The Cozy Mystery List Blog

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

Cozy Mystery Book Recommendations – February 2022

We’re just about at the end of February, so it’s time to discuss our favorite Cozies that we’ve 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 Dorothy St. James’s Beloved Bookroom 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 February? 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 during February 2022 that you want the rest of us to know about, and why did you enjoy it?

Ellery Adams (aka J. B. Stanley, Jennifer Stanley, & 1/2 of Lucy Arlington): Charmed Pie Shoppe Mystery Series

Connie Berry: Kate Hamilton Mystery Series (first entry A Dream of Death)

Melissa Bourbon (aka Winnie Archer & Misa Ramirez): Book Magic Mystery Series

Laura Bradford (aka Elizabeth Lynn Casey): A Friend For Hire Mystery Series AND Emergency Dessert Squad Mystery Series

Kate Collins: Goddess of Green St. Mystery Mystery Series

Cleo Coyle (aka Alice Kimberly): Coffeehouse Mystery Series

Krista Davis: Paws & Claws Mystery Series

Peggy Ehrhart: Knit & Nibble Mystery Series

Alex Erickson: Bookstore Cafe Mystery Series (first entry Death by Coffee)

Monica Ferris: Needlecraft Mystery Series

Joanne Fluke: Hannah Swensen Mystery Series

Eva Gates (aka Vicki Delany): Lighthouse Library Mystery Series

Elly Griffiths: Brighton Mystery Series (first entry The Zig Zag Girl)

Sherry Harris: Sarah Winston Garage Sale Mystery Series

Anne Hillerman: Leephorn & Chee Mystery Series

Miranda James  (aka Dean James,  Jimmie Ruth Evans, & Honor Hartman): Cat in the Stacks Mystery Series

Libby Klein: Poppy McAllister Mystery Series

Cynthia Kuhn: Lila Maclean Academic Mystery Series

Elizabeth Logan  (aka Camille Minichino, Ada Madison, Margaret Grace, & Jean Flowers): Alaskan Diner Mystery Series

Leslie Meier: Lucy Stone Mystery Series

Alexis Morgan: Abby McCree Mystery Series

Carlene O’Connor: Irish Village Mystery Series

Richard Osmon: Thursday Murder Club (first entry The Thursday Murder Club)

Deanna Raybourn: Lady Julia Grey Mystery Series

Barbara Ross: Professional Busybody Mystery Series

Sofie Ryan (aka Sofie Kelly & Darlene Ryan for Young Adult): Second Chance Mystery Series

Dorothy St. James: Beloved Bookroom Mystery Series

Diane Vallere: Samantha Kidd 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.

Dorothy St. James: Beloved Bookroom Mystery Series

The Broken Spine (A Beloved Bookroom Mystery Book 1) As part of the long-ongoing series where I look at the most popular and recommended Cozy mystery series put forward by site readers, I’m once again moving into unfamiliar territory – at least by series – with the Dorothy St. James title, The Broken Spine. I specify unfamiliar with the series because I have read books by Dorothy St. James before, but nothing in this, the Beloved Bookroom Mystery Series, which only started last year in 2021. That definitely puts this in the running as one of the most recent series that I’ve read for this series.

As is likely obvious from the title of both series and book, this is one of the more popular topics in Cozy fiction – books about books – very “meta”. Trudell Becket (sometimes “Tru” to her friends), the librarian of a library in the town of Cypress, South Carolina, is campaigning against the conversion of the library to a “bookless” library, one that focuses primarily on the lending of electronic books. When the books are finally all scheduled to be removed and dumped in a landfill, Trudell and a group of friends break into the library at night, determined to save at least some of the books from destruction by housing them in a now-abandoned bomb shelter built in World War II under the library.

Unfortunately, while moving books down into the basement, Trudell and her friends are surprised by the sound of a crash, which Trudell quickly determines came from a shelf of DVDs falling onto the town manager – the very person who had led the campaign to move the library to a bookless format. Naturally, Trudell is a leading candidate for the murder – not only was she vocally opposed to the transition, she was also in the library at the time of the death. Also naturally, she also has a somewhat complicated relationship with one of the local detectives, a former high school classmate of hers, though in this case he is the one who has recently returned to the town.

There’s definitely an obvious irony in the method of how I read this particular book – on my Kindle, taking advantage of the variable type size. My eyes aren’t what they once were, and while I was initially skeptical of moving to an electronic format, the option of having several hundred books in a single package lighter than a paperback and lit for easy bedroom reading has definitely made the transition smoother. That said, I personally don’t think that the electronic format should fully replace the printed word, and certainly still appreciate the charm of actual paper books – there’s a certain physicality to them that isn’t possible for Kindles, and I still find browsing through pages for a detail I want to recall easier than working backwards through a Kindle. So I can see both sides of the paper vs. electronic argument.

