The Best Cozy Mystery Books

I’ve been an avid reader of mysteries since I was a child, curling up on the sofa with a Nancy Drew or The Hardy Boys. But it wasn’t till the early 2000s that an article in the Wall Street Journal gave me an inkling of the genre I enjoyed reading: ‘cozy mysteries.’

This is the sub-branch of crime fiction for those who don’t want to read about gruesome deaths, drug addiction, criminal gangs or the emotional anguish of real crime. It’s not a place for the FBI or CIA (whose agents, in my view, belong in realistic spy books) or hard-boiled detectives (apologies Philip Marlowe!). At the same time, a cozy mystery can’t be too saccharine, and if a book includes recipes, that’s a big no-no for me. It also needs a good plot, with a satisfying and unexpected twist.

With that disclosure of my personal tastes done, here are some of favourites:

Any list of cozy mysteries has to start with Agatha Christie and, in particular, the books featuring Jane Marple, an elderly lady living in the fictional English village of St. Mary Mead. According to Agatha Christie, Miss. Marple had “some faint affinity with my own grandmother, also a pink and white pretty old lady who, although having led the most sheltered and Victorian of lives, nevertheless always appeared to be intimately acquainted with all the depths of human depravity.” Christie’s books really do stand the test of time, and I’m rarely disappointed when I pick one up. She nailed plot twists: I don’t think anyone since has done better. The one that has been frequently recommended on Five Books is A Murder is Annnounced; I also love 4.50 from Paddington.

Also dating back to the ‘golden age’ of mystery is one of my favourite mysteries of all time, Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey. I love all of Tey’s books, but this one really won my heart. It’s very cozy, opening with a scene at the kitchen table, but as with Agatha Christie’s novels, there is a touch of darkness:

One aspect of cozy mysteries that’s important to me is that they don’t take themselves too seriously, and personally, I do enjoy ridiculousness. A particular favourite is the Agatha Raisin series by the late M.C. Beaton. When the kids were very young and I was at home a lot, I would sit on the sofa and often laugh out loud as I was reading them (as the kids, aged 3, 2 and 1, hung out in the ‘play area’ behind the sofa). The title of the first book in the series sums up her approach, it’s called ‘The Quiche of Death’:

Also a lot of fun and dating from the early 2000s are the Fethering mysteries by Simon Brett, set in the fictional town of Fethering on the south coast of the UK. These feature Carole (spelt with an ‘e’), a strait-laced, retired civil servant and her more bohemian neighbour, Jude.  Like M.C. Beaton, this series highlights the foibles of life in a contemporary English village:

If you enjoy humour,  the most recent writer to nail the cozy mystery format is Richard Osman, the British comedian. You’ll see copies of his books everywhere. The first one he came out with, The Thursday Murder Club, is a really funny book:

Other books recommended on Five Books include An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972), by P.D. James and Gaudy Night (1935) by Dorothy Sayers:

Finally, if you’re in the mood for books that are set around a domestic environment with humour but veer out of it and start to break out more into the psychological thriller genre, you can do no better than Victorian novelist Wilkie Collins. I loved The Moonstone, which I read first. The Woman in White is one of my favourite books of all time: