Curl up with a cozy

IN our real world of global violence, the cozy murder has maintained its intellectual escapism. The cozy began in England in the time of Queen Victoria and has been popular ever since. As opposed to hardboiled crime, the cozy downplays sex and violence. A baffling puzzle, with clues for the reader, give it the special appeal.

Agatha Christie remains the best known cozy author, yet there are modern writers just as good. And, with today’s internet browsing, it is easy to track them down.

Ann Morven (six cozy novels, several short stories) leads the field in my opinion. Her bio and titles can be found on  her web page at Amazon, http://www.amazon.com/Ann-Morven/e/B008GREDDE

She does the standard English village crime, but also locates her whodunits in erotic settings that vary from the Borneo jungle to the remote Highlands of Scotland. This reflects her lifelong career as a world journalist. This, I suppose, is also the source of the various hostile police characters who resent her amateur sleuthing.

A few more cozy authors of interest: Simon Brett, Jeanne M. Dams, Christianna Brand, Nicholas Blake, W.J. Burley, Christopher Fowler. Also, the late PD James, applying unique gentle prose to the gory evils that beset the human mind. Unlike most cozies, hers feature a professional police detective. The usual cozy sleuth is amateur (a trend set by Miss Marple). Their ages, jobs and backgrounds vary, often providing the link to the fatal deed.

The killers in cozies are generally members of the group or the community where the crimes occur. Their motives—greed, jealousy, revenge—are often rooted in past events.

But, of course, it is the writing that makes a cozy you simply can’t put down, and some of these creations surely must qualify as great literature. To critics who claim crime writing cannot be literary I say: Shakespeare wrote some lovely murders.

Happy reading! From Cathy.

In Praise Of Evil Men

MY PRAISE, I hasten to clarify, is for the creators of the best villains of fiction.

A recent discovery for me is Fallen Angels, first published 1984 by Bernard Cornwell and his wife Susannah Kells.

When reprinted in 2018 Susannah’s name was dropped from the authorship despite its narrative leaning to the romance genre. But I suspect she invented the book’s most evil character. He is a dashing cavalryman employed to woo and marry, and then murder, England’s richest and prettiest young heiress. I believe only a woman could think of and explore such a horrible situation for the unsuspecting heroine.

Or maybe not. John Ivor (in Run Maggie Run) has a priestly pedophile ‘comforting’ a girl of 9 on the night before she is to be hanged. Of course, she escapes both rape and hangman to undergo further perils on her adventurous odyssey to womanhood. This is brilliantly written, like all the most evil characters in the world of books.

There are many such, and depicting them needs a talent beyond the numerous baddies in popular fiction. Look at Shakespeare for a start. Of his many villains, I rate the vilest to be Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus. He arranges the killing of Lavinia’s betrothed in front of her, just to horrify her, before rape, tongue cut out and hands cut off. (So she can’t tell anyone).

Can anything be more evil? Well, there’s the bloodsucking vampire Dracula, by Bram Stoker. Or how about the demon barber, Sweeney Todd, who sliced customer’s throats before disposing of their bodies as juicy meat pies. Author? Many men worked on this penny-dreadful serial in Victorian London.

From the same era, Charles Dickens created the sadistic burglar and killer Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist.

Literature’s evildoers have been around for thousands of years and they abound in all mythologies. Not so well known to Western culture is Ravana, demon king in the Hindu epic Ramayana. Find a translation; it is a great read with as many gripping tales as the Bible.

In modern times, we have the blood chilling Hannibal Lector, by Thomas Harris. A respected doctor moonlights as a cannibalistic serial-killer. In children’s books, Lord Voldemort has been voted the most evil villain. He plagues the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling.

Mind you, there are evil women in fiction also, but mentioning them might let a few #metoo blokes off the hook. Am I being evil?

Happy reading! from Cathy.

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