What do you know about a whodunnit? A mystery genre deep-dive

Something about this season of cold weather and long, dark nights makes us want to read mysteries. Whether you like 'em cozy, hard-boiled, or realistic and by the book, there's something in this genre for everyone. Join us as we follow the clues to learn about the history, make-up, and readers of the mystery genre.

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Sources: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20090719003858/http://www.historyofthemystery.com/crime_and_punishment.php?page=35 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_fiction

https://americanwritersmuseum.org/many-writers-many-forms-mystery/

https://web.archive.org/web/20090719004017/

https://lithub.com/agatha-christie-is-the-best-selling-novelist-in-history/

https://archive.org/details/sim_publishers-weekly_1929-10-05_116_14/page/1728/mode/2up 

https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-fiction/popular-mystery-tropes-for-writers

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20090504/4567-some-like-it-mild-cozy-mysteries.html 

Moser, S. & Xhignesse, M. (2023). A Garden of One’s Own. Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, 9(1). https://doaj.org/article/c742434a58f74246a086d0fcfc90416b 

Vester, K. (2015). Bodies to Die for: Negotiating the Ideal Female Body in Cozy Mystery Novels. Journal of Popular Culture, 48(1), 31–43.

https://bookriot.com/diverse-cozy-mysteries/

Transcript

[All Books Aloud theme music and intro] 

Elizabeth: Well, hi Martha,

Martha: Hey, Liz

Elizabeth: how are you?

Martha: I am doing great. It's been a while though.

Elizabeth: It has been a while. So as we, said at the end of the last season, we're not doing a regular schedule anymore. We're just doing an episode when the mood strikes us. And the mood has struck right now because it is coming into the time of year [00:01:00] fall. We just went through spooky season.

The nights are longer. It's cold where you might want to read a mystery. And so the topic that we are gonna be talking about today is a deep dive on the mystery genre, right?

Martha: Yes, the mood has struck a and it's time to talk about mysteries. I'm excited because I'm not a big mystery girly, so I can't wait to learn more about the genre and hear your thoughts Liz.

Elizabeth: Yeah, , this episode should pair great with our fantasy episode where you are the one that is a fantasy reader and you , held my hand and , took me through learning about fantasy and learning about some of the sub genres that I might enjoy based on other things that I read.

So this, , could be the same thing with mysteries because I am a big mystery reader, which listeners will know if you've ever paid attention to, what I'm reading at any given time, I usually have a mystery going either as a print book or an audio book. Before we get into that though, speaking [00:02:00] of which, what are you reading right now, Martha?

Martha: I am reading Slew Foot by Brom. Actually, I just finished it. It was one of my spooky season reads, but I haven't started another print book, so that's the one I wanna talk about. , It's not a new book. It was published in 2021, but for some reason I feel like it's in the zeitgeist right now. S probably because of Book Talk or Bookstagram or something, but I have seen a few people who have read it and enjoyed it. One of the girls in my book club specifically, posted about how much she liked it, and I really trust her judgment, so I put it on my spooky TBR 

Elizabeth: I feel like I've heard of it. It has a little bit of, a witchy vibe, right.

Martha: Yes it does, but it's categorized as horror, . It's a little bit of a departure for me for that reason, but it's kind of a historical fiction, fantasy, horror. All wrapped into one. It's [00:03:00] set in colonial New England in Connecticut. So it has that witch hunt element to it.

But the twist, at least the twist in my mind is that it's kind of like, well, what if she was a witch? What would that look like? For real? So there's also a character who may or may not be the devil, but he's having an internal struggle about who he is and how he wants to be.

Elizabeth: Oh my God, I love that.

Martha: Yeah. Yeah, it's really good.

And the horror element of it, I didn't find it to be scary. It's just a little graphic. So if you're sensitive to violence, definitely read the, trigger warnings before you start, but I highly recommend it to anyone who's into any of those things..

And then I am, I'm laughing because [00:04:00] I'm back to reading Harry Potter in October, November, December. I took a year off last year. I don't know if listeners have been with us that long and remember, but I usually read Harry Potter or listen to the Jim Dale version every year. And I took last year off, but now I'm back and I still love it as much as ever.

That's what I am reading. What are you reading?

Elizabeth: Well, it's funny when you were talking about Slewfoot, I was kind of laughing to myself because I am also reading a witchy book. So again, I think it's just this time of year it calls to us. , I'm reading Chocolat by Joanne Harris, which a lot of people will have probably seen the movie

with Johnny Depp and Juliette Binoche. It came out in 2000, so I guess maybe not all of our listeners will have seen that movie. I remember it very vividly and remember loving it, but I've never read the book and, [00:05:00] I think what put me in mind of reading it was that I recently listened to a podcast episode with Joanne Harris and she is a really cool woman and she has done a lot of things in her life and she's written a lot of other books.

This was the book that sort of hit, but she's written a lot of books and she's never let the success of this book trap her into one genre or trap her into only writing that type of book. So I found the interview with her really interesting, but it also made me want to, , actually read this book.

And I think when I'm done reading it, I will also watch the movie again. It's been a really long time since I've watched the movie, but as usual, I'm finding that there is. S more to the book than you get in the movie, right? , The story has a richness, which is obvious. You can't achieve that in a movie, really the same way that you can in a book.

, But with Vianne's character, who is Juliette Binoche's character, the main character, there is a lot more witchiness. , She actually has powers [00:06:00] in the book that she's reluctant to own. And I, I don't remember that being as much of an element in the movie. I feel like it hinged a little bit more on just this idea that there was a little bit of an atmosphere around her.

But in the book, there's more to that and, I'm really, really liking it. It's very short and it's a very quick read. I'm almost done with it. I just started it a few days ago, 

Martha: I have not actually seen the movie or read the book.

Elizabeth: You haven't seen the movie?

Martha: No, I only know of it. I think I only know of it because it's in other movies. I can't think of what it is, but there's like some character in a show or a movie that's watching it and they reference it.

Elizabeth: It's really good. You should definitely, well, you should read the book, but you should definitely watch the movie.

Martha: I had no idea it had a witchy element at all. ,

Elizabeth: yeah, it's not really overt, she's not,

doing spells and [00:07:00] stirring a cauldron, but it's just this idea that I actually really love that exists in a lot of books that are about witchcraft, are about witches where it's like. You know what, if witches are real and they're actually just like everyone else, but just a couple of clicks away,

, She's a single mom who comes into town and opens up a chocolate shop, which we learn. Is her trade. And everywhere that they move, she opens up , a version of this chocolate shop. And they move around a lot because she moved around a lot with her mom. And so she's a single woman.

She has a business, she's try to make it the chocolate, the description of the chocolates are absolutely mouth watering. So if you like reading food descriptions, that's a reason to read it right there. But her mom was really into reading tarot and scrying, you can use a lot of different mediums, but it's basically a divination process. . And this person receives prophetic visions from whatever the item is that they're using.

And so the idea in the book, which I'm not all the [00:08:00] way through it, so I don't actually know how far it goes, but the idea is that she has inherited these powers from her mom, but she has rejected making it her whole life and making her living that way. Her mom made a living by reading , people's Tarot cards and doing scrying and all that stuff.

