VPs and Dissecting a Cozy

My Sunday School group is made up of some of the neatest people you would ever want to be around. Don’t let it be said that we VPs are old or dull or staid. No indeed! We want to know what, who, why, how. We are as curious as cats. We may look on life with quiet eyes but behind our noble exteriors lies a lifetime of experience. We’ve stored up a lot of information, understanding, discretion, and, I like to think, wisdom.

But some of us are not quite sure why a cozy mystery is called a cozy. So, I decided to find out. (Remember that I’m brimming with curiosity.) And I discovered the dictionary says “cozy” means warm and comfortable. Mystery is something that is secret or unexplainable. Hmm. Maybe unexplainable until it meets the protagonist who is the brain child of said curios VP. Then the unexplainable, like a tangled ball of yarn, is smoothed out, made sense of, and neatly rolled into an engaging story. There was never a mystery too mysterious to be solved by an up and coming protagonist.

My son commented that my mysteries are the most bloodless he has ever read. “Oh, no,” I answered. “It’s just that all the gory stuff happens off-stage, where no one sees or hears the horrid blow-by-blow account.” In fact, this same child of mine once told me that the first chapter of The Cemetery Club contains a clue that is altogether yucky enough for the most hard-boiled mystery fan.

A cozy mystery  naturally seems to call for a comfortable chair, a crackling fire, and a cup of coffee. That certainly sounds warm and comfortable to me. Then, add sleuths who must get involved in catching a bad guy or two and making sure the good guy (or gal) wins, always, and you have that most wonderful of all fiction books, the cozy mystery!

By the way, the VPs I’m referring to are Vintage Persons. And we all know that vintage only increases value!

Speaking of value, books make wonderful Christmas gifts. You can find mine at Pen-L.com, Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Booksamillion. Soon, ebooks will join the paper backs in availability.