Here is another cozy mystery theme… I have gone through all of my authors and found two who “borrow” characters from other authors. They are as follows:
Carrie Bebris… Bebris has an MA in English Lit, has been an editor, freelance writer, and college instructor. Her Mr. and Mrs. Darcy Mystery Series features two of the main characters from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Mrs. Darcy is Elizabeth Bennet, who, if you remember, married Mr. Darcy at the end of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice… obviously in England!
Barry S. Brown: Mrs. Hudson of Baker Street Mystery Series
Carole Buggé: Sherlock Holmes Mystery Series
D.E. Ireland: Eliza Doolittle & Henry Higgins Mystery Series, based on the George Bernard Shaw Pygmalion characters.
Laurie R. King: King has an MA in Old Testament Theology, and writes the very popular Mary Russell Mystery Series which features Mary Russell, a protégé of Sherlock Holmes. I won’t give all the details… but Sherlock Holmes is actually the partner/side-kick sleuth!
Lora Roberts: Roberts writes the Mystery with Sherlock Holmes Mystery Series.
Joanna Campbell Slan: Jane Eyre Chronicles Mystery Series, which features Charlotte Brontë’s Jane.
June Thomson: Thomson writes the Sherlock Holmes Series.
Jill Paton Walsh writes the Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane Mystery Series, which is based on the characters of Dorothy L. Sayers.
♦To access more Cozy Mysteries by Theme click on this link.♦
Wow! There sure are a lot of detectives of “a certain age” out there in the world of mystery books! When I started going through all of my authors and trying to categorize them, I divided them into more obvious themes… I had sleuths who cooked and cleaned, amateur detectives who gardened and golfed, accounting sleuths, amateur detectives who skated and golfed, sleuths who owned book stores or worked at libraries, ETC. However, I think that the “senior” sleuth was the most ambiguous of all of the categories. When I was in my twenties, I probably would have said that 60s would be considered senior. Now, however, I don’t think of 60s as anywhere near “retirement time.” (Note that I don’t say just “retirement”…. since I am truly looking forward to the day when my husband can retire and we can really start living… it up, I mean! Travelling during the time when other people are locked into the school schedules, taking off when we feel like it, going where we want to go, ETC… and that’s a BIG “ETC” of all the things that are available once you retire from work… but by no means from life! (Enough philosophizing for the day!)
What better way to begin this list than by listing Anne George’s Southern Sisters Cozy Mystery Series! Here is the second part of the Senior Sleuth Mystery Theme…
Senior Sleuths… hmm… Just how old does a senior sleuth have to be? Does that mean that the sleuth has to be ten years my senior, or my mother’s senior? As someone who not yet qualifies for the House of Pancakes’ senior discount, but who has a lot of friends who do, I can’t quite decide what the age should be. So, I am just going to leave it to the cozy mystery site readers to decide if the following series qualify as senior sleuths or not. It’s all in the eye of the beholder…