And she's leaned away from that. And she's just trying to be a normal person, but she can't, . Get away from the fact that it's in her. And so that's the thing in the movie that they make into like, oh, she's really intuitive, is that she always knows people's favorite chocolate when they walk into the shop because she reads them she reads their aura or she can feel their emotions or whatever.

So yeah, it's interesting in the way that it's not jokey. It's like, you know what? If this was something that's real and that fits into our everyday world, and it's just something that's a little bit beyond our understanding, you

know? 

Martha: And so much more meaning and metaphor in the book of like inheriting traits from your parents and trying to [00:09:00] run away from them, so to speak. But really you can't. You have to deal with it head on.

Elizabeth: . I'm really enjoying it. I recommend it. And then for my audiobook, I am listening to, and I have been listening to for all of October and the early part of November, the Woman in White by Wilkee Collins, which is thought by many to be the first mystery novel.

So it's very apropos for our topic today. It is also incredibly long. So that's the reason I've been listening to it for so long.

I started reading it as a print book, and it was printed in one of those really old books where the paper is really thin, like a bible.

Martha: Oh yeah.

Elizabeth: And so when I first got it, I thought it was just like normal length book. But then when I realized how thin the paper was and how small the print was, I was like, oh my God, this is a 600 page book.

So I started listening to it and you know, it's a 26 hour audio book. And so I'm on hour, I [00:10:00] think 18 at this point. But anyway, I actually am really enjoying it and I'm gonna stick it out. , It's very overwritten in the way that Victorian books tended to be. Sort of like Charles Dickens. If you were to put a modern day copy editor , onto this manuscript, they would easily cut out 300 pages. But also, it builds up the suspense a lot more because it doesn't just get right to the point.

So I actually have been enjoying it. And , the premise of it is that , there's this young man , who lives in London and is a painting teacher, is a gentleman but is lower rung gentry, so needs to work for a living, doesn't own land, doesn't own property, and teaches watercolor painting and gets a job in, , Cumbria, which is very north.

Northern England to teach two ladies how to do watercolor painting. And the night that he finds out that he got the job and he's [00:11:00] walking home, it's very late at night. It's one o'clock in the morning and a woman all in white, thus the title of the book, comes up behind him and startles him and is a ghostly figure.

But she's a real woman. So at first he thinks she's a ghost because she's dressed all and white. She has really pale skin, but she's a real woman who is asking him directions and seems very scared and skittish, like something bad has just happened to her. And he's a really nice guy and so he helps her out.

And then later he discovers a woman all in white has escaped from an asylum nearby. And so he's like, oh wow. Okay. Uh. Yeah, that's weird. And so goes on with his life, goes up to his new job, basically forgets about the interaction, but then it turns out that there's a connection between this woman and white and the people who he goes to work for.

So that's all I'll say to not spoil anything that's basically the setup. But what I just relayed, which is the setup of the book is like the first a hundred pages of [00:12:00] the book. It's like,

Martha: Yeah.

Elizabeth: it's like, so, , I am enjoying it, but , it's very long. , But it is relevant also to the topic that we're talking about

Martha: Yeah. Very apropos.

Elizabeth: yeah.

Martha: So other than the woman in white, Liz, what's your experience with mystery thus far, or your early experiences maybe.

Elizabeth: . I'm a huge mystery reader now, but I wasn't always , I always loved mystery tv. I don't know if you remember when we were kids, I was always watching Law and Order, like forever watching Law and Order. Especially law and Order SVU And as an adult, I don't really watch law and order anymore, but give me a British mystery show or a British crime show, , a British murder mystery.

And I'm definitely watching it. It basically doesn't matter. I'll watch any, and there are a lot of them. For some reason British people make a lot of murder shows.

Martha: Yeah. Which is kind of combining [00:13:00] two of your favorite things, which is mystery and British culture

Elizabeth: Oh, I thought you, I thought you were gonna say British people and murder

Martha: Yeah. Well, well, I mean, we could say that.

Elizabeth: It's really funny though, not to go too much on a tangent right away, but when that whole, , TikTok meme that was . About men being always able to talk about the Roman Empire, no matter what. They always think about it, what's going around. I saw a lot of women doing tiktoks wondering what women's version of the Roman Empire was ,

and then I started to seeing a lot of videos were, people were saying that , murder and true crime are a woman's Roman empire. , Did you see videos like that?

Martha: I don't remember that, but I can totally see how and why that would be. I know a lot of women are into true crime. True Crime podcasts are some of the most popular on the charts. 

Elizabeth: You must have seen 'em even if you don't remember, but talking about books, women [00:14:00] are the main readers for these genres as well. So there does seem to be something going on with women being drawn to these types of stories. , So I always loved the TV show element. I wasn't a big mystery reader because as I've talked about on the podcast before, I, used to have this snobbishness around quote unquote genre fiction.

That I was really her only hurting myself with thinking that the only books that were worth my time to read were literary fiction books. But once I took Nancy Pearl's class and got over that, I have read a lot of different types of mystery and Cozy Mystery is definitely my favorite.

I love a cozy mystery. I especially love listening to them., My audio books are usually cozy mysteries. , There's something that's comforting about it, which we'll probably get to talking about, but knowing that they'll always get the bad guy in the end.

Martha: Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth: It just is. Yeah.

Martha: It is cozy,

like in happy place. Remember [00:15:00] that?

Elizabeth: Yeah, that's right. I do. Yeah. When she start, she's like, why do you like these like gruesome stories? She's like, it's cozy.

Martha: though. It's

Elizabeth: Yeah. So what about you? What are your experiences with mystery? I.

Martha: Um, well I played Clue when we were kids.

Elizabeth: Oh, that's right. Oh my God. Clue. I loved that game.

Martha: Yeah. I feel like we did. We loved that game. So that was probably the earliest, mystery adjacent activity I can remember. And then obviously growing up in the Brookbank household, we did watch a lot of law and order.

We all liked it. SVU and who doesn't love Olivia Benson. Right.

Elizabeth: Oh my god. Olivia Benson

Martha: But for some reason. It didn't really translate into me loving the genre. We read Boxcar Children as kids too, which is kind of like a mystery.

Elizabeth: are those mysteries.

Martha: I think so. 'cause they're kind of solving little predicaments, 

Elizabeth: that's [00:16:00] right?

That's right. They are. I definitely remember reading the box card children. 

Hold on. I now need to know. Yeah. The children encounter many adventures and mysteries in their neighborhood or at locations where they visit with their grandfather after they find out who their grandfather is. Sorry, spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't read Boxcar

Martha: Well, I feel like the statute of limitations on that is over. 

Elizabeth: Yeah, no. Well remembered. They do solve mysteries in the Boxcar children.

Martha: Yeah. But from there it never really translated for me. I think the only mystery I've read recently that I can think of is the Perfect Marriage by Geneva Rose. But that was more so just 'cause I loved her social media accounts. She's so funny. , She started trolling her critics who would send her letters about how she should get out of literature and stuff.

And I just thought she was hilarious. So I was curious about what her writing was like, but that might not even really be a [00:17:00] mystery. It's. S could, I don't know. 'cause I'm not as versed in the genre, but it could be a more of a thriller, maybe even.

