The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series is, I’m told, not heavy on the mystery side, but great on characters and setting. That’s according to my wife, I haven’t read them. There’s also a TV series, apparently quite good but short-lived.
I borrowed this one. Thanks!
Yes, the series has gotten too complicated and less funny. I haven’t read the last ones in the series, but I was eagerly waiting for the early ones.
Thanks, I’ll check it out.
I only read the first couple pages of The Invisible Code and the humor is evident. Since I’m often looking for humorous mysteries, this is a nice find. Thanks again.
I usually like Cleo Coyle, but the first in that series was not my cup of tea (coffee). But I’m looking into some of her other stuff. Thanks.
One of my favorites. Alexander McCall Smith has some great series. Thanks for reminding me about him.
I like Janet Evanovich’s Wicked series, Anne Charles’ Deadwood Mystery series, Heather Blake’s Magic Potion Mysteries, Juliet Blackwell’s Witchcraft Mystery series, and somehow I’ve managed to collect several of the books in Leighann Dobbs & Traci Douglass’s Silver Hollow Paranormal Mystery Series but haven’t started reading them yet.
Louise Penny’s series about the Canadian village of Three Pines. There is a pet duck but the duck is played more as local color than as a pet involved in the mystery. She writes evocatively about what her characters eat, but food is never the centerpiece.
How did I earlier fail to mention Monica Ferris’ “Crewel World” series?
M.C. Beaton was a woman. Hamish McBeth was made into a TV series with Robert Carlyle a while ago (available on Acorn). Beaton didn’t like Carlyle, heh.
Dominic Minghella did Doc Martin which is nearly a direct copy transported to Cornwall.
I think the Stephanie Plum books might be written by ghost writers now - they ceased making sense, with character histories changing - sometimes personalities too - and just general very lazy writing.
And the Agatha Raisin TV show is just about watchable, but the books are some of the worst books (the first three, for free) I’ve ever read. It’s very hard to believe they were written in the 90s rather than the 60s, and the TV show exists in some sort of weird time zone that doesn’t fit any decade ever.
I loved the Good Thief’s Guide - never seen anyone else mention them!
Fiona Leitch’s Nosey Parker books are a lot better than I expected. There is a lot of food in them - the main character is a chef - and there are actual recipes at the end of the book - so if food bothers you, then these aren’t for you, but the plots and characters are strong, and the setting feels current while still being very cosy.
I don’t know if you’ve read the Father Brown books, but I prefer them to the TV show, which has a strong lead but terrible acting from everyone else (and they moved it to thirty years later than the books for some reason). It’s also worth looking at the other golden age of crime writers if you haven’t already. They vary a fair amount in quality, and do make you appreciate Christie more, but, apart from a few, they are well worth reading.
For books set now, UK quiz show presenter Richard Osman has a sudden very successful third career as a cosy crime writer (his first career was behind the scenes as a writer and producer). They would definitely fit in with your general likes. Only two so far, with another due out fairly soon.
Oops, sorry to Ms Beaton. I tried to watch one of the Hamish MacBeth TV series, but I couldn’t get past the accents. I didn’t think to put on subtitles, maybe I’ll give it another try. I think I had a problem with the lead actor too, but I don’t remember what it was.
Somewhat older is the British series “Pie in the Sky” starring Richard Griffiths, available via Acorn (and maybe BBC?). It started in 1994 and lasted 7 seasons. It will appeal to the foodies in the house as well. Fun to see who the guest stars are each episode, a much younger Andy Serkis put in a turn as a low-life petty thief about half-way through the first season.
The first episode didn’t really hook me, but at my wife’s insistence we tried episode 2 and have just finished the first season.
(Another reply echoing into the void of an abandoned thread.) Try “The Brokenwood Mysteries” on Acorn. Cozy mysteries and the music is great!
Absolutely love Brokenwood! We just recently watched the whole series again over about a month. When I watched the very first episode the first time, I thought the country music schtick was going to be hella annoying, but it really didn’t turn out that way. Great cast, and Dr. Gina Kadinsky is the quirky pathologist that that smug annoying Fleur (from Midsomer Murders) wishes she was.
All the quirky is kept to small doses, and the actual mysteries are pretty good. Besides the scenery is gorgeous.
Hmm, I got half way through the first episode and decided it wasn’t for me. It really gets better?
