I’m fully aware that all fiction is what my mum would call
‘storytelling’ – basically just a pack of lies. But putting the words ‘crime’
and ‘cosy’ (or ‘cozy’ as the Americans call it) seems like taking things just one
lie too far to me. How can any crime be a cosy, friendly, homely thing? A local
librarian gets stabbed in the eye and the crime is solved in time for everybody
to enjoy jam and cream scones for tea. Hurrah! That’s just plain weird. Or an
outsider is found dead on the vicarage steps but the vicar, while expressing
immense sorrow, is unmoved enough to deliver his sermon on loving thy
neighbour, thus proving that he’s a
cold-hearted killer. It’s all so very British – a Britain that no longer exists
if it ever did at all.
The queen of cosy crime had to be Agatha Christie with her
Miss Marple books. A lovely English village, a doddery old lady whose body is
falling apart but whose mind is still sharp as a tack, and the death of someone
despicable who everyone agrees (behind the victim’s bloodstained back of
course) pretty much deserved it. Miss Christie never felt the need to throw in
any complex subplots, she just churned out light books to be read for fun.
Perfect holiday reading, we’d call her novels today.
And although it could never be described as high art, there is plenty of cash to be made in this particular literary field. The homely nature of these books represent a world where, however bad things get (and multiple murder is pretty bad) we always have friends, family and a pint of mild in the village pub to return to in the final chapter. Nothing in the world of cosy crime ever changes, they just hit the reset button on the final page ready for the next book in the series – because it’s always a series. These authors know that they’re onto a winner so they milk that cash cow until it’s teats squeak. It may not be realism but we all need an escape from the real world some time or other.
Anyhow, I’d better leave it there for today. I have a cosy
crime novel to work on.And although it could never be described as high art, there is plenty of cash to be made in this particular literary field. The homely nature of these books represent a world where, however bad things get (and multiple murder is pretty bad) we always have friends, family and a pint of mild in the village pub to return to in the final chapter. Nothing in the world of cosy crime ever changes, they just hit the reset button on the final page ready for the next book in the series – because it’s always a series. These authors know that they’re onto a winner so they milk that cash cow until it’s teats squeak. It may not be realism but we all need an escape from the real world some time or other.
© Shaun Finnie 2011
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