Elizabeth: Yeah, I haven't read that book, but from what I know about it, I think, I'd probably say it's a thriller, but there is a lot of crossover between mystery and thriller. There are a lot of books that you could easily say are one or the other.

Martha: But I do love cozy fantasy like we've talked about, and romance of course. So I'm intrigued by Cozy Mystery specifically because I've heard from you that there's a lot of similarities, so I'm interested to learn more about that.

Elizabeth: Yeah, there are a lot of similarities. Before we talk about that though, let's talk about, , the history of the genre I do read mysteries, but I did some research, , for this as is my way. 

Martha: Mm-hmm. 

Elizabeth: I some. People, , actually trace the origins of crime stories back really, really far. There's a quite esoteric website that [00:18:00] I found that only exists on the way back machine called a website for fans of mystery novels, which is a very like late 1990s website.

Everything is, really bright colors and very large writing. , But it was really interesting and well researched. And so it talked about how, , Beowulf in English is sort of a crime story. The Greeks and the Romans had stories of crime. But putting that aside, I think most people would say that mystery books and stories date somewhere in the early to mid 18 hundreds.

, And it came about when our modern conception of law and order and policing was starting to come into existence. . 

Martha: Oh, that's interesting. And it makes sense.

Elizabeth: Right. Because , so much of mystery novels is about catching the bad guy and before there were people to catch the bad guy, what would it be about? So, like I said, the woman in White is often thought to be the first mystery novel. It was published in 1860, , but there was a [00:19:00] short story before that in 1841 by Edgar Allen Poe, that was called The Murders in the Roux Morgue,. so that's the first mystery story. But then the woman in white is thought of as the first mystery novel. And, , the murders in the Roux Morgue actually sounds really creepy, and I kind of wanna read it now, after doing this research.

Martha: ,

And the 18 hundreds is really when novels in general start entering the scene. Right?

Elizabeth: Yeah, Jane Austen was writing in the late 17 hundreds, early 18 hundreds. , And there were other people who were writing what we would recognize as a novel before her, but it was sort of getting solidified around that time. So this time period, , 1841 is right at the beginning of the Victorian era. So I would say that novels are definitely established by this point, but they're new-ish, right? They are less than a hundred years old.

It sort of depends on your definition of a novel, but yeah.

Martha: Right. So novels are now here, they're a thing, [00:20:00] and now policing is on the scene, and the combination of the two.

Elizabeth: Mm-hmm. And what is maybe an intrinsic fascination with murder, as we were just talking about by one or more genders , at the least. , There are also two novellas that get mentioned in this same conversation about , the origin of the mystery novel that I should not neglect to talk about.

So one is by a German author. It was published in 1819, and then one is by Voltaire, who's a French writer. , And it was published in 1747. So if you agree that that is the first one, then he's the first mystery writer. But I know of Voltaire mainly as a philosopher. And the main point of this novel, which is called Zadig, seems to me when I was reading the plot summary on Wikipedia, which has its limitations obviously.

So I'm telling you right there where I was reading it, but it seems to be really a philosophical one as opposed to about the murder mystery. And then I did read the plot summary of the German one called The Lady Von [00:21:00] Ery. Sorry if I'm pronouncing that wrong. And it also didn't really sound like a mystery to me.

So I'm going to plant my flag in the sand and say that the woman way is the first mystery novel. And listeners, feel free to write it and argue the point with me if you want.

Martha: Yeah, that makes sense.

Elizabeth: , Now, Sherlock Holmes, which is obviously one of the first very famous . Mystery Detectives is published in 1887 and they were hugely popular and spurred a ton of similar books and characters, which further solidified the genre as something that is around and that people were reading.

Martha: Yeah. I guess I didn't really realize Sherlock Holmes was that old,

Elizabeth: Oh yeah.

He was a Victorian gentleman.

We love some Sherlock Holmes in this household. . And then another thing that, again, good old Wikipedia told me, I did do some other research besides Wikipedia. You can look at my sources , in the show notes as always. , But I did read some really interesting things on [00:22:00] Wikipedia, which included that the genre, , expanded a lot near the turn of the century with the development of dime novels and pulp magazines, which really struck me because we talked about those dime novels when we were talking about romance and the formulaic, , mills and boons novels that, , were really popular at the time.

Martha: Mm-hmm. Could you tell if , these mystery dime novels were as formulaic as the mills and Boones seemed to be.

Elizabeth: Oh, that's interesting. I actually didn't really look into that. That's a great question though. . I don't know the answer. And just a quick scan of the page about dime novels. Does it answer it for me? I wouldn't be surprised though, because mystery novels even still similar to romance, have a formula, the mills and boon romances were very formulaic to the point where it didn't even matter who wrote them,, so I don't know if it rose to that level, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was more of a formulaic element because they were just pumping out these [00:23:00] novels.

They were cheap . They were quick. People read 'em, they threw 'em away. They weren't precious about them in any way. The way that we are about books today,

Martha: So interesting.

For the mills and Boon even, there was some value in just doing the reps, getting the formula down and then obviously it's been improved upon.

Elizabeth: Well, and people like to read 'em,

Martha: Yeah.

Elizabeth: Right? I don't know this for sure, but it strikes me as when books were more popular than they are now, in the sense both that they were read more, but also that they were the. Only medium that people were getting entertainment from.

We didn't have tv, obviously we didn't have phones or the internet, , or the radio at this point,, or it was very new, that books were the entertainment. And so there wasn't this angst, there wasn't the pressure of like, oh, the art, , this was just quick and dirty entertainment.

So there wasn't as much, there wasn't as much pressure on the [00:24:00] form as I feel like there is now.

Martha: yeah, I like that. 

Elizabeth: There is something about it that's appealing.

Martha: and maybe we'll get back there. , It seems like a lot of people are getting to that point where they're over all of the technology and kind of craving more of the human element,

Elizabeth: yeah, and , you and I have talked about before in a different context on the podcast, how books don't need to be so serious. It can just be for fun. I always think back to, I think in one of our first episodes where we were talking about , books don't always have to be broccoli.

They could also be chocolate.

Martha: Yes. Yes. Oh my gosh.

Elizabeth: And it reminds me of that conversation, we don't have to put so much pressure on this. It can just be fun and something that you read quickly and like it just is entertainment for a couple

Martha: Yeah. And you forget about it the next day even, maybe.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Martha: Yeah. Anyway, I digress.

Elizabeth: No, I think so many of these topics that we talk about are all related. It's this web of, all things books.

We're bound to [00:25:00] have crossover topics. , So then after that, in the 1920s is when we get the Hardy Boys and the Nancy Drew series.

Both of these series were actually written originally by a man named Edward State Meyer, which I never knew. I mean, obviously he wrote under a pseudonym. I thought that Nancy Drew, I loved Nancy Drew. When I was a kid, I thought that Nancy Drew was written by a woman this whole time.

Martha: Yeah, I would assume that too.

Elizabeth: I loved Nancy Drew. I should have mentioned this when I was talking about my history and experience with mystery novels. I actually didn't remember that until this moment. I loved reading Nancy Drew when I was in like fourth grade time period.

