The Cozy Mystery List Blog

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

Cozy Mystery CPAs and Cozy Mystery Financial Advisors…Who’d ‘a Thunk It?

For those of you cozy mystery readers who enjoy “money matters”… the following three authors should be of interest to you. These mystery authors have chosen to give their main characters professions that you wouldn’t ordinarily associate with a cozy mystery sleuth…

Elizabeth Chamberlin has been both a teacher and an accountant, and now writes the Jane Mayhew Mystery Series, which happens to feature a retired accountant.

Connie Feddersen writes the Amanda Hazard Mystery Series which is set in Oklahoma and features a CPA/Sleuth.

Diane Kelly writes the Tara Holloway Death and Taxes Mystery Series, which is set in Texas, and features an IRS criminal investigation agent.

Connie Shelton writes the Charlie Parker Mystery Series which is based in New Mexico, and features an accountant.

Patricia Smiley‘s Tucker Sinclair Mystery Series features a financial management/advisor.

Jennifer Sturman‘s Rachel Benjamin’s Mystery Series has an investment banker as her sleuth.

Maggie Toussaint writes the Cleopatra Jones Mystery Series which features a golfing-accountant-sleuth and her side-kick, Madonna (a rather huge St. Bernard)…

It’s time for us (the cozy mystery readers) to get rid of our notions of knitting needles, mustache combs, and walking canes in lieu of calculators, pie charts, and index graphics!

♦To access more Cozy Mysteries by Theme click on this link.♦

Holiday Post Office Blues

Have you been to the post office recently? I really planned and organized this year so that all of the packages I had to send out of town were actually sent before Thanksgiving. However, one thing I didn’t plan for was running out of stamps. I was the only person in the post office line who didn’t have any packages in my arms…. I felt somewhat out of place there. And, I also felt like an idiot for being able to get the obvious post office tasks done early… just to be standing in a long queue in order to buy stamps.

I do most (if not all!) of my holiday shopping online. Of course, that means that I pay for each item’s postage two different times, but I prefer getting the items so that I can wrap them, and then repack them. The online shopping is so convenient that I feel like I should do something personal… cutting the glitzy paper and adding the bright bow makes me feel like I have selected the gift personally… There’s something about actually having the item in my hands.

To get back to the point I was going to make at the beginning of this blog…. If you did your planning and have already sent out the packages you have to send out…. I hope you don’t run out of stamps! Your feeling of "Wow! I beat the mad rush!" will soon be a thing of the past…

(Of course, you would think that someone who admits to doing almost 100% of her holiday shopping online should be able to do something as easy as ordering stamps online, also!)

I Will Offer No Excuses….

Good grief! Where has the time flown?!? I have been very busy these past few days. I am guessing that most of you have been busy, too…. Rushing around getting things accomplished before December arrives.

My husband and I are so lucky that both of our grown children can be with us during the holidays. We had a terrific Thanksgiving visit…. And, I was actually able to see my college roommate during this past week! She was visiting her niece in Austin, so I drove up and we had lunch. You know the sign of a great friend… someone you haven’t seen in over twenty years, yet you are able to resume your conversations as if you had seen each other a day ago. (Of course, now that we have e-mail and cell phone capabilities, we actually are connected, even though physically we are distant… me in San Antonio and she in Iowa.) It was wonderful to see her again… Next time she is in Texas, it will be for a vacation… not because of a family emergency. She has an open invitation to stay with us…

I have been busy getting my Christmas preparations started. I have been listening to seasonal music, trying to get myself motivated. And, I am just about finished with M. C. Beaton’s Kissing Christmas Goodbye. I have really been enjoying this book… it reminds me of Beaton’s earlier Agatha Raisin books.

Well, I just wanted to write a quick blog… It has been a while since I last blogged… and I don’t know where the time went!

Happy Thanksgiving… Kissing Christmas Goodbye…

Happy Thanksgiving! (Actually, I am writing this the day before Thanksgiving… since I know I will be busy enjoying my family AND not enjoying the kitchen duties!)

Well, I am going to have to take a break from my Who Killed Father Christmas? novel (by Patricia Moyes) in order to read my Kissing Christmas Goodbye (by M. C. Beaton). I finally got my eighteenth Agatha Raisin novel, and I am so excited about reading it that I am almost giddy!

I know that I have written about this before, but here it is in a nutshell!

I first discovered M. C. Beaton through her Agatha Raisin books. I thought that they were absolutely delightful. In fact, I enjoyed the Agatha novels so much that I didn’t want to read the Hamish Macbeth series, in fear that I wouldn’t like it… since, how many authors can have two wonderful series going at the same time?!? Anyway…. I stayed with solely Agatha until after the (+/-)tenth book of the series. For some reason, I became a little disillusioned with some of Agatha’s antics. That is when I decided to try Beaton’s Hamish books. How glad am I that I did that!!!!?!!!?

I love Beaton’s Hamish series… I still continued to really like the eleventh through fourteenth Agatha novels, but, when Beaton dropped the "Agatha Raisin and the….." part of this series’ titles, I started thinking that at any time, I would stop reading the series… I thought that perhaps the series had seen its final chapters (as far as I was concerned). I got very tired of one of the characters…James (not to worry… I won’t go into details since I don’t want to write any spoilers. But, I can say that it was one of the few times in my reading experiences that I wished the earth was flat so that James could simply walk off the side… never to be heard of/from again!)

Anyway, I have continued with the Agatha Raisin series since I still enjoy the novels… but not as much as I used to. And, since I love holiday-theme cozy mysteries, I think that I am going to enjoy this book.  The cover is absolutely beautiful, but I’m hoping that Agatha is back to her delightfully wicked ways!

On a totally different topic… My husband sent me  a notice about Amazon having a day after Thanksgiving sale (better known as Black Friday Sale). We were totally unaware of that Amazon had a Black Friday Sale in the past….

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