I really enjoyed reading this book. Being a Cozy about books and book lovers, it certainly covers a lot of old ground, but it also discusses newer issues like electronic books – though admittedly in an often obviously biased way.

If you’re interested in seeing other most recommended or popular Cozy Mystery authors/series, please visit the Most Popular & Recommended Cozy Mystery Series page on my site.

Upcoming Mysteries on Turner Classic Movies for March 2022

I was pretty excited when I started compiling the March 2022 Turner Classic Movies (TCM) mystery movie list. The first two days of the March schedule were exactly what I like to find: lots and lots of mystery movies! I have seen many of them, however if there’s a movie that I particularly enjoy seeing, I occasionally find myself DVR-ing it so that I can watch it again! I’m back to my needlework projects, so I enjoy watching the movies in the background.

TCM has added a lot of “more modern” (i.e. movies after the mid 1950s) – I am pretty selective about those mystery movies. I much prefer movies that used to be on the three main networks late, late at night – movies from the 1930s and 1940s. Hmmm… I wonder how many of you prefer those old-time movies…

Anyway, getting back to the purpose of this blog entry – here are the mystery movies you can find on the Turner Classic Movies channel during March 2022:

***** ***** ***** *****

TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES CHANNEL MYSTERY MOVIES – March 2022

***** ***** ***** *****

March 1, 2022

10:00 AM The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
A man remains young and handsome while his portrait shows the ravages of age and sin.
Dir: Albert Lewin’ Actors: George Sanders, Hurd Hatfield, Donna Reed
110 mins

4:15 PM The Naked City (1948)
A step-by-step look at a murder investigation on the streets of New York.
Dir: Jules Dassin’ Actors: Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart
96 mins

6:00 PM Key Largo (1948)
A returning veteran tangles with a ruthless gangster during a hurricane.
Dir: John Huston. Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall
101 mins

10:00 PM Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)
Phil Green is a magazine writer who decides to write a series of articles exposing Antisemitism. After failing to achieve an in-depth grasp of the problem, he pretends to be Jewish in order to experience the hostility of bigots first-hand.
Dir: Elia Kazan. Actors: Gregory Peck, Dorothy Mcguire, John Garfield
118 mins

***** ***** ***** *****

March 2, 2022

12:15 AM Laura (1944)
A hard-boiled detective falls hard for a murder victim. Every man who knew her fell in love with her, and now that she’s dead, the obsessed detective can’t get her out of his mind.
Dir: Otto Preminger. Actors: Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb
88 mins

2:00 AM Gaslight (1944)
A newlywed fears she’s going mad when strange things start happening at the family mansion.
Dir: George Cukor. Actors: Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten
114 mins

4:00 AM Suspicion (1941)
A young woman marries a charming man after a brief romance but then comes to believe that he is only after her money and will do anything to get it.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock. Actors: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, Sir Cedric Hardwicke
99 mins

***** ***** ***** *****

March 3, 2022

8:15 AM Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
An aging American judge presides over the trial of Nazi war criminals.
Dir: Stanley Kramer. Actors: Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark
190 mins

***** ***** ***** *****

March 4, 2022

12:15 AM Bullitt (1968)
A detective is sent by a politician to catch a big-time gangster so he can procure him before a Senate crime committee for selfish gain. When the gangster is killed before this can happen, the detective and the politico clash with each other.
Dir: Peter Yates. Actors: Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, Jacqueline Bisset
114 mins

10:15 PM The French Connection (1971)
A tough-talking New York City detective and his partner uncover an international drug smuggling ring.
Dir: William Friedkin. Actors: Gene Hackman, Fernando Rey, Roy Scheider
104 mins

***** ***** ***** *****

March 6, 2022

12:45 AM Raging Bull (1980)
The story of Jake LaMotta, a former middleweight boxing champion, whose reputation for tenacity and success in the ring was offset by his troubled domestic life: full of rage, jealousy, and suspicion–particularly towards his wife and manager/brother–which, in the end, left him destitute, alone, and seeking redemption.
Dir: Martin Scorsese. Actors: Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty, Joe Pesci
129 mins

10:15 AM The Lavender Hill Mob (1952)
An overlooked gold transporter with twenty years service plots to steal a million pounds of gold.
Dir: Charles Crichton. Actors: Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway, Sidney James
81 mins

***** ***** ***** *****

March 7, 2022

2:15 AM Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932)
Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic tale of a scientist who unleashes the beast within.
Dir: Rouben Mamoulian. Actors: Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Rose Hobart
90 mins
*****I’m not sure if this movie qualifies as a mystery…*****

***** ***** ***** *****

March 12, 2022

12:00 AM Klute (1971)
A low-key small town detective journeys to New York City to investigate the murder of a friend and discovers that both the killer and the victim were clients of the same high-class call girl.
Dir: Alan J. Pakula. Actors: Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Charles Cioffi
114 mins

