soft option for readers who can’t face the darkness. (Oh, and who probably recoil from sex, swearing, pain and fear and serial killers too.) In other words, a reader with a more literary backbone wouldn’t waste their time with on it.
My Reading History
As a reader, I’m no expert on crime fiction. But I’ve read a fair amount of it over a life of rainy days and Sundays. And by the nineties I was starting to read the blurbs of crime novels in my library very, very carefully before I borrowed them. “Psychological thriller” had become a term of art. The Gothic had come winging back from Jane Eyre and The Murders in the Rue Morgue, only now it was pathological.
The earliest I was aware of was The Silence of the Lambs (1988). Just the title conjures up terror and revulsion. Even now, I can’t type it without shuddering and wanting to cry. And yes, it gave me nightmares.
Over the years, I’ve read crime novels that unsettled me (Tiger in the Smoke by Marjorie Allingham), broke my heart (Tomorrow’s Ghost by Anthony Price), kept me on the edge of my seat (The Zero Trap by Paula Gosling) and brought my heart into my mouth (anything by Sarah Paretsky). The emotions were cathartic and the stories all left me, often sobered, but in a calm state of mind.
But then, none of those authors was trying to give me nightmares.
Non Pathological Crime?
Far too many of the crime novels I was picking up in the 90s didn’t seem to want to do anything but give the readers bigger and nastier nightmares. I read them with increasing dread for the characters and ended up floundering in unreason and nameless horror. So I learned the telltale key words in the blurb (serial killer, troubled past are a couple to watch for) and, mostly, have steered clear since.
My point is that books that are being marketed as cosy are first and foremost not about pathological states and characters. They have their characters’ normal life running along as a counterpoint to the crime in question. The great PD James said that crime fiction was about justice. Hers certainly was. Justice along with a return of the book’s world to sanity.
Would she be labelled cosy now?
The wondrous Mary Stewart, another candidate for the cosy label, wrote books labelled at the time “modern Gothics”, “woman in jeopardy” or “romantic suspense”.
In her very first novel, Madam Will You Talk, one of her characters actually articulates the affect that the best non pathological crime fiction achieves. “I love you Charity,” he said again. “You’re so sweet and you’re so sane. My God, I think you could almost make the world seem a sweet, sane place again, the way it used to be before…”
Neither run away from real life trauma, conflict or pain. Nor do current so-called cosy crime writers Lesley Cookman, Liz Fielding, Kate Hardy, or Richard Osman. They just give them a proper resolution.
And so…
Even after all this, I have no idea whether a publisher would think my present work in progress counts as a cosy crime novel or not. But I now have a shorthand description for its content and genre ready for the next time somebody asks me. Gentleman in Jeopardy, it is. I like it.
Sophie
Wow! Gentleman in Jeopardy would make a great title! Love it. The cosy label can be a drawback as it raises particular expectations. I think, if your wip is historical, you can stick with historical mystery. That’s my label. And I prefer traditional to cosy. That seems to conjure up a more Golden Age idea of non-violent and non-horrific. It’s all in the puzzle, not the violence.
Thank you for your wise words, Liz. I’m banking them for when I get to the end of sodding editing.
YES!!! YES!!! YES!!! Thank you so much for this, Sophie. After years of railing against this term – which was not in general use in the UK when my career in crime began – I have given myself a new label: “Murder in the Traditional Manner”. I also prefer the “Mystery” definition, but I fear I’m beating my head against a brick wall. I do love Gentlemen in Jeopardy. We must fight for its recognition.
You’re very welcome, Lesley.
I’m afraid alliteration has much to do with this label. Though cozy mystery does seem to be used quite a lot in the States, bless them.
I imagine the “cosy” in this instance implies the opposite of terror. I have my own trigger words in the crime genre. “Psychological” is an immediate turn off. I don’t doubt that I’m missing some great books, I live on my own and I have closed and deleted several books recently when the crime in the initial chapters was too horrific to contemplate. I like to sleep with the light off. Cosy is not a label I enjoy much, I prefer – as does my publisher – crime mystery. I do thoroughly approve of “Gentleman in Jeopardy”.