While I’ve enjoyed many of these shows, I think I have a different definition of a cozy mystery than many of you do. In a cozy mystery, the main crime solving person cannot be a detective or police officer of any kind. So I would put Brokenwood and Death In Paradise as light crime rather than cozy.
I think the whole point of cozies is that the crime solver is an amateur. Thus they are dogwalkers, bakers, librarians, quilters or book club members that just happen to stumble into as many murders as Jessica Fletcher, a cozy mystery solver herself.
Often there is a police character in the books, but they will be the incompetent Chief of Police of Podunkville that takes credit after the cozy amateur has solved the crime. Or there will be a cousin or in-law that’s a lowly police officer that are used for information they have on the case.
Cozy or not, do watch Brokenwood, a great show and I hope more come out. Same for Death in Paradise, just skip the ones with the Irish guy, I found him really annoying.
Thank you. I was just about to write this. I attend Jane Cleland’s online seminars on writing every month. She is a cozy writer, and this Saturday she gave a definition which matches yours. Much as I love Death in Paradise, it is not a cozy. Neither is Brokenwood or the Murdoch mysteries.
BritBox now has Sister Boniface, the Father Brown spinoff. One season, ten episodes, and I much prefer it over Father Brown. And they used me as a consultant for episode 3 which involved jigsaw puzzles.
At it’s broadest, cozy mysteries are those without very much angst or violence, and where the focus is on thought rather than action. You can narrow it down to “police limited to being stupid or obstructive or both” if you want but I think a lot of classic police detectives like Roderick Alleyn or Adam Dalgliesh or Reg Wexford are reasonably cozy. At least they suit me for that purpose.
Coincidentally, me and my wife have this next in our queue. Now I can brag I know a consultant on the show. 
Sure, you can include those if you want, but then you have to include about 95% of UK shows that were on Masterpiece Theatre in the US. To me, cozy always applies to an amateur sleuth and I had never heard the phrase until the last decade (?) or so when themed book series intertwined the amateur sleuth with whatever their occupation was. I think the Hallmark Channel helped this along with all the movie series they adapted from cozy books.
For a given value of better, yes. It is a bit dated, however the shows do deal well with issues of race, gender, white privilege, food production and marketing and in the final episode of season 1 even environment versus development.
I’m going to spoiler what is my main issue with the show so far:
The reason that Crabbe gets stuck having to be the dirty errands boy for Fisher is requiring a pretty big suspension of disbelief on my part. If I was Crabbe, I’d have told Fisher to publish and be damned given the extremely dubious way the supposed sting went down. Even jaded old me finds it hard to believe that someone with Crabbe’s experience couldn’t torpedo any sort of internal inquiry, especially after his DS commits suicide by drunk driving.
I’m a big fan of the Charlotte MacLeod mysteries. My favorites are Wrack and Rune, The Luck Runs Out, and The Withdrawing Room. The first two feature Shandy, the last, Kelling and Bittersohn. She also wrote a series of cozies called The Grub and Stakers.
If you have Acorn, you can’t go wrong with Vera. Wonderful actress in the lead and it’s great fun to watch her slowly put the pieces together.
Also on Acorn, I enjoy the Brokenwood Mysteries. Cast is great (I particularly like the Russian pathologist) and every eppy has some comic relief.
We’ve watched all of David Suchet’s Poirot, and we’re working our way through Father Brown, which is okay, but not great. We watched a couple episodes of Sister Boniface, a spinoff about a nun who is a crime-solving chemist (as in scientist, not pharmacist), and although her character was fun and interesting in her first appearance in Father Brown, she’s a little too contrived (and derivative) to support a whole series, IMHO.
We’ll check out some of the suggestions here when we finish up Father Brown.
A slight hijack: we watch Britbox on Roku, and it is by far the most unstable channel I’ve ever had on the Roku. It will hard freeze, so that the only thing I can do is unplug the device, or lock up and make the Roku reset itself, or sometimes simply not load at all. To be fair, we haven’t had any of those problems in the last few months, so maybe they’ve gotten their act together. But it was very frustrating because the content is good, and we watch it quite a bit.
We were having that problem with Hulu* until I tossed the Hulu app and re-downloaded/installed it. No problems since.
*And that was happening during Only Murders In The Building. A post-modern Cozy… lots of fun.