The Cozy Mystery List Blog

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

Happy Mother’s Day, 2019!

mother's dayJust a quick note to wish Happy Mother’s Day to all of you 🙂 !

As I’ve said before — I think we should use this day to celebrate all of the women in our lives. I have posted (twice!) a letter I once received that was passed on by my best friend about the importance of maintaining relationships with all of our “sisters”.  If you are interested in reading it again, here is a link to the latest post in which I included the letter.

Hope you all have a great day!

Reading Next: The Cracked Spine (A Scottish Bookshop Mystery) by Paige Shelton

I decided to try something different for the book I am reading for next month’s Most Popular and Recommended Cozy Mystery Series post. This time around I thought I would tell you well in advance the book that I will write about next month (probably late in May). This way, if you all want to read the book too, you can if you want. Then, those of us who have read the book can talk about it in the comments after the post.

Anyway, I have read enough of this first book in Paige Shelton’s Scottish Bookshop Mystery Series, The Cracked Spine, to know for sure that it will be worth writing about — and discussing!

So, if you get a chance to pick up this book and read it before I post my thoughts on it (sometime near the end of May), we maybe could have a fun discussion!

Patricia Moyes: Henry Tibbett Mysteries

Dead Men Don't Ski: Inspector Tibbett #1 (Henry Tibbett) This time I really didn’t have any trouble deciding what to read (or, re-read in this case) for the next in my series of posts covering the most popular and recommended Cozy Mysteries. As I wrote last month, most of Patricia Moyes‘ Henry Tibbett Mysteries are finally available on Kindle. Since these are some of my very favorite mystery books, I decided to re-read the first of that series right away.

In Dead Men Don’t Ski, we are introduced to Inspector Henry Tibbett of Scotland Yard and his wife, Emmy. Henry and his wife are off to an Italian ski inn, the Bella Vista, above the village of  Santa Chiara, a small Italian village near the Austrian border. Henry and his wife had planned a trip for the skiing — Emmy was a somewhat more veteran skier than Henry who was a total newbie to the sport — when Scotland Yard decided to assign Henry to keep an eye out in Santa Chiara because there was some suspicious activity that had come to the Yard’s attention going on there.

When Henry and his wife travel by train to the inn, they meet a number of English and other guests who will be staying at the Bella Vista with them. Not too long after they arrive at the inn, there is a murder. Henry and his wife become involved with the Italian police in trying to solve the case. And, with Henry being a great detective, as you can guess, he is instrumental in solving the case.

Henry and his wife are classic mystery characters. Henry is 48 years old and Emmy is somewhat younger. Henry has a reputation of solving many cases partially through use of his “nose”. Henry’s instincts plus Emmy’s common sense approach make this one of the great detective duos in mystery fiction. With this first book in the series being written in 1958 and the series extending to nineteen books with the last published in 1993, Patricia Moyes provided a fine series of post-classic era mysteries.

Moyes was born in 1923, which was just about when Agatha Christie’s first books were being released and when Christie was becoming famous. Although born a generation after Christie, Moyes’ Henry Tibbett’s Mystery books are very similar to classic Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham, and Ngaio Marsh (sometimes known as the Golden Age’s Queens of Crime).  Although Moyes was born too late to be a member of the Golden Age of Crime, her stories are a fine follow-on to that era. If you enjoy classic Cozies but haven’t yet met Henry Tibbett and his wife Emmy, I think you are in for a treat!

P.S. If you’re interested in other entries about some highly recommended Cozy Mystery series, you can see them on the Most Popular and Recommended Cozy Mystery Series page on my site.

Four New to the Site Cozy Mystery Authors

It’s time once again add authors to the site! As always, these were mostly recommended to me by site users.

Vivian Conroy is the author of the Country Gift Shop Mystery Series in Maine, the Merula and Raven Mystery Series starring a zoologist in Victorian London, the Lady Alkmene Callender Mystery Series starring a British aristocrat and reporter in the 1920s, the Cornish Castle Mystery Series starring a worker at a castle in Cornwall, and the upcoming Stationary Shop Mystery Series starring a stationary shop owner in Montana.

Alexia Gordon is a medical doctor who was raised in the American east, and has lived in various areas of the United States from the southeast to the southwest to the northeast, to three years in Alaska. She is the author of the Gethsemane Brown Mystery Series, starring an African American classical musician in Ireland.

 

Cynthia Kuhn is a teacher of literature, writing, and film at Metropolitan State University of Denver and the president of the Colorado branch of Sisters in Crime. Originally from New York, she now lives in Denver. She is the author of the Lila Maclean Academic Mystery Series, starring an English professor in Colorado.

 

Lisa Q. Mathews has had a wide and varied set of careers, having been an editor, a lifeguard, and a figure skating professional. She is a native New Englander, and has lived in many locations across the United States but now lives in New Hampshire. She is the author of the Ladies Smythe & Westin Mystery Series, starring a retirement community resident and one of the employees of the community.

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