2:15 PM Topkapi (1964)
An international band of thieves plots to steal a priceless treasure from a heavily guarded museum.
Dir: Jules Dassin. Actors: Melina Mercouri, Peter Ustinov, Maximilian Schell
120 mins

***** ***** ***** *****

March 13, 2022

6:00 PM Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
In the early 1930s, a car thief and the daughter of his intended victim team up to become America’s most feared and ruthless bank robbers.
Dir: Arthur Penn. Actors: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Michael J. Pollard
111 mins
*****More of a crime movies.*****

***** ***** ***** *****

March 17, 2022

4:15 AM Rashomon (1950)
In medieval Japan, four people offer conflicting accounts of a rape and murder.
Dir: Akira Kurosawa. Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, Takashi Shimura
88 mins
*****This movie is in Japanese.*****

12:00 PM Z (1969)
A political assassination uncovers a hotbed of corruption.
Dir: Costa-Gavras. Actors: Yves Montand, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jacques Perrin
125 mins
*****Im not sure if this movie is in English or French… It may even have parts that are in Russian.*****

***** ***** ***** *****

March 19, 2022

2:15 AM Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
On one of the hottest days of August 1972, three amateur bank robbers plan to hold up a Brooklyn bank. A nice simple robbery: Walk in, take the money, and run. Unfortunately, the supposedly uncomplicated heist suddenly becomes a bizarre nightmare as everything that could go wrong does.
Dir: Sidney Lumet. Actors: Al Pacino, John Cazale, Carol Kane
130 mins

4:30 AM Shaft (1971)
A slick black detective enlists gangsters and African nationals to fight the mob.
Dir: Gordon Parks. Actors: Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn, Charles Cioffi
98 mins

***** ***** ***** *****

March 20, 2022

11:45 AM I Want to Live! (1958)
True story of the small-time lady crook who fought to escape the gas chamber.
Dir: Robert Wise. Actors: Susan Hayward, Simon Oakland, Virginia Vincent
120 mins

2:00 PM Mildred Pierce (1945)
A woman’s ambitions for her daughter drastically impact her life.
Dir: Michael Curtiz. Actors: Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott
113 mins

***** ***** ***** *****

March 21, 2022

5:15 AM The Life of Emile Zola (1937)
The famed writer risks his reputation to defend a Jewish army officer accused of treason.
Dir: William Dieterle. Actors: Paul Muni, Joseph Schildkraut, Gale Sondergaard
123 mins

***** ***** ***** *****

March 23, 2022

12:30 AM A Letter to Three Wives (1948)
A small-town seductress notifies her three best friends that she has run off with one of their husbands.
Dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Actors: Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, Ann Sothern
103 mins
*****This movie is a “sort-a” mystery movie. It keeps you guessing ’til the end…*****

***** ***** ***** *****

March 25, 2022

4:15 AM What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
A crazed, aging star torments her sister in a decaying Hollywood mansion.
Dir: Robert Aldrich. Actors: Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Buono
132 mins

***** ***** ***** *****

March 27, 2022

11:30 AM All About Eve (1950)
Broadway legend Margo Channing has everything: a successful career, close friends, and a man who loves her. She also has a fan named Eve Harrington, who manages to worm her way into Margo’s life in order to study her like a blueprint.
Dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz Actors: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders
138 mins
*****This movie is not a mystery, but if you haven’t seen it… it’s oh-so good.*****

***** ***** ***** *****

March 30, 2022

10:45 PM The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
International spies kidnap a doctor’s son when he stumbles on their assassination plot.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock. Actors: James Stewart, Doris Day, Brenda De Banzie
119 mins

***** ***** ***** *****

If you’re really looking forward to these or other mystery-themed TV specials coming up in March, be sure to leave a comment below!

In case you’re interested in seeing the rest of this month’s television mystery movies, here’s the February 2022 television mystery movies schedule:

Upcoming Television Mystery Movies for February 2022 on Turner Classic Movies channel

And here is the page on my site with plenty of entries about movies and television shows you may enjoy:

Cozy Mystery List TV and Movie Section – all you have to do is click on the link to go to that page on my site.

February 21 to February 27, 2022

Here is the list of new releases for February 21 to February 27!

Maddie Day (aka Edith Maxwell & Tace Baker): Batter Off Dead (This will be the 10th in the Country Store Mystery Series.)

Peggy Ehrhart: Death of a Knit Wit (This will be the 8th in the Knit & Nibble Mystery Series.)

Amanda Flower (aka Isabella Alan): Put Out to Pasture (This will be the 2nd in the Farm to Table Mystery Series.)

J. A. Jance: Nothing to Lose (This will be the 26th in the J.P. Beaumont Mystery Series.)

Libby Klein: Antique Auctions Are Murder (This will be the 7th in the Poppy McAllister Mystery Series.)

Carlene O’Connor: Murder on an Irish Farm (This will be the 9th in the Irish Village Mystery Series.)

Diane Vallere: The Kill of it All (This will be the 9th in the Mad for Mod Mystery Series.)

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