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

Bree Baker: Seaside Café Mystery Series

January 16, 2021

Live and Let Chai: A Beachfront Cozy Mystery (Seaside Café Mysteries Book 1) Have I ever told you that I like the beach? Well, I do. I like the beach… a lot. I can sit for hours just watching the ocean as it continually changes and yet remains the same. Unfortunately, my husband is not so crazy about the beach (but that is a story for another time). At any rate, any Cozy mystery series that contains a lot of beach and ocean, and a shop in an old house on the boardwalk on the beach has a head start to my affection. The Seaside Café Mystery Series has plenty of sun and sand (the sleuth’s tea café is called “Sun, Sand, and Tea”) and Live and Let Chai, the first book in this series by Bree Baker is the next book that I have read to continue my posts about the most popular and recommended mystery series. 

Everly Swan is a 20 something culinary school dropout who has followed her dream back home to open a tea restaurant in Charm, North Carolina. Charm is just a stone’s throw away from Kitty Hawk and Nags Head. Everly had dropped out of culinary school to follow her cowboy (“Wyatt”) on the rodeo circuit. But, after having her heart broken by her cowboy, Everly decided to return to her hometown and open the tea shop that she had always dreamed of. 

Just as Everly seemed to be getting her life back together, a murder occurs in Charm and Everly becomes a chief suspect! Everly begins her own investigation when she decides that the handsome new detective in town seems to not be working hard enough to find the real culprit. (What else is a girl to do?!)

Charm is, well, charming, and Everly, her family, and friends are just the type of cast of characters that a lot of us like to read about in a good and light Cozy mystery. When I use the word “light” I mean it in the best possible way. Live and Let Chai is a true Cozy. The small town, the characters, and especially the beach are all very inviting. Without a doubt, the Seaside Café Mystery Series is a Cozy series worth all of the recommendations it has gotten.

By the way, Bree Baker also writes as Jacqueline Frost, Julie Chase, and Julie Anne Lindsey.

If you are interested in reading some of the other entries about highly recommended Cozy Mystery series, you can find them at the Most Recommended Cozy Mystery Series page on the site.

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Stephanie Blackmoore: Wedding Planner Mystery Series

August 27, 2020

Engaged in Death (A Wedding Planner Mystery Book 1) This month, as part of my series of entries on  the most popular and recommended mystery series for the site, I decided to read the first entry in Stephanie Blackmoore‘s Wedding Planner Mystery Series, Engaged in Death.

This first novel in the series doesn’t start with the sleuth giving up her big-time job in the big-time city to go to live in the scenic countryside, though name of the series does give a strong clue that this is going to be her eventual destination. Instead, it begins a little bit before most Cozies do – the protagonist, Mallory Shepard, is still living her life pre-Cozy-fication, going through her job as a lawyer, and engaged to a no-good-fiance (Keith) with an unpleasant family (Keith’s controlling mother, Helene). That said, this part of the novel passes fairly quickly, with the inevitable and unsurprising discovery that the no-good-fiance is in fact no good.

At the same time, Mallory suddenly inherits a piece of property, though the source is a bit less conventional than in many Cozies – she inherits it not from her own favorite aunt/grandma, but from her no-good-fiance’s grandmother Sylvia, who obviously didn’t exactly care for Keith or Helene but was surprisingly close with Mallory. So, Mallory goes down to take ownership of the property, joined by her unreliable little sister, Rachel, who has uncharacteristically come to offer support – possibly because she is at loose ends after having more characteristically dropped out of college again.

The bad news is that the piece of property, in this case a run-down but still impressive mansion named Thistle Park, is located in Port Quincy, Pennsylvania – the same town that Hellene lives in. As a result, Mallory isn’t exactly sure what to do with the house – she doesn’t want to live there, as it is too far from her work in Pittsburgh, besides being located uncomfortably close to her almost-mother-in-law.

Fortunately, the property does have some people interested in it, even in its current dilapidated condition – a gas company thinks that they can make a lot of money fracking, and are willing to pay top dollar for the land alone, uninterested in the house currently on it. Still, Mallory is reluctant because she knows that Sylvia loved the house and wanted to keep it intact, so she initially turns down the offer, shoving the unpleasant salesman when he refuses to leave initially. Mallory decides to sleep on the offer – but unfortunately, the salesman comes back at some point in the night, and even more unfortunately for him, someone murders him on the lawn of Thistle Park. Naturally, Mallory and her sister Rachel seem like prime suspects, so they’ll need to solve the crime while trying to decide what to do with the property and their lives from here on out (and again, spoiler in the series title).

All told, Engaged in Death is a well-done example of a conventional modern Cozy. There are a lot of enjoyable elements of the genre that fans are sure to be able to latch onto. It may not do much particularly new in the spot, but it certainly does a good enough job of presenting an enjoyable mystery in an interesting, likable area.

P.S. If you are interested in reading some of the other entries about highly recommended Cozy Mystery series, you can find them at the Most Recommended Cozy Mystery Series page on the site.

