A lot of us like to read books of scary fiction. That’s the key word–fiction. If we know it is only make-believe and we are safe and snug inside our own homes when we read it, it gives us a satisfying case of the shivers. One summer years ago when I was visiting my brother and sister-in-law in Minnesota, I found and bought a mystery written by one of my favorite authors. It was The Red Lamp by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Carlene and Tracy have a guest house a few steps from the main house and very near the lake. They also have beautiful pines, white birch, lots of tall trees. When the wind blows through these trees, it makes a sighing, whispering sound. That night, a storm came up. Lightning flashed. The wind blew hard. Those trees swished and swayed and sounded–well, they sounded ominous. It was a perfect backdrop for The Red Lamp. And out in the guest house, I couldn’t stop reading. Who could when each page led me deeper into a petrifying puzzle? Would the storm send trees crashing into the cabin? Was the noise that I heard only the wind blowing something against the door? I shivered and read on. Finally, I did the only thing a courageous writer of mysteries could do in that situation. I pulled the covers over my head and hoped for the best.
I like to create the same kind of shivery scenes in my cozy mysteries. In Grave Shift, one of my favorite parts is when a noise disturbs Darcy late at night and she goes to investigate:
“I jerked my hands away and stared at him. Never, in the two months since he’d adopted my mother and me, had Jethro behaved this way. My throat felt tight. “What’s wrong, old fellow?”
The cat didn’t appear to be looking at me. Instead, he gazed at the opaque night outside my bedroom window. His wide, unblinking yellow eyes brought back the memory of my encounter with his wild cousin. My legs suddenly felt like rubber. Something had caught the cat’s attention, something that I had neither seen nor heard. I brushed the curtain aside and peered out. Below me, the peony bushes bowed their stalks to a brisk breeze…Was that a footstep on the front porch? My mouth felt suddenly dry.”
Anyway, you get the idea. A feeling of tension, fear, but the reader is safely inside her home, an interested onlooker who is safe in her cozy easy chair. Maybe a fire is crackling in the fireplace. Perhaps a cat is snuggled in beside her. In one hand she holds Grave Shift or The Cemetery Club, in the other, a cup of coffee. Hmm. Maybe that’s the reason this kind of mystery is called a “cozy”.
Blanche’s cozy mysteries
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