The Cozy Mystery List Blog

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

Cozy Mystery Book Recommendations – December 2022

December is almost over, so it’s time to discuss our favorite Cozies that we read this month!

If you read a Cozy mystery this month and want to recommend it to the rest of us, be sure to post it here! For this month, I read the first entry of Laurie Cass’s Bookmobile Cat Mystery Series. For the reasons I want to recommend it, be sure to check out the blog entry!

So, what have you been reading that you can recommend in December? Please be sure to tell us why you liked these Cozies so much. I know we’re all always on the lookout for more particularly good Cozy Mystery authors! (If you have a lot of Cozies you think are great, please post the ones you like the most at the top of the list.)

As always, please do not tell us about the Cozy Mysteries you did not like.

What really good Cozy Mystery did you read December 2022 that you want the rest of us to know about, and why did you enjoy it?

Winnie Archer (aka Melissa Bourbon & Misa Ramirez): Bread Shop Mystery Series

Jennie Bentley (aka Jenna Bennett & Bente Gallagher): Do It Yourself Mystery Series

Laurien Berenson: Senior Sleuths Mystery Series

Lynn Cahoon: Cat Latimer Mystery Series

Laurie Cass (aka Laura Alden): Bookmobile Cat Mystery Series

Ann Claire: Christie Bookshop Mystery Series (first entry Dead and Gondola)

Maya Corrigan: Five-Ingredient Mystery Series

Vicki Delany (aka Eva Gates): Sherlock Holmes Bookshop Mystery Series

Victoria Hamilton (aka Amanda Cooper): Merry Muffin Mystery Series

I will list the authors and series that have been recommended, but I urge you to read the comments below so you can see the reasons other Cozy Mystery readers thought these were their best reads of the month.

♦To access more Cozy Mystery Books Recommendations, click on this link♦

P.S. I usually don’t comment on your recommendations since they speak for themselves.

Laurie Cass: Bookmobile Cat Mystery Series

Lending a Paw: A Bookmobile Cat Mystery (Bookmobile Cat Mysteries Book 1) As part of my ongoing series highlighting the most recommended and popular Cozy Mystery series suggested by site readers, this month I will be discussing the first entry in Laurie Cass (aka Laura Alden)‘s first entry in her Bookmobile Cat Mystery Series, titled Lending a Paw.

Librarian Minnie Hamilton has spent the last three years in the small resort town of Chilson, Michigan, having taken up an assistant director position at the district library, having spent many happy summers there as a small child, staying with her aunt Frances, who still maintains guest rooms for the resort season. More recently, Minnie had acquired a new family member as well – Eddie, a stray cat black and white striped cat that had followed Minnie home from relaxing in a local cemetery.

Though she has been working in Chilson for some time, Minnie is starting another chapter in her career – she had the idea for a bookmobile attached to the local library, driving about town to visit readers and distribute books, and as her idea, when it was decided to go along with the idea, she was the person who would end up driving it.

Naturally, it was a bit of a surprise to her that there would be a co-pilot for the drive – her cat Eddie – and even more of a surprise that at one of her first stops, Eddie would turn up a dead body instead of a book enthusiast looking for some light reading.

The deceased that Eddie and Minnie turned up, Stan Larabee, was a bit of a surprising figure – most of the town considered him a tight man with his money, someone who was more concerned with business than anything else, but he had also been the main donor to setting up the bookmobile, more or less single-handedly bankrolling the project. So despite the fact that most of the small town wasn’t terribly concerned at his sudden death, Minnie felt a certain responsibility – not only as the person who discovered him, but also one of the few that seemed to see him in a better light, no doubt one of the reasons that she began investigating on her own – or rather, with Eddie.

Set in a small midwestern sort of town, revolving around two comfortably Cozy topics, in this case cats and books, with a protagonist returning to a familiar family haunt after years away, Lending a Paw is a good example of a fairly conventional modern Cozy – and like most modern Cozies, it’s definitely a story that many modern Cozy fans will be able to sit down and spend some time with. This isn’t an innovation in mysteries by any means, but the interactions of the characters and especially of Eddie make it quite worthwhile to any fans of a combination of mysteries, cats, and bookmobiles.

Happy Holidays 2022!

Merry Christmas Eve, Happy Hanukkah, and many other happy holidays! I’m very fortunate that this year I’ll be enjoying the holidays with family – my husband, son, daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter are all in town, so it’s a very merry Christmas for us!

I hope this holiday season has been a healthy one for all of you – I know we are hopefully past the worst of the pandemic, but please do make sure to stay safe this holiday season! Here’s wishing you ALL an early Healthy, Happy, and Merry Christmas!

Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking (2004 BBC Movie)

Arthur Conan Doyle‘s Sherlock Holmes is likely the most famous fictional detective of all time, and possibly one of the most famous fictional figures outside of mystery fiction. He also happens to be in the public domain, which means that there is zero effective oversight of how the character is used by the author or their estate.

As a result, unofficial Sherlock Holmes stories can be written by just about anyone and be added to the unofficial Sherlock Holmes body of work. Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking is one such case, an addition by the BBC in 2004. This work is a semi-sequel to another 2002 BBC production, one of the many, many adaptations of The Hound of the Baskervilles, but in this case the connection is a bit more tenuous on the stage end – Richard Roxburgh was Holmes in the 2002 Hound production, but was replaced by Rupert Everett in the 2004 Silk Stocking. The main point of continuity is Ian Hart, who plays Dr. Watson in both productions.

A bit of a warning for Cozy fans – this one is a bit darker than most Cozy work. A serial killer is at large in London, targeting young women of higher birth. Meanwhile, Holmes is indulging in his customary distraction from many works, including indulging in narcotics. Watson lures him out of hiding, and quickly enough “the game is afoot” once more.

The main success for this particular movie is in the setting and costuming, which gives a very good feeling for Victorian England. Likewise, the performances are all decent, particularly Everett as Holmes and Hart as Watson. They give a good impression of being old friends, perhaps a bit estranged by time and events, but still willing to come through for one another and showing keen understanding of how the other works. Hart as Watson is in particular a good version of a less dunce-ish Watson, giving a better impression of the character, who is after all a practicing doctor, war veteran, and Victorian gentleman, not the bumbling oaf often portrayed.

Unfortunately, the mystery end does let things down a bit. Not to spoil the ending, but it does violate one of the Knox’s 10 Commandments of Detective Fiction – which is never a great sign. As a result, the conclusion feels a bit cheapened, as there is no real way that the viewer could hope to discover an important aspect of the mystery up until Sherlock suddenly proclaims that a specific conclusion must be true. Naturally enough, this being the great genius, he is correct, but it still feels like a cheapening of the mystery.

Still, regardless of shortcomings, I’d still recommend it to any fan of mysteries with a BritBox subscription, as it is free at the moment on the service. 

MENU