Never Invite Jessica Fletcher to a Party

Amateur sleuths are a core feature of cozy mysteries. This poses a huge hurdle for the writer (and the suspension of disbelief for a reader). Why the heck do all these average folks decide to solve a murder?

Murder, She Wrote is the epitome of this. How many murders did that one woman stumble upon? And why did people ever invite her anywhere? Everywhere she went, someone got murdered! (“RSVP: Did you invite Jessica? If so, I can’t make it.”)

Coming up with a very good reason for an average person to solve a crime can pose a quandary for even the most creative mystery writer.

When writing a series, the issue becomes even more challenging. One murder solved by your hometown baker, florist, innkeeper, or librarian is hard enough to explain. When it happens repeatedly during the course of a series, writers face an extreme challenge. Why does this keep happening to the same person? And how do you explain all these bodies in one small town?

Some writers combat this by expanding the settings. A character might take a trip to another location where–surprise!–she finds a body.

As a reader as well as a writer of such books, I believe that the best way to deal with the issue is head-on. Make a tongue-in-cheek reference to the high body count in the cozy setting. After all, the reader is going to be thinking it, so the writer might as well be in on the joke.

Apart from the issue of body count, there is a problem of motivation. There has to be a very good reason why an amateur sleuth must solve the case. These often include:

• the main character has been accused of the crime
• someone she/he is close to has been accused of the crime
• he/she or someone she loves is in physical danger if the killer isn’t found
• the local police have bungled the crime
• the police have developed “tunnel vision” focused on someone innocent
• the main character’s business/livelihood is threatened by the fact of the murder

You might think that once a writer has exhausted all of those reasons, it’s time to move on to a new series. That would be logical.

However, so many of these series have characters that we as readers grow to love and settings we hate to leave. That’s something readers expect from cozy mysteries: a cast of quirky, lovable characters in an enticing setting. Many are set in places we as readers would like to visit (aside from the aforementioned troubling body count). The opportunity to get away from our everyday existence and take an imaginary vacation to a fictional town is one of the reasons we read.

Readers will continue to love cozy mysteries, and writers will keep creating these comforting, funny, lovable stories for our readers. After all, creative thinking is what writers do.