Martha: Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth: One time I remember that we went to school and we were supposed to dress up as our favorite character from a book, and I dressed up as Nancy Drew.

Martha: Cute. Oh,

Elizabeth: I mean, it was totally historically inaccurate because I didn't [00:26:00] actually dress up like a 1920s school girl. I dressed up as like what I thought in my mind's eye, a young girl solving mysteries would look like. Like a cool, detective girl.

Martha: Like a 1990s version of Nancy Drew.

Elizabeth: Yeah, I think I wore like a jean jacket with the collar turned up and a pair of sunglasses on my head.

Martha: Cute. Oh my gosh, that's so funny.

Elizabeth: Oh my God. I'm cracking up about that memory. Oh wow. , So anyway, apparently those were both written by a man named Edward State Meyer. , But that was interesting, , that the genre really, continued to expand and as we saw with fantasy, part of the popularity came from children's books being really popular.

Martha: mm-hmm. Yeah. That's really interesting.

Elizabeth: , And then this time period of the early 20th century is also the time that is often referred to when people are now talking about mysteries referred to as the golden age of Detective Fiction, which is an era [00:27:00] of classic murder mystery novels that all have a similar pattern and style.

 It seems to me like this is the formula, there's a very recognizable formula. Maybe the dime novels were the prototype of this. I'm not sure. But by the time that it was this early 20th century time, there was the golden age of detective fiction that had a recognizable formula, and at some point someone wrote it down and called it The 10 Commandments for a Golden Age Mystery.

Martha: Hmm. That's kind of fun. , It's kind of like a paint by numbers, but here's how to write a mystery. You must have these 10 elements.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Martha: So I'm gonna run through these 10 commandments for a golden age mystery. The first one is the criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know.

Elizabeth: Yeah. So that one, it's thought of as playing, an unfair trick on the reader if you're giving them the point of view of the murderer and [00:28:00] concealing from them that they're the murderer. The caveat to that is that there definitely has been a development maybe since this time of the unreliable narrator, but there has to be clues that the person who's narrating the story is unreliable., So that one's interesting because I feel like it's both still the case and also there can be exceptions to it. I,

Martha: Yeah. Number two is all supernatural or preda. Natural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course. Number three, not more than one secret room or passage is allowable, so only one secret room per novel. Four no hither. Two undiscovered poisons may be used nor any appliance, which will need a long scientific explanation at the end. That sounds like. It would almost be getting into sci-fi fantasy if there's always just some poison that takes care of things.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Martha: So that makes sense to me. Five. No [00:29:00] Chinaman must figure in the story. Did I read 

Elizabeth: I, yeah. I mean, I know that I am the one that looked this up, but I actually didn't realize that that was in there. That is so interesting. Obviously racist as well. Just for the record.

Martha: Yeah. What's the context there?

Elizabeth: There is some context , which we could do a whole episode on, but just since that is there and we said it, I feel like it's worth an explanation. So in the 19th century there was a lot of immigration from China to America and a lot of Chinese immigrants, , worked on the railroads famously and , were a big part of the gold rush.

There was a lot of immigration to the country. And as is a repeating story that we are seeing repeat itself, even today when there's a lot of immigration from one specific area, one specific country. In America, there tends to be often a backlash against the people from that [00:30:00] country or that area.

And so that basically is what is happening here. And there's a lot of horrible things that happened to, , Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans, including the Chinese Exclusion Act, which basically barred people from China, from immigrating anymore. And , is the only time , according to this article that I'm reading, that the US has ever passed a law to prevent, , immigration on the basis of race.

Martha: Interesting. Well, that's something I never really would've known about unless this came up, there you go. That's number five. Number six, no accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition, which proves to be right.

Elizabeth: Note the he pronoun. It was usually men at the stage who were the detectives. We'll talk about that later. I feel like it's worth pointing out.

Martha: Yeah. Number seven, the detective himself must not commit the crime again, that kind of goes back to number one. Number eight, the [00:31:00] detective is bound to declare any clues which he may discover. Number nine, the sidekick of the detective. The Watson must not conceal from the reader. Any thoughts which pass through his mind.

His intelligence must be slightly but very slightly below that of the average reader. 10 twin brothers and doubles generally must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

Elizabeth: Okay, so those are the 10 commandments. And I feel like , , putting aside number five, about the stereotype about, , Chinese people at this time,

For the rest of the nine, I feel like what these rules are all about is still something that's important in mystery, in the mystery genre today, which is that you have to play fair with the reader. The mystery needs to be figureoutable in theory, I. Tricks like, oh, it was aliens the whole time.

Or, oh, there was a secret passage that you didn't know about that allowed someone to be in two places at once, or, stuff [00:32:00] the reader couldn't possibly know. And so therefore, is thought of as a dirty trick,

It's not tolerated by readers in the mystery genre.

Martha: Interesting.

Elizabeth: Probably most famous of the people who we get these commandments from, not in the sense that she wrote the commandments down, but her stories followed these commandments is Agatha Christie, , who was also really popular at this time and is part of this golden age and Agatha Christie mysteries famously.

People will say, oh, I can always figure an A, the Christie mystery out, even though I think that's silly. 'cause I can never figure 'em out, but whatever. Maybe my average intelligence is lower than all these other mystery readers, but people say they can figure them out because it's always the person who shows up in the beginning that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the crime.

Martha: Ah,

Elizabeth: it's, that one commandment that the criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story?

Martha: yeah. Which I guess if you read enough of them and you really understood the formula, [00:33:00] you probably could start to guess

Elizabeth: yeah, sure. Agatha Christie actually is really interesting to talk about as well, because I learned recently that she has sold more books of fiction. So not talking about the Bible or anything, but has sold more books. A fiction worldwide than any other author ever. 2 billion books, billion with a 

b, copies of her books.

And the reason that I learned that is 'cause Alex and I saw a statue of her in London with that statistic on it. And I was like, that can't possibly be true. , Is that true? And it is,

it's 

Martha: it is. Wow, that's amazing.

Elizabeth: They just tallied it up recently, which is why it's not something, I think that's in the popular zeitgeist, but it is true.

Martha: That's really cool. 

Elizabeth: So within mystery novels, as they exist today, but also for a long time, there have been a lot of different sub genres the same way that there is with romance or with fantasy.

I would say [00:34:00] probably the most popular one is detective fiction. So think Sherlock Holmes. Think, , Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christy Famous, , detective. . Contemporary books would be like Sue Grafton. The detective in Edgar Allen Po short story also is, , considered to be the first detective.

. So basically the idea here is that they're a detective, but this genre is distinct from a police procedural. They're not the police usually, , but they are working within some type of system or rules. So like Sherlock Holmes has some type of history with the police,

and , the police come to him for advice. He's not just a rogue person. He has some legitimacy. And that usually is the case with any of these detectives. But , the thing with detective fiction, even if they are part of. The police are part of like a constabulary or whatever the time period would be, is that the individual figure?

Usually a man, the individual [00:35:00] person, the detective is the one who solves the crime by themselves. It's like this superhero figure, Sherlock Holmes , has this superhero like ability to solve the crime. Whereas a police procedural is, there are actually police officers and detectives that are working together to solve the crime.

