Cozy Mystery Novels: A Starter Pack
Read that last sentence with the appropriate eye roll, because that's how I wrote it. Entering middle age made me realize that marinating in perpetual darkness wasn't doing me any good. I feel better when I temper that darkness with witty stories that highlighted community and care.
If you're never dipped into the joyful glory of a cozy mystery, here's where to start.
I want a charming mystery with sparkling prose
Thus Was Adonis Murdered
Caudwell's four books featuring a group of young London lawyers and their mentor, the Oxford professor Hilary Tamar, may be the platonic ideal of a good mystery series: intelligent and elegantly mannered, filled with sparkling prose, pithy dialogue and characters making terrible choices. Start at the beginning with 'Thus Was Adonis Murdered,' ostensibly about a murder in Venice, and prepare to be utterly charmed.
If you've read it and loved it, try … Emma Lathen's John Putnam Thatcher series or Jane Haddam's Gregor Demarkian books.
I'd like some modern-day Miss Marples
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