Cozy Mystery update
3 Feb 2015 02:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneI 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. There's Carola Dunn's Daisy Dalrymple series set in the 1930s and sleuthed by an upper-class female British journalist, which sounded interesting on paper, but I gave up in disgust in far less than a chapter with an extended Twitter rant thanks to a jaw-droppingly awkward exposition dump that just went on and on and on. Then I tried one set in the Edwardian period by M.C. Beaton, a pen-name of Marion Chesney, who I believe writes Regency romances that my mom reads more than one of but which I vaguely recall disliking. I have tried several times with this one and actually made it to the second chapter even though the detective is a dude, but the narration is bizarrely stiff and wooden. As I ranted on Twitter, I wouldn't say "plodding" because the word "plod" has a sort of bottom-heavy feeling that implies a bit of syncopation or expression. This is more like a very long plot outline, complete with long chunks of wooden dialogue without any dialogue tags and still missing crucial bits of characterization (and motivation).
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.
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. There's Carola Dunn's Daisy Dalrymple series set in the 1930s and sleuthed by an upper-class female British journalist, which sounded interesting on paper, but I gave up in disgust in far less than a chapter with an extended Twitter rant thanks to a jaw-droppingly awkward exposition dump that just went on and on and on. Then I tried one set in the Edwardian period by M.C. Beaton, a pen-name of Marion Chesney, who I believe writes Regency romances that my mom reads more than one of but which I vaguely recall disliking. I have tried several times with this one and actually made it to the second chapter even though the detective is a dude, but the narration is bizarrely stiff and wooden. As I ranted on Twitter, I wouldn't say "plodding" because the word "plod" has a sort of bottom-heavy feeling that implies a bit of syncopation or expression. This is more like a very long plot outline, complete with long chunks of wooden dialogue without any dialogue tags and still missing crucial bits of characterization (and motivation).
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.