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Eva Gates: Lighthouse Library Mysteries

July 14, 2020

By Book or By Crook (A Lighthouse Library Mystery 1) This time around, I decided to read a multi-themed Cozy as part of my series about the most popular and recommended mystery series. This book incorporates no less than three Cozy mystery themes – librarians, lighthouses, and cats! Two of these, librarians and cats are among the most popular of all the themes. 

I read By Book or by Crook, the first in the Lighthouse Library Mystery Series by Eva Gates. Eva Gates, you may already know, also writes several popular series as Vicki Delany. (It still mystifies me why such a popular author needs to write under two names — oh well, it is lucky for us that the world is full of mysteries!)

The story follows Lucy Richardson, the new assistant librarian at the Bodie Island Lighthouse Library. (By the way, in an “Author’s Note” at the beginning of the book, we learn that although the lighthouse actually exists, it is not big enough in real life for a library or much else that the book’s lighthouse contains.)

Lucy has newly arrived from Boston. She has arrived just in time for a very special exhibit — a complete set of Jane Austen’s first editions on loan for a few months. In celebration of the arrival of these special books, the library hosts a small party for staff and board members to see the books for the first time. During the party, as is often the case in Cozy Mysteries, a murder occurs. 

Of course, the person murdered as disliked and/or hated by quite of few of the library staff and board members. So, it is a real mystery that must be solved. Lucy is especially interested in discovering the culprit since one of the prime suspects is Bertie, the head librarian who recently hired Lucy.

Besides the usual long list of suspects, the small town also includes several other characters, including two different men who are interested in Lucy as well as the murder. The first, Connor McNeil, is the mayor of the town and an old acquaintance of Lucy who first met Connor during one of the summer vacations that her family had spent in the area. The second, Butch Greenblatt, a police officer. Before the party is over, both Connor and Butch have asked Lucy out of for a date at the new seafood restaurant in town. (I must have been doing something wrong when I was single. When I moved to a new town, this never happened to me!!)

I forgot to mention another important character, the cat, Charles (Dickens), who spends his time in the library and ends up living with Lucy in the small apartment inside the lighthouse above the library.

The book is a charming delight of a read. I zoomed through the pages trying to solve the mystery before the plucky Lucy could do so. Fun and light (in the good sense of the word), By Book or by Crook is a delightful start to a Cozy series that hits all the right notes.

P.S. If you are interested in reading some of the other entries about highly recommended Cozy Mystery series, you can find them at the Most Recommended Cozy Mystery Series page on the site.

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Monica Ferris: Needlecraft Mystery Series

April 27, 2020

I just finished re-reading Crewel World, the first book in the Needlecraft Mystery Series by Monica Ferris (aka Mary Monica Pulver and part of the writing team under the name Margaret Frazer, at least for part of one series), another series that I am highlighting as one of my posts about the most popular and recommended Cozy Mystery series. Some of the novels that I highlight in this series are relatively new, and some relatively old. Crewel World is somewhere in between, and it wouldn’t be unfair to consider it one of the early entries in what I would consider the “modern” Cozy.

It’s easy to see how modern Cozies have been affected by novels like this – see if the description sounds familiar to any Cozies you’ve read recently… As her marriage ends, Betsy Devonshire has decided to uproot from her home in San Francisco to spend an indeterminate time visiting with her sister, Margot, in the small town of Excelsior, Minnesota. While there, Betsy will be able to not only get to know the friendly and often eccentric members of the small community, as well as spend time with her sister and help work part time in her store, the Crewel World knitting shop.

Unfortunately, not long after arriving, tragedy strikes when Betsy finds her sister in the shop, murdered, in what the police assume to be a robbery gone wrong. But there are many elements that don’t fit, including a landlord who had hoped to run Margot off to convert the property into a more lucrative development, and an apparently unbalanced acquaintance who wanted nothing more than to open up her own knitting store in Excelsior, a community too small to support more than one niche business of that sort.

Re-reading this novel, it’s also easy to see why this and others of its era were so popular, and how they came to set the mold that many Cozy series continue to turn two decades later. While this certainly wasn’t the first mystery to include details from an enthusiast hobby, the integration of the knitting and other needlework elements are inserted well into the novel, serving not only as a backdrop but also an important part of the mystery as it develops – which unfortunately isn’t always the case in many modern Cozies!

The writing of the novel is also well above average, including one part that actually became a bit uncomfortable. Often, the death of a relative or friend in a novel such as this is faced with almost a shocking degree of indifference, with the sleuth springing back almost immediately to vow to get to the bottom of the case. Here, the death is portrayed in a more realistic manner, with Betsy having significant difficulty recovering emotionally, which might be more accurate to reality, but wasn’t necessarily as comfortable as the more streamlined recovery time of other Cozy protagonists. Still, it does add a significant degree of realism that helps make the novel feel more real, and Betsy’s eventual determination to ensure the murderer is brought to justice feel more earned.

You can see the other entries I have written about the most popular and recommended series here.

PS: Oh, one more thing that the novel also did, perhaps a bit ahead of its time – it included a sample of the theme at hand, in this case a needlepoint pattern!

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