And it's a group effort as would actually be the case. There's also usually some effort in a police procedural to depict a sort of realistic process of solving a crime. And I say sort of because my husband Alex absolutely hates watching and won't read police procedurals because he says that they actually are ridden with errors and, , thinks that, .

Yeah, they actually just get a ton wrong. , But there is some effort, however successful made to it, being realistic.

Martha: Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth: The whole idea of this genre though is that the police detectives are subject to error and are constrained by rules and regulations just like they are in real life. Unlike the [00:36:00] superhero like detective who is allowed because they're not, hemmed in by that structure.

To be above the rules. So famous authors who write police procedurals are people like PD James or Louise Penney.

Yeah, Louise Penney. Even though she has a central detective who's the main detective, he's working in a

Martha: With a team of people. That's interesting. That seems like such a small group of people that could qualify for the detective fiction role, though, like retired detective it's so specific. What other examples are there other than a former detective or a retired detective?

Elizabeth: , A private detective, a lot of them are private detectives, so there's also something called hard boiled fiction, which is specifically mystery novels where private detectives are the detectives. They were really popular in the 1920s and 1930s. , Think like Raymond [00:37:00] Chandler, film noir style, gritty urban settings, a lot of violence and sex, and they're a private eye setting things to right.

, But , there's definitely detective fiction still where , the legitimacy comes from them being a private detective. 

And , I think that a lot of detective fiction, the person actually is a detective in the sense that they're a police detective, but it's just that they're doing it basically by themselves.

Maybe the rest of the police around them are sort of bumbling. That's a common trope. Or they're a rogue, like, I don't play by the rules, kind of a detective, and they break all the rules or go around their supervisor or whatever because they just know that what they're doing is right.

Martha: And once they solve the case, all is forgiven.

Elizabeth: All is forgiven. Yeah, exactly.

Martha: Got

Elizabeth: Yeah. So it's definitely more about that central figure versus a team of police that are constrained that are actually following the rules. And so they're not able to [00:38:00] like entrap the suspect into confessing because they know that it won't be admissible in court or whatever, you know, whereas the detective would just do that because it would help catch the person.

Martha: Okay.

Elizabeth: and then there are also legal mysteries or often called legal thrillers. So this is where the crossover with the thriller, definitely comes in. , And these are stories where the system of , justice itself is a big part of the story, not just solving the crime. So lawyers and courts and judges are all central sets and characters and parts of these stories.

So think like John Grisham, Michael Connolly, , Lisa Scodel line, people like

Martha: Would law and order be a legal thriller, because there's , all of the different players, like you said, judges, attorneys, detectives, policemen.

Elizabeth: Yeah, well, as you'll recall, , , law and Order episodes, the classic ones. Anyway, there's all the spinoffs, right? That focus on one more than the other. But the classic Law and Order episodes, half of the episode [00:39:00] would be following the police solving the crime, which I would say is a classic police procedural because we have our main characters, but they're not doing it on their own.

And they sometimes break the rules and will get in trouble, but for the most part, they're working in a team, they're following the rules, they're actual legitimate police officers. And then half of the episode is what happens after the person gets 

caught. So that would be the legal thriller part. So I actually think they're both intentionally, half the episode is the police and half is the legal, the sort of justice

Martha: Yeah. And that's what makes it so satisfying. 

Elizabeth: Yeah. Yeah. , And then true crime. Just like it sounds, there were real crimes by real people. Podcasts have sort of taken over this genre, but there are actually a lot of books that do it too. , And I thought this was interesting. This is a quote from, , one of my sources, , unlike crime fiction, true crime doesn't focus so much on the identity of the murderer, figuring it out.

'cause you already know who it is, [00:40:00] so there's no clues or some of the other things that go into mystery fiction. But instead it emphasizes how the culprit was caught and what their motivations were behind their crime. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote was one of the earliest and most famous examples of true crime, and he detailed the real life, quadruple homicide of a family in Holcomb, Kansas.

Martha: You know, I don't know if you remember me talking about this book, but we read and the C Will Tell, that was the first True Crime book that I read, and the lawyer who did the case wrote it. Yeah. 

Elizabeth: Yeah, I 

Martha: was, it was so interesting, but it didn't make me want to keep reading the genre that was enough. I was like, oh, that was really interesting.

Surprisingly good. But it, I wasn't like, oh, I need more of that.

Elizabeth: I've never actually read a true crime book. I haven't [00:41:00] really listened to the really popular True Crime podcast either. That's not really my jam when it comes to mystery. , That's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for, well, I'm looking for Cozy Mystery, which is the last sub genre, we talked about what makes something cozy, quote unquote in our fantasy episode, which I feel like is worth revisiting because it applies to , cozy mystery as well, which is that it gives a feeling of comfort, warmth, and relaxation, and is sometimes called light or low stakes, in that case, fantasy, in this case, mystery, expect magic in the case of fantasy, but little violence.

So basically the same applies to , cozy mystery. These are books that generally don't have much, if any, violence on the page. They do always start with a crime, which isn't in the 10 Commandments, but is implied, ? If it's a mystery, there's some type of crime, usually a murder that it's gonna start with.

And that needs to happen right away, . Usually it happens in the first pages of the book. , But with [00:42:00] cozy mysteries. , It often starts with the discovery of a body. It doesn't start with the actual crime. And it's not very gruesome in its descriptions. It's not gory, it's low stakes, it's cozy.

, It's hard to call murder low stakes, but in the realm of murder mystery, , cozy mystery are low stakes because you're not generally going to have a serial killer. You're not gonna have an international manhunt or that type of intense level , of action or intrigue. It's usually set in a closed community, like a small English village,

your quintessential cozy mystery setting.

, But of course they're set in , lots of other types of closed communities. Mainly the characters that are involved are honorable. So obviously you have the killer. But the general formula is like this is a town of good people who all know each other and like each other, who could possibly do something like this.

Martha: Okay. Based on your description, I'm remembering I [00:43:00] have read a cozy mystery. Do you remember Shady Hollow by Juno Black that I talked about, except all of the characters were animals.

Elizabeth: Oh, that's right.

Martha: Yeah, and it's totally a cozy mystery. It fits this, all of this description, this whole description. There was a murder, it was a closed community.

It was like, who could have possibly done this? Yeah.

Elizabeth: It is a cozy fantasy mystery.

Martha: It's kind of a crossover of all the things.

Elizabeth: Oh my God. I love it. I need to put that on my list now. Yeah, that's cozy mystery. They all differ, but there's usually some level of humor. , The solution to the crime is usually achieved by, the detective's intellect or intuition rather than police procedure. Because the other main characteristic of cozy mysteries is that they have an amateur detective.[00:44:00] 

So an amateur detective, meaning they're not at all involved in the system or structure of solving crimes. They're random people who get pulled into solving a crime for various

reasons, , but don't have any validity from the justice system. So they don't have any resources at their disposal.

