Mysterious Mercury, Cozy

Sometimes I like to read in bed. I've illustrated that activity with pictures, of Me in Bed and [a long shot of] My Loft.

Reading in bed is usually an excuse for selecting less demanding mysteries [see 2 previous entries]. But plots, characters and the writing skills of the authors must still be held to a high standard. Below I review three authors' works that fall into a rather strange, twee sub-genre: the British Cozy.

I've identified 3 types of British Cozies [No one's quite sure what actually counts as a British Cozy, itself a sub-set of the Cozy style. Essentially "Cozy" appears to be a recently coined marketing term.]

The 3 types are identified by their Mercury Rating: excellent, good & all-too-arch & rather sickening. Below examples of each type are described.

Excellent: The Agatha Raisin series by M.C. Beaton. Here is the first sentence of Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wykhadden:

"There is nothing more depressing for a middle-aged lovelorn woman with bald patches on her head than to find herself in an English seaside resort out of season."

What more can I say? With titles like Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death, Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage, Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death, the series, set in the Cotswolds, is a jolly romp through the life of its heroine and her unlikely group of quirky friends. Note that M.C. Beaton also pens the Hamish MacBeth series situated in the Scottish Highlands. [Hamish is Lochdoub's town bobby whose penchant for solving murders is only equalled by his joi de vivre & utter lack of ambition. Try Death of a Dustman.]

The most recent Agatha Raisin: Love, Lies and Liquor: an Agatha Raisin mystery

Good: The Dorothy Martin series by Jeanne M. Dams, relates the tales of a widowed American expat living in Southern England. There she acquires a wonderful 17th century house and a husband and finds a whole lot of dead bodies each following one after another as surely as one novel in the series succeeds its predecessor. If you read Sins out of School, you'll find our heroine preparing a traditional [American] Thanksgiving feast and "discovering the body of a man whose death was really a blessing for his wife and daughter." Dorothy Martin is engaging and fun, but she doesn't have the charisma, vulnerability or raunchy charm that characterize Agatha Raisin.

All-too-arch: The Mrs. Malory series by Hazel Holt really isn't actually the worst of the worst. I've read several Mrs. Malorys and they pass the time. Mrs. Malory lives in Taviscombe, a British village. The series is not as bad as those with names like A Tea Room Mystery series, or stories [and titles] structured around scrap-booking, wedding planning, or soap operas. [For an example of arch-beyond-all-too-arch consider this title: Murder Most Frothy: a Coffee House mystery.]

But Mrs. Malory's life is so ordinary, so unutterably dull--other than her penchant for stumbling over cadavers--as to be a great cure for insomnia. If you read in bed to fall asleep, perhaps chose one of this series, for example Mrs. Malory and the Silent Killer.

I read in bed to heighten the lovely luxury of reading!

Please check back soon for another mystery books review & look for the highly prized Mercury Rating evaluation.