What makes a cozy cozy?
There are a number of factors which go into making a cozy mystery. The Mystery part takes care of itself, but the Cozy part has its own set of rules and traditions. Let’s look at the things which make a mystery cozy.
The Sleuth
The protagonist is an amateur detective, usually an everyday person who gets caught up in the crime in some way. By not being a professional investigator the reader can identify with them more easily.
The story is written from that person’s perspective, so the reader never knows something they don’t know, and vice versa. We are in a sense working alongside them, trying to solve the mystery together.
We have written much more about the sleuth in a separate article.
The Crime
Almost all cozy mysteries are about a murder, and rarely another type of crime.
The murder takes place off the page, usually with someone discovering the body. In a cozy we don’t get any of the graphic details which are prevalent in some subgenres of mystery. The focus is on the puzzle of the mystery, but not in the minute detail of how they were murdered.
Those details are so proscribed we might not even get so much as the description of a pool of blood. We certainly don’t get what you would see in a noir or thriller type of story.
Humor
You might think that humor doesn’t belong in a murder, but you’d be wrong if it’s cozy. Most cozies include some elements of humor, whether it be puns in the title or wisecracks from the best friend.
These tend to defuse the tension inherent in the situations the sleuth finds themselves in, providing balance from the seriousness within the story.
You also see this in the tone the story is written in. If I told you a book was a noir or a police procedural, you’d have definite expectations about how the book is going to sound. The same applies to a cozy. The language is light and fun, and you don’t expect to feel exhausted after reading a cozy for an hour.
The Characters
Not just our sleuth, but all the characters in a cozy are memorable, adding to the depth of the story and creating a sense of community.
The characters drive the narrative, their various quirks and actions often pushing the sleuth in a new direction. It’s common for an innocuous comment to make the sleuth suddenly think of a different line of reasoning, bringing them one step closer to finding the person who committed the crime.
Interactions and relationships between the characters always take precedence over potentially violent scenes. Even in cases where the sleuth is confronting the suspect, someone’s going to make a joke to diffuse the tension right before the cops burst in to save the day.
Themes
You’ll be hard pressed to find a theme in a cozy mystery. If there are themes they are simple ones like community, friendship, and justice. This is partly why they can be widely read and enjoyed. Readers don’t have to fear trying to figure out the deep meaning behind a book.
Cozy mysteries tend to avoid deep meaning in their stories. You’ll never find an idea being expressed which is disturbing in any way. Psychological horror and other unsettling ideas don’t exist in the world of cozies.
Nostalgia
Cozy mysteries often use nostalgia to bring readers into their books. This can be as simple as setting the story in a time or place where it brings the reader back to the past, but it can also mean incorporating elements from the past to bring the same feeling. Using book clubs, knitting, tea, or other cozy activities helps to create the calm and relaxed atmosphere which is a hallmark of cozies.
For that matter, language is also used to evoke the cozy idea. You’ll never read a four letter word in a cozy. It’s simply not what the reader wants to see. There have been authors who try to sneak them in here and there, but you can ignore them, just as you can ignore the author who says they’re writing an “edgy” cozy. These terms are the same as saying “not cozy.”
The Puzzle
Perhaps the primary emphasis of cozy mysteries is the puzzle. It’s what the reader is there for. Most of the other trappings which surround mysteries are there to categorize them, but if you don’t have a good puzzle, you don’t have a cozy. If you wrote a cozy romance with a puzzle as the subplot, you didn’t write a cozy mystery. Simple as that.
Cozy readers want a complex puzzle with multiple clues and multiple misdirections. They want to engage their minds and piece together the puzzle alongside, or preferably just before, the protagonist. This type of story emphasizes the intellectual challenge over almost all other aspects of the story.
The Resolution
Every cozy has to have a resolution. There has never been a cozy where the book continues into another book, where there’s a cliffhanger at the end of the story. You have to have closure and justice (even though the justice part is never seen, just assumed).
Any resolution will ensure the perpetrator will face justice at some point. There may also be emotional resolutions which will affect our perspective of the characters in the story, and how we will see them going forward. A reader will not be satisfied without the appropriate level of resolution being found.
Most of the major loose ends are tied up. I say most, because there are two kinds of loose ends in cozies: the ones related to the mystery, which must be tied up, and ones related to various characters, which may be tied up. A good writer will tie some up, leave some untied, and open some new ones, which will carry over to the next book in the series.
Romance
One final thing to talk about which defines whether a mystery is cozy or not is the romantic part of the story. It is possible (perhaps likely) to have a mystery without romance, but if you are reading a romantic story which has a mystery on the side, it’s not a cozy mystery.
Once again we look to see where the author’s emphasis is. If the main story is a love story, it’s not a cozy. The main story in a cozy mystery is always the mystery. You can have subplots involving romance, and many cozies do, but they can’t be the point of the story.
And of course, the romance has to be very chaste. No kissing, no PDA, and absolutely no sex or hints about it. Doesn’t belong in a cozy mystery.
In Conclusion
There are more things than you might imagine going into a cozy mystery, and more things being left out. Having looked at thousands of books for this site, I can tell you there are plenty which would qualify as cozy except for one wrong word here or there. That word could be “private investigator” or it could be “romance.” It all depends on the context.
Here at CozyMystery.com we have thousands of books listed, and it’s possible even we’ve made mistakes here and there. Don’t feel bad if you’re not sure, it can take a long time to decide if you’re reading a cozy. Experience helps, but sometimes you simply have to read a book to find out if it’s cozy or not.
The risk is worth the reward though. For people who like cozy mysteries, there’s nothing better than sitting down and enjoying a story, trying to figure out the answer to the puzzle before the sleuth can tell you whodunnit.
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.
Leave a Reply
Your email is safe with us.