The Cozy Mystery List Blog

Cozy Mystery (and Other Favorite) Books, Movies, and TV

An Original Camille Minichino Miniature!

Original Camille Minichino MiniatureI am happy to be able to “show and tell” my latest Cozy Mystery item: an original Camille Minichino miniature crime scene.

I am so delighted with this crime scene… I have placed it on the shelf right above my computer screen, so that I can look up and get inspiration while writing my entries. Believe me >>> I need a lot of inspiration sometimes!

I live in Texas, and the Bluebonnet is our state flower. Yep, those are Bluebonnets in the blood-covered vase on top of the TBR stack of books. As an avid coffee drinker, I was quite happy to see that yes, that’s coffee in the cup.

Camille Minichino asked me to tell her some of my favorite authors so that she could include their books in the crime scene. But since I was going to be getting a Camille Minichino original, I thought that I would prefer her books gracing the crime scene. What a treat to have covers from both her Miniature Mystery Series and her Periodic Table Mystery Series…

Thank you so much, Ms. Minichino!

A Truly Terrific TNT Channel Show: The Closer …

I have recently mentioned (several times!) that my daughter is home for the summer. The two of us watch a television show together every morning… a “chick flick” type of show that we have not introduced to either my husband or son. Our favorite show is TNT’s… The Closer.

We have several shows that we follow together, but The Closer just seems to “have it all” for us. It is a detective/”cop” show which is different from others. The boss happens to be a woman who is very smart, who demands respect from her subordinates while instilling a trust and comradeship in the office. She is able to balance being “the boss” with being one of the detectives who must solve the case during the one-hour time limit of the show.

Several weeks ago, after watching that week’s show, I tried to decide why we like the show so much >>> I think it’s because the characters actually interact the way real people do. There is a genuine friendship between some of the characters, but there are also jealousies.

Brenda Lee (the main character) is played by Kyra Sedgwick. She is a strong woman with many weaknesses. She is a boss who believes in second chances – third, fourth, and even fifth chances! She is a woman who makes no excuses for doing things her way. She has worked all of her adult life to achieve the success in her career that she is now experiencing – heading the homicide department in the city’s police department.

She hasn’t put off having children to a time when they would conveniently fit into her life. Instead, she has elected to forgo children… knowing that children not only bring joy, but as she has seen on the job, they can also bring such unbearable sadness when they disappear or are harmed. (*****SPOLER ALERT FOR THE NEXT SENTENCE*****) The loss of her beloved “Kitty” took Brenda Lee to such an unexpected sad point in her life that she simply cannot fathom putting herself in a position that would take her even beyond that sadness.

The Closer has the perfect addition of comedy, the characters all seem (to my daughter and me, at least) to be three-dimensional with true-to-life pasts, and the acting is truly enjoyable.

The Closer is a show that I highly recommend!

Happy Fourth of July to All of the USA Cozy Mystery Site Readers

I’ll keep this Fourth of July greeting short, since I know that there are many Cozy Mystery Site readers who aren’t USA citizens, so please bear with me…

A lot of you are probably out enjoying the summer weather, picnics in the park, time with loved ones >>> It seems like this holiday brings out a time when a lot of us want to connect with others, to enjoy the simple pleasures that we are able to take for granted. 

The Fourth of July is a time when I always think of both my father and my father in law. Both of them served in the armed forces so that we could enjoy all of the rights and liberties that we have to enjoy.

THANK YOU to all of those who have made the Fourth of July a holiday that depicts how truly lucky we are!

No Longer An Empty Nester… AND Loving It!

Where to begin?

Both my son and daughter are back in the nest for what might be our last summer together. Our son is looking for an accounting job, and our daughter is taking a much needed break from summer internships… getting ready to go “back east” to law school.

We have been living in San Antonio for the last sixteen years… Both of our children attended elementary, middle, and high school right here. They both went to college in Austin (less than 70 miles away), so we have been very lucky to have them close enough that we could see them on a regular basis.

What a shock it was when I heard that my son is applying for jobs as far away as California!!! And our daughter will be moving east in just two months. Where has the time gone?!?

I didn’t really think about this possibly being our last summer together until last night, when my husband “announced” this bit of information. I don’t know if I was living in a time warp, dream land, or just not facing reality >>> I just hadn’t “put it all together.”

I don’t want to dwell on the negative (which I am inclined to do), rather embrace the time we have to enjoy each other. But, with the “help” of my husband’s one little phrase, I am already dreading the time when our two children will go their own ways, and our time together will be limited to holiday visits and phone calls.

At least it isn’t like “the olden days” when phone calls were limited… more than 35¢  per minute made them a costly event. It seemed to me that whenever I talked to my parents on the phone, my father would say hello and pretty quickly lapse into how much the phone call was going to cost. I am pretty sure that some of our phone calls consisted solely of how much we were going to pay Ma Belle per minute!

So, I am armed for this brave new world, which I will be exploring in a short while: We are on the “family plan” of T-Mobile… an answer to every parent’s empty nest syndrome, and perhaps not such a great joy for sons and daughters of new Empty Nesters…

MENU