The Cozy Mystery List Blog

It’s once again time for me to continue my now-very-long-running series highlighting one of the many Cozy Mystery Series recommended by site readers. This month, I’ll be reading the first entry in Jana DeLeon‘s Miss Fortune Mystery Series, Louisiana Longshot.

In many ways, this is definitely a book that really stretches the definition of a Cozy, or even a ‘mystery’ to a certain extent. Certainly the protagonist is nothing like most of the sleuths you see in most Cozies. Fortune Redding is a CIA agent who is involved in a lot of serious (and violent) espionage activities. Most Cozy detectives have difficulty with the more ‘physical’ part of the sleuthing trade, particularly confronting the villain. That certainly won’t be the case for Fortune!

That said, in this one instance she is in a bit over her head. Having recently bungled a job and inadvertently ‘removing’ an international arms dealer in the process, she finds herself with a bounty on her head, and the CIA decides her best course of action is to lay low for a while posing as a librarian in the small town of Sinful, Louisiana. Probably not standard CIA operating procedure, but whatever works I guess!

Sinful, Louisiana, is where many of the standard Cozy features do begin to appear. Fortune actually has a cover story very similar, to many Cozy sleuths – a remote relative who has come to town to sort out the belongings of her late great-aunt. Naturally, the town is full of colorful characters, interesting local scenery and businesses, a geriatric hound dog named Bones… and a human bone that said dog unearths from the river minutes after Fortune arrives in town. Equally naturally, this changes Fortune’s itinerary somewhat, as suddenly there is a reason for the local Sinful police to have questions about her identity, so she decides she needs to help them out a bit and get the whole ‘corpse’ thing cleared up as quickly as possible.

While I cannot recommend this particular entry to those who are looking for a traditional Cozy experience with a knitting-loving baker who is returning to her home town to fulfill her childhood dream of opening a pet supplies store, there is still a lot to enjoy in Louisiana Longshot. There are plenty of familiar elements still present. The main difference is the sleuth herself, as much of the setting otherwise fits well within the Cozy mold. On another final note, I don’t normally discuss price, but in this one case it bears mentioning – the Kindle version of Louisiana Longshot is available for free, and as far as I can tell, this isn’t a temporary sale but a permanent pricing. So if you’re interested in a mystery that weaves together traditional Cozy elements and a decidedly non-traditional sleuth, I’d recommend giving Louisiana Longshot a try.

As always, if you want to read more of these brief discussions of some of the more popular Cozy Mystery Series that I’ve written in the past, you can find them at the Most Recommended Cozy Mystery Series page.