They can't check DNA, they can't look at fingerprints. , Sometimes with cozy mysteries, you have amateur detectives that end up working with the police, they convince whatever the local detective is, that they know what they're talking about and that they're helpful. And so the police sort of lets them be involved, which obviously wouldn't happen in the real world, but often happens in cozy mysteries.

, But basically they are completely amateurs, they're just people and often are women. So think about Agno, Christie's, miss Marble series, the little old lady who lives in an English village and solves a [00:45:00] bunch of murders. , Dorothy Sayers, who is super fun and really under read today, in my opinion.

, Rita Mae Brown is a really famous, cozy mystery writer who I actually haven't read, but her mysteries are apparently co-written, quote unquote, by her cat.

Martha: Oh my 

Elizabeth: Like her cat, her cat. I think the idea is that her cat plays a role in the narration of the mysteries. That's my read on it, but I now wanna read those almost

Martha: Oh my gosh. That's amazing.

Elizabeth: And then, , if you've been listening to the podcast, you'll have heard me talk about the Thursday murder Club. That's also a cozy mystery because it's a group of retirees in a retirement village. , So yeah, a lot of times the amateur detectives are women or they are people who have less power in society.

Two of the people in the Thursday murder club are women, but they're all senior citizens who are often overlooked and undervalued for the skills that they bring [00:46:00] to the

table. . So that's the idea, and I think that there's more to say about that, but

Martha: Yeah.

Elizabeth: we can put a pin in that for now and come back

Martha: Yeah, there's definitely a little bit to unpack there. So you already mentioned a few of the common tropes, just when you were describing the genre. Obviously the biggies is that there's a crime at the beginning, usually a murder. , It's usually in the first chapter, if not the first page. And the crime is solved by the end, right?

Elizabeth: Yeah, it's like the romance genres version of a Happily ever After. You can't have a mystery without the crime being solved by then.

Martha: Yeah. You can't just leave it on a cliffhanger or something like that. That would be not satisfying at all. But there are some other common tropes, which include a locked room. So a murder occurs in a setting where no one could have entered or exited. Seemingly. A common version of this is a country house setting, [00:47:00] usually in England, where a group of suspects is confined, often at a remote estate. IE clue.

Elizabeth: Yeah, exactly.

Martha: Another one is the red herring. So an early suspect or clue that sends the reader and often the detective off in the wrong direction. Three, A misjudged death. The crime is initially ruled a suicide or an accident and it's up to the intrepid detective to realize and convince others that it was foul play. Related to this is the incompetent police in detective and cozy fiction especially. So that's a very common one.

Elizabeth: Yeah, the bumbling, incompetent police is a big trope.

Much to the chagrin of people who have worked with the police, , in real life. , This one is a big one in cozy mystery because remember how I said that the crime is solved by intellect and intuition, and so it's very common in cozy mystery for there to be a death that's ruled a suicide or an accident.

And then the amateur [00:48:00] detective just has a feeling that it's not that and that there was some foul play. And they dig and dig and dig at it until they find some evidence that suggests

Martha: but that's also so relatable. 'cause I do feel like that happens a lot in real life. Like someone who's close to the deceased person is like, they would never commit suicide and 

then, you know, try and figure out what really happened. So I could see why that one is often used. , Another one is everybody did it.

So the sleuth is overwhelmed by the fact that there's several people who seem to have a motive and no alibi. Also, obviously often happens in the reverse where it seems like no one could have done it because everyone has an alibi or because of logistical obstacles like a locked room.

.

Another one is the killer place detective, or detective is a suspect.

Elizabeth: Yeah. So think about though, back to the 10 Commandments. The detective can't [00:49:00] actually be the killer.

Martha: Yeah.

Elizabeth: , If the killer is playing the detective, then the way that that usually plays out is that they are either a corrupt detective or they're just acting like a detective. They're not really a detective.

, Yeah. So that is a, that's one that's a little bit tricky.

Martha: Yeah. Or maybe when you're reading it, you're like, are they breaking this rule? And then

surprise, no, 

they're not. 

Elizabeth: And the detective being a suspect is actually really related to another one of the tropes, which is the detective with the sorted past. So often the reason that the detective is a suspect is because they have some type of sorted, well, sometimes it's not a past, sometimes it's a present, like because they're an alcoholic or because they are a drug user or something

Martha: They're somehow discredited or unreliable. Yeah. So that's another one. And then history returns. So either the case reminds the detective of something from their past, usually a [00:50:00] mistake or an unsolved case that is definitely a common one, like a case that haunts them and it helps them with their present case, or another character has to face something from their past. The big reveal, the detective gathers all the suspects together to share all the vital clues and puts them together to explain why Person X is the murderer , or sometimes uses this as a ruse to catch the murderer. So like putting them under pressure until they, , confess.

Elizabeth: exactly.

Martha: And the last one on our list is a twist ending. So the detective correctly identifies the killer and everyone goes on with their lives with a sense of ease. Now , that good, has ferried out evil. Only the detective was wrong, or only partially correct?

Elizabeth: Yes. So this is the only exception to , the crime is always solved by the end, and I feel like this only usually happens when it's a series.

Martha: Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth: And they're trying to get you to hang on and read the next

Martha: [00:51:00] Yeah, like the murderer had an accomplice and the accomplice is gonna have revenge or something like that.

Elizabeth: Yeah, 

Martha: Okay. Interesting.

Elizabeth: , So you can see with some of those tropes and sub genres that I feel like I saw the light bulb go on a couple of times while we were talking about those, like they're reminding you of other things and things that you've actually, 

Martha: Yeah, totally. 

Elizabeth: and as we're talking about them, they do really remind me of obviously different things, but the way that we talk about tropes and sub genres in 

Martha: Yeah. And this is why I am a big advocate of tropes because it really does help to contextualize what you're talking about, especially if you're not familiar with the genre. And then, yeah, you can relate and then. Decide like, oh, actually, this does sound like something I would really like because I've seen this movie where this trope is, used and I really enjoyed it,

Elizabeth: yeah, exactly. It makes it more

accessible. . So that [00:52:00] is the big picture history and what's involved in the mystery genre. In terms of where it sits in the publishing industry, it is really popular. , , at one point, I think maybe for the romance episode or maybe the fantasy episode, I looked up the different genres and how much they make.

In book sales every year, and romance is always at the top. In this chart that I looked up, it had $1.4 billion in book sales, but crime slash mystery is second, and in that chart it had $728 million in book sales. So it's a big,

Martha: It is a big end. It's funny though, 'cause it's literally half of romance. 

Elizabeth: yeah. Nothing comes clo.

Martha: yeah. You just can't touch it. But that's still very impressive though.

Elizabeth: Yeah. And as I said before, the readers are similar. There are a lot of readers who read both romance [00:53:00] and

mystery. And going back to the conversation about cozy mystery, I think that there's something there, because like I said, most of the amateur detectives in Cory Mystery are women, which makes sense when you think about how.

At the turn of the century when mystery was getting popular, women weren't allowed to be police officers, they wouldn't have been private detectives. And Agatha Christie was one of the first women to write in this genre, but it is a genre dominated by women authors and marketed mainly to a female audience. , And I was reading, a couple of articles in, , publishers Weekly, which is a book industry trade, website.

