The Cozy Mystery List Blog

I know of one author (who I will not name) who actually killed off the husband of one of the primary characters in her series… and never mentioned him again!

Actually, I have to admit that the fact that the killed-off husband wasn’t mentioned even one time in the next mystery of the series was enough to turn me off of that particular author forever! I have never read another one of her mysteries, so maybe the deceased husband is mentioned in one of the following books in her series. But ignoring one of the secondary character’s death in the following novel of the series was enough for me to essentially "ignore" that particular author!

I just don’t like it when authors take "the easy road" on pesky details. Sometimes, I wonder what the editors are doing! Don’t they actually read the mysteries and make notes like "What happened to Mrs. Primary Character’s husband? Why don’t you mention his death? Why don’t you mention that he was the killer in the previous book? Why is Mrs. Primary Character still feared as a beacon of the town when her husband turned out to have killed several people? Do you even remember that Mrs. Primary Character had a husband?"

Yes, those are just some of the questions that I would have annotated in the margin of the original transcript to the following novel in the series. And, yes, (or should I say no?!)…. I am not an editor! I just don’t like inconsistencies…

How about you? Are you able to overlook author’s forgetting about a character? Or just changing a character mid-series? Maybe I’m too harsh of a reader… Or maybe it brings out the "teacher-days" in me… red pen in hand… trying to note the positive…. along with the sloppy/just-plain-wrong!

PS>>>>>>> I guess I am really showing my age when I say "the margin of the original transcript" instead of saying "highlighting and adding a comment in the downloaded file" that authors probably submit these days!

I am just wondering what is happening to my time! It feels like as soon as I post an author, I get two or three more recommendations… Which is why it is taking me so long to get all of the authors you all have been nice enough to recommend for the site. Not to worry though… I will get to them soon. (Some of them sooner than others!)

I am not following any particular manner in my posts… I just sort of "grab" the name of an author from my list, and start looking up the needed information. I really like it when I am able to gather all of the information from that particular author’s site. And, I have been lucky in being able to find authors’ sites through search engines.

But, as I have mentioned before… some of the authors don’t list their books chronologically. I don’t really know why they would scatter their novels… unless it is to make sure that we can see that the mysteries can also be read as "stand alone" novels. And, most of them can be.

Anyway… I will soon be posting new authors who you all have recommended for the Cozy Mystery Site. Thanks (again) for the recommendations!