Are English Cosies Cozy?
The British have, frankly, been ahead of America when it comes to cozy mysteries, and I’m not just talking about spelling. What we want to know is whether modern English cosies are cozy mysteries or not?
Cozies came out of the early days of detective stories, with English authors like Agatha Christie producing the Golden Age. It wasn’t until the 1980s, when the modern idea of the cozy mystery came into vogue, that the genre swung toward the western side of the Atlantic.
A few decades later we have seen a boom in the genre, and both the American and English sides are growing rapidly but distinctly.
Separated by a common language
We’ve said that we don’t care about spelling. Americans spell cozy with a zee, the English spell cosy with an ess. It doesn’t matter, it’s just a difference in language.
The American cozy of the last few years is set in a small town, features a young woman getting started in her own business, and a small circle of friends, one of whom might become a romantic relationship.
The English cosy has recently been set in a village, features a slightly older, perhaps middle-aged woman who is having a mild life crisis, and mostly trying to deal with things herself.
These might sound similar, but they are remarkably different. We can look at features of the English cosy to see both strong and subtle differences.
The Cover
If we start with the cover, you’ll see a style developing which features a country house or village or rustic scene, and it’s all very blues and greens. They will often even have the word cozy (note the spelling) right on the cover.
There is a darkness to these books which you can already see. It separates them from the standard cozy mystery.
The Style
We have debated whether to even include these books as cozy mysteries. They do tend to break a number of rules:
- they are darker in tone than standard cozies
- they include foul language (although four-letter words are still rare)
- they are often from multiple perspectives
- the protagonist is often a current or former police officer
None of these by themselves would break the rules (except perhaps the last), but they all tend to point us away from cozy mysteries and in a new direction. A branch, perhaps, of the same tree.
But Is It Cozy?
Let’s talk about one book as an example of this subgenre. I recently read and enjoyed Murder in the Valleys by Pippa McCathie, but it clearly felt different from most of the cozy mysteries I have read.
Right on the cover we see the phrase “A cozy Welsh crime mystery full of twists.” And yes, cozy is spelled with a z, at least in the US edition.
This brings us back to the discussion of branding. If a publisher puts “cozy” on the cover, are we to merely accept it, or to push back against their marketing? Many do it through their desire to position the book in a market, but some just want to gather readers.
But we’ll let it go for now and take a look at the book through our cozy mystery ranking system.
How we rank books
At CozyMystery.com we have developed a checklist to determine if a book is cozy or not. It contains several sections to either include or eliminate a book as cozy, and to see how cozy the book is.
You can get a free copy of the checklist by subscribing to our newsletter.
Let’s review Murder in the Valleys using the checklist.
Dealbreakers
We stretch things on the police officer question. Our star is a recently and reluctantly retired police officer. If we are being harsh, we could use that against her. Even more, she works closely with her former partner, an active officer, and we see several scenes from his point of view.
If we wanted to be very strict about the rules we could stop right here and call the book a police procedural. We’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.
The problem is, this doubt doesn’t survive the foul language rule either. Literally on page 3 we have the F word, and several other swear words as one of the young characters goes on a rant. An absolutely broken rule in the Dealbreakers means the book is already Not Cozy and we could stop here.
Warning Signs
A check through our Warning Signs brings even more evidence.
It feels like half of the story is about the romantic relationship between the protagonist and her former partner, with a lot of will-they-won’t-they involved.
Much of the rest of the book is about family relationships.
There are definitely multiple perspectives.
The tone of the book is very dark, and fast-paced in many places.
We could seriously check four or five items in the Warning Signs, and since they’re limited to two, it’s another signal the book is not cozy.
How Cozies
The subjective How Cozies get us to about a 6 / 20, which again is very much not cozy.
So, are English cozies cozy mysteries?
We need to be clear: we are talking about a specific style of English cozy. There are many cozies written by English people, or set in England, which definitely qualify as cozy and we are pleased to have them on CozyMystery.com. In this article we’re talking only about the style described above.
If we use Murder in the Valleys as a representative of this style, we have to say it’s Not Cozy, and thus we have to ask if any of these kinds of books are cozy.
I would tend to vote against them being cozy, and shuffle them into a separate subgenre.
To be clear, that doesn’t make them bad books. It simply makes them not a focus of this website, and our strict definition of a cozy mystery.
Even though, in this case, the protagonist is retired from the police, it doesn’t make her an amateur sleuth. She has far more detective skill than an amateur, and she uses her connections in the police to find clues.
So if it’s not strictly a police procedural, and not strictly cozy, it’s sort of a hybrid between the two. What would you call it?
A cozy police procedural, perhaps? Sounds clunky.
I think this is an interesting time for this type of book. We can argue it’s a new subgenre, which doesn’t happen very often. It has grown out of the combination of two genres, and produced something new. Sometimes it works, but more often than not it doesn’t. In this case it does.
And we now have to decide if this subgenre of the cozy police procedural is something we should include on the site or not.
Do you have anything to say about this article? Agree or disagree with what we have to say? Let us know in the comments below.
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