And it has an outsized share of the market for mystery novels. There's a lot of cozy mysteries. , The title of one of the articles, by the way, is some, like, mild

Martha: Oh my God. I love that. That's amazing.

Elizabeth: about cozy mysteries. Like with every other , sub genre and rule [00:54:00] that we were talking about, there are some exceptions to the amateur detective thing. , But the exceptions kind of prove the rule. Like Louise Penney, who I just read for the first time this summer and I really liked, has a series of mysteries where the detective , is named Inspector Ache, and it is a police procedural because he is an actual detective and he has a team of people.

But I feel like it has a heavy crossover into the cozy category because it's in a closed community, this little town . In Quebec, I wanna say, because it has the French element. , And it's exactly what I described that as. , It's this little town where everyone knows each other who could have possibly done this.

, And I don't know, there's something about it that just feels very cozy to me. There is some fuzziness when it comes to these genres.

Martha: course. I mean, most books are not just black and white, right? Well, they 

are literally [00:55:00] if they're in print, but,

Elizabeth: Yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck.

Martha: but yeah, there's a lot of gray, we're talking about generalities.

Elizabeth: Yeah. And as we, we've talked about in the past with genres, they're a way to talk about the books. They're not gonna define every single aspect of it. , The main reading doorway, I would say for all mysteries is story. But when I think about cozy myster mystery, specifically like romance, I would say there's a lot that have strong character doorways as well.

So if you remember the doorway conversations that we've had, I'm a really big character 

reader. Not mainly story, but I love especially cozy mysteries because they tend to be the mysteries that get more into the actual inner lives of the characters. And they're often the mysteries that have a romance subplot or , that have some element where I get a little bit more satisfaction from learning about the [00:56:00] characters.

Martha: That makes total sense. Like you were saying with the Thursday murder Club, where there are a group of seniors. Solving these mysteries. . That wouldn't work if you weren't also talking about who these seniors were. Right. It would be weird.

It wouldn't work.

Elizabeth: Right. Like why are they 

compelled to do this? Why are they compelled to solve this crime? Or to be looking into such a sort of grizzly,

Martha: Yeah, exactly. So it makes sense and that's what makes it so fun. , And we already talked about the tropes for the mystery genre as a whole, but of course, cozy Mystery has its own tropes and sub genres within the sub genre. So some examples of that are academic or campus animal or pet bookstore or library crafting, culinary, historical holiday.

Ins, hotels and bed and breakfasts, medical gardening, paranormal seniors and retirement [00:57:00] communities, romance, seaside, beach settings. And there's definitely a lot of similarities here to romance because I could probably think of a romance novel for each one of these

Elizabeth: yeah, totally. And also I feel like cozy fantasy, we were talking about how cozy fantasies are all like, the person is renovating an inn, or they have a bookstore, they have a cafe,

you know? 

Martha: Yeah. It's just like this cozy scene, this little nice lens to look at some of these tougher subjects through that make it more palatable for, those of us who like it mild.

Elizabeth: Yeah. Oh God, I'm gonna start using that now. Some like it mild. , So as might not be surprising to you, given the similarities with romance in terms of the tropes and the content and also the readers and who it's marketed toward, [00:58:00] there are a lot of the same criticisms of mystery, specifically cozy mystery as there are romance,

people like to talk about how there are too predictable, there are too formulaic, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I would guess that a lot of our defenses, both of our defenses probably of the genre would be similar to the defenses that we've already wax poetic about when it comes to

romance. But I just feel like it's worth pointing out. Anytime women love something, there's gonna have to be

Martha: Yeah.

Elizabeth: A debate about whether it's actually smart enough or worth your time or, you know.

Martha: Which really makes me feel like it all boils down to the root of what feminism is, which is , do whatever you want. , It's the same argument like, whatever books you like, why does it matter? It's so stupid. Why are we having this conversation at all?

Elizabeth: Right. Specifically, do whatever you want, like whatever you like. [00:59:00] And it's okay for other people to do whatever they want

and like whatever 

Martha: yes, exactly. And also, yes, they are formulaic. Yes, it is predictable. That's the point. That's what some people like, they like the comfort and the predictability of, if I pick this book up, odds are I'm gonna enjoy it. And that's why I want to read a book is just for entertainment and enjoyment, like we were talking about with the Mills and Boone era. Creation of art that it doesn't have to be so serious.

Elizabeth: Yes, exactly. And . It doesn't actually ruin my enjoyment that I know that they're gonna catch the bad guy at the end because there are a million ways to get there. Right? Just like when we were talking about romance and that one video that we watched, the woman was saying how romance is like chocolate chip cookies.

You're never gonna be like, oh, a chocolate chip cookie is boring. You can have chocolate chip cookies [01:00:00] with nuts. You can have chocolate chip cookies with white chocolate. You could have it with dark chocolate. It's all chocolate chip cookies, and they're all delicious.

Martha: And give me more. I want to try 'em all.

Elizabeth: Yeah. and beyond our take on this, which I think, you know, whatever has merit as people who read these things and, , talk about it and think about it a lot, there is also actually some scholarship in gender studies about cozy mysteries as a genre similar to how there is for romance, because there's a lot to unpack, like we were just talking about with how these seemingly low stakes, cozy feel, good books are related to, gender roles in our society and power and all that

stuff. , So I did look at a couple of articles, which I put in the show notes, and I won't go too long on this. , It's a little late in the episode for me to start putting on my academic hat, but. ,, There were a couple articles that I read that were real interesting. So there was one about how even though Cozy [01:01:00] Mysteries, , were, when they were originated and continued to be liberating for the women characters, , by allowing them to be detectives , when they came, into existence, , it was into a world where women often weren't allowed to be detectives in real life.

It also is limiting to these characters because of the way that the genre is defined. So the argument is that despite there being, many quote unquote lady detectives in the cozy mystery genre, there are no great detectives who are women that rival your Sherlock Holmes or your Poirot, because then it wouldn't be cozy mystery

Martha: Hmm.

Elizabeth: and it's rare for a woman to, .

Rise to this level of greatness that is this socially constructed thing that we mostly put onto men. It depends, on a level of public acclaim and a perception of greatness in our society, that the very structure of cozy mystery precludes cozy mystery is predicated on this idea that this is just a normal [01:02:00] random woman who just has a hunch about this,

so the creation of these quote unquote great characters can't happen within this genre where most of your women detectives 

live now, there obviously are women detectives now in the other sub genres, but not as many as are in the cozy mystery genre. So I just thought that was interesting that

it opened up the playing field, so to speak, in fiction for women to be the one solving these crimes. But by defining it as an amateur detective, it sort of limits what they're able to be in the

stories 

Martha: Yeah. That's so interesting. I'm having so many thoughts and feelings about it. , A few things came up when you were describing that. The first thing I was wondering is , you said that of course now there are [01:03:00] some serious women detectives in the other sub genres, i'm curious how often their looks are described.

Like, are they also beautiful? , How are they described physically? , Could you see them being like, uh, not beautifully described, serious lady, woman, detective.

Elizabeth: That's interesting. I don't know the answer, but I think that's a really interesting question and I know that that is something that women who are actually police officers and detectives deal with. 

Martha: And. 