Forget what I said about my publisher. A quick look on Amazon and I see they have plastered “cozy” as an identifier all over the place. Very like my copy editing, my eyes were seeing what they wanted to see!
I read in the same way, Liz. I’m fine with being intrigued and of course I feel stuff about the characters it the book’s good. But once it turns to dread, I’m outta there.
And hugs on the seeing what you want to see. Or seeing what you meant to write. I’m afraid I do that all the time. AAAARGH!
I’m with you on the lights. At the age of 19 my then boyfriend persuaded me to read Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon, which is a sort of precursor to Silence of the Lambs. He then complained when I slept with the lights on for two weeks!
I attended the Romance Writers of Australia here in Adelaide recently. There was a workshop on “cosy crime”. Full disclosure. I did not attend it. However a close friend did. I think the woman delivering the workshop put Suzie off for life! So many rules! Nothing graphic, or even gritty. Definitely no sex, romantic or otherwise. No swearing. I had the impression from Suzie that anything I’d read that I had considered “cosy” was hors de la loi as far as this woman was concerned. And Suzie? She’s one of my critique Group. We once had to suggest very gently that her description of the dismemberment of a corpse with a chainsaw was, shall we say, a teensy bit outré. She’s not going to be writing cosies.
I have to admit that I do sometimes jump the odd paragraph of butchery, Elizabeth. It usually doesn’t mess up the impact of the story.
It’s the long drawn out evil on every page that I can’t take. And there seems to be an awful lot of it about.
I must say many of the books I’ve read that have been labelled as cosy in the UK are emotionally really gritty. Definitely not for sissies. Well, not sissies likely to get involved with the characters anyway.
Maybe they’re more rigorous about using the term in the USA.
Here I am, breaking the rules again. I did get a 1 star review from a woman who objected to a “swear”. Keeping it real… But only one. Oh, and I have romance. Slapped wrist.
Well there’s the problem in the nutshell. In the real world people swear… and are attracted to other people… and that’s actually part of the good, normal stuff that a murder disrupts. I want to see and hear it when it happens . And that’s the world I want to come back to, possibly wiser, kinder and more philosophical, when the murder has been solved.
So many rules? But as Sophie explains in the blog, no two authorities can agree on what cosy crime is. So how can there be such hard and fast rules? Answer: there’s can’t. As with so many aspects of writing, it’s hard to pin down any rules. And, often, the person who lectures about the “rules” is basically telling people to “do as I do” because the lecturer thinks they know it all. But with writing, no one knows it all. (Not even Dame Isadora, bless her pedantic cotton socks.)
When I started to write for publication it was for Mills and Boon and my agent told me they had strict rules and gave me a long list:of which all I can remember was what she said were the most important: no swearing, no adultery, no sex before marriage, no dead dogs. Then almost the first M&B I had read for 10 years was by Sarah Craven and it had 3 out of 4. And it was wonderful. (Adultery was the one missing.)
To the very last one, every mystery writer I loved and followed faithfully at some point jumped over the line into grisly psychological nastiness nightmarish horror. Every one. I couldn’t take it anymore.
Sorry, I meant to say that this was in the 90’s.
I do so agree, Michelle. I stopped reading a number of authors back then for exactly that reason. I blame the publishers, at least in part. I suspect they told the authors to up the gristle content because that would keep the punters coming. Only for me, it didn’t. And for others too, I fancy
My experience was similar, Michelle. It skewed the characters so one didn’t like them any more – or liked them so much that one didn’t want to read on in case they were a) horribly killed or b) the murderer. That’s when I learned to read blurbs very, very carefully.
I was listening to a very famous crime author talking on the radio last week. She wrote a cosyish series a long time ago, but she said that the character stopped talking to her. And then, as I know from a previous interview, she was on holiday in Italy where she visited a torture museum. From successful author to star in a single bound. I remember thinking at the time that the only way to make money writing was to write grisly crime. Still couldn’t do it.
Oh dear. No wonder the world is in such a mess.