Cozy Mystery update

I was looking at popular series and award-winning writers from a couple of websites that specialize in cozy mysteries, then looking for female protagonists and female writers. My main motivation in looking for cozies is a preference for a more Golden Age style versus modern bestsellerese (style), thrillers (genre), and law enforcement (subject matter). I'd be just as happy to read a modern locked mansion murder that was graphically bloody as long as the narration and storytelling were good and lacking clumsy clues, exposition dumps, and too many points of view.

One of the sites also had a thematic division of mysteries so I browsed through their description of the historical ones, but the few that I looked up samples from weren't at all what I was looking for. ( Read more... )

I also looked at short samples of a handful more modern American so-called cozies, but they had the same tweeness and unskilled writing, though in varying mixtures, as the aforementioned cookie shop mystery that irritated me so much.

So now I guess if I want to find more mysteries to read I should look at ones that are not considered cozy, perhaps? But I'm not sure I really feel up to it anymore yet. I've spent a week or so reading Catriona McPherson and have almost finished everything in her ouvre (I'm saving the last two because I am reluctant to run out), and after you discover a new writer that's rocketed up into your top ten list, almost everything else you try to read is going to be a bit of a let-down. Maybe I'll just reread some old favorites instead.