Elizabeth: to this day. 

Martha: seems like in that sort of male dominated field that only the attractive women rise in the ranks, , or,

Elizabeth: just that the idea , of the women's looks is something that gets talked about 

Martha: yeah. Yes. That's where I was going is like the, , politicians who rise to the top.

You know? , the other thing I was thinking about [01:04:00] is it feels similar to me in like the beauty industry, for example, in the way that it's predominantly women who are in the industry, , but the people at the top of the industry who get the most accolades for hair shows or, , being educators or whatever it is they're disproportionately men. So , of course men and women can both be good at being detectives and solving crimes, but for some reason men are disproportionately. Given that credit so

it's giving a lens in which to show that no women also have the skills to do this job

Elizabeth: mm-hmm.

Martha: they weren't allowed to do

Elizabeth: Right.

Martha: a long time.

Elizabeth: It's also interesting that you bring that up because it is in a lot of ways related to the other scholarly article that I read, which was [01:05:00] called Bodies to Die for Negotiating the Ideal Female Body in Cozy Mystery Novels. And it's not exactly about what you were just talking about, it's basically about the representation in the genre.

So the scholars discuss how and why Cozy Mystery is more of a diverse sub genre than other mysteries or other genres, and. , It's a really interesting article, but this sentence basically sums it up, which is that this niche market lives as in the cozy mystery market, lives from copy sold and has recognized that female readers demand a greater diversity and representation of female bodies, a demand to which the industry willingly caters.

So, so women who are the readers of Cozy Mystery want to see more diversity in the sense of, different types of women. I would also guess , the women who are reading these books don't want all of the women detectives to just be models. [01:06:00] Right. The same way that women who are reading romance don't want every single main woman character to be, you know, a size two and 25 years old and have blonde hair.

No offense if that describes you, listener, but there's been a lot of movement in the genre, especially in the last couple of decades, towards having representation for all different types of body sizes, , races, cultures, 

Martha: Sexuality

Elizabeth: every sexuality, disability, everything that you can think of in romance.

And cozy mystery is also a more diverse sub-genre for a similar

Martha: yeah. As is cozy fantasy, which you know, we talked about too. It like provides this lens through which to tackle some of these bigger issues, . So that's really interesting.

Elizabeth: Yeah, it is. And it's funny how it's so [01:07:00] connected to a lot of the other. Things that we've been talking about. , And how all of those sub genres within those larger genres, well, romance as a whole genre, but then cozy fantasy and cozy Mystery are all sort of working on the same project 

in a way, 

Martha: Mm-hmm. 

Elizabeth: you know, 

Martha: Yeah. Yeah.

Elizabeth: and also just entertaining people.

They don't have to be working on a

Martha: right. But it seems like inherently through entertaining the market that they, , serve, they are tackling some of these

Elizabeth: Yeah. 

. Because at the end of the day, you know, we sometimes will get into a little bit of a lofty discussion about, politics or the cultural impact of these books. And I'm not saying that people who work in the publishing industry don't think about that.

I'm sure they do, but at the end of the day, it's an industry, it needs to make money. And so the bottom line is always gonna be what readers are. Willing to buy and what they're not. So I think that cozy mystery and cozy fantasy and the romance genre all being more [01:08:00] diverse is a good illustration of the fact that people can actually make a difference in what art is available to them by using their dollars

or by using whatever form of currency it is that they use not to be too western

Martha: yeah, that's perfectly stated. So what we choose to read matters

Elizabeth: Yeah, I think so. So , if this conversation has inspired you to wanna read a cozy mystery, , if you've listened to the podcast in past episodes, you'll probably have heard me talk about most of these. But this is, , a list of some of my favorite recent cozy mysteries, , for people who wanna get into this genre.. So obviously Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osmond. , And that is, like I said, about a group of seniors, which is really interesting. In a similar vein, Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thoro Good is also about senior women, specifically who are solving the murder.

And I mostly recommend the first one of those I've [01:09:00] read further into the series and I don't think it's as good, but the first one is really good and he does a really excellent job actually, of being in the point of view of an older woman and talking about how she feels invisible and overlooked in society.

How To Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin is a really good, , really fun, cozy mystery. The Hapless Milliner by Jessica Bowl. Is a cozy mystery where Jane Austen is the amateur

detective. 

Martha: cute.

Elizabeth: So speaking of a crossover with other genres and other loves of mine, which is Jane Austen, , the Dinner Lady Detectives by Hannah Hendy is a lesser known cozy mystery that I read a couple years ago because I just happened to pick it up in an LGBTQ plus bookstore that I was in, in Leeds.

I wanna say it was the year that the conference was in Leeds. I went into this bookstore and, , it's about what we would call two lunch ladies and [01:10:00] what, , British people in a certain part of the country call dinner Ladies because they call. The meal that we call lunch,

dinner, , who solve a murder, and it's adorable.

And it also has LGBTQ plus representation and characters. The Golden Spoon by Jess Maxwell. You've heard me talk about that on the podcast. I would say that that is a crossover with a thriller, but it definitely has elements of a cozy as well, because it's amateur detectives solving the crime. It's a closed setting.

It's basically a locked, it's not a locked room, but it's like that country estate one caveat that you talked about. , So yeah, I would put that as a cozy slash thriller.

And then one that I read this year, well, I read the published version of it this summer. When it came out in July. I first read it as. A first draft in 2019. , Yes. By my critique partner, who is an amazing, , author named [01:11:00] Zoe b Wallbrook. And her book is called History Lessons. , And it is a cozy mystery that, well, I would call it a cozy mystery.

I actually would be curious to, know if she thinks of it as a cozy mystery. It's set on a campus though. It's that academic setting, and the amateur detective is a junior professor who works at the university, , in the town where the murder happens. And she is also a black woman. And so it, it touches a lot of the bases that we are talking about with the cozy

Martha: Yeah, I'm definitely gonna be reading that one.

Elizabeth: Yes. And , we are actually going to be interviewing Zoe soon, so. Listeners, if you are up for some homework, if you've made it this far with us in this episode, in a couple of episodes, we are going to interview Zoe about her book and about her writing journey. , And we'll talk about some of this stuff that we talked about today with the mystery genre as well. So if you want to have a little bit more insight into that conversation, I [01:12:00] think that you should buy or check out from the library History Lessons by Zoe Wallbrook.

Martha: I love it. Yeah, and there should be plenty of time for people to read it between now when we release our interview 

with 

Zoe. Yeah, Awesome.

Elizabeth: a great read.

Martha: Well, thanks so much for doing all of that research, Liz. I feel like I learned a lot about mystery and I am inspired to read, if not traditional. Mystery, at least some cozy mysteries and try 'em out

Elizabeth: Good. Thank you for coming along on that journey with me.

Martha: anytime.

Elizabeth: a journey. 

Martha: I loved it. Thank you. 

If you want even more bookish content, make sure to follow us on in Instagram and TikTok, subscribe to Be sure that you never miss an episode, especially now that we're not scheduling them regularly. And if you have any. Feedback or any thoughts about the [01:13:00] mystery genre, feel free to send us an email to allbooksaloudpod@gmail.com and read on my friends.