At the end of last month, as MJ was recommending three authors to us, she brought up a really good point about a lot of our sleuths’ love interests. (Keep in mind that MJ liked all three of the authors.)<\/p>\n
MJ:
\nRe: Author #1:
\n“… has some quirky characters, and the \u2018requisite\u2019 (of many cozy writers) police boyfriend love interest…”<\/p>\n
Author #2:
\n“…This author ALSO follows the \u2018cozy\u2019 formula of the love interest being a police detective…”<\/p>\n
Author #3:<\/p>\n
“…It appears *** is utilizing the same love interest formula as the previous two \u2013 police dept. boyfriend to-be!<\/p>\n
I know several mystery cozies have love interests with OTHER occupations. But many (if not most) love interests are detectives (police or private), which is why I jokingly call them \u2018formula\u2019.”<\/p>\n
My answer was:<\/p>\n
“MJ, I totally agree about the \u2018requisite\u201d detective love interest! Either that, or the detective is their niece, nephew, son, daughter, best friend, neighbor, ETC! Sure helps the sleuth gather interesting clue-solving tidbits\u2026”<\/p>\n
Susie followed our line of conversation by adding:<\/p>\n
“MJ\u2019s point both intrigues and worries me. In the series I\u2019m developing, I don\u2019t have a detective as a love interest in the first book, but I do for the second. But the problem is, as Danna suggests, that the detective (or in my case, constable) comes in handy when you have an amateur sleuth, especially in a time period when women couldn\u2019t serve as police, detectives, etc (my books are set in early modern England). But I suppose he doesn\u2019t need to be a detective, but for a series you need a reason to keep bringing them together. Do you think a lawyer as the love interest is equally formulaic? And if so, do you mind? (I can think of the Anne Perry novels, but not too many others). I would love to know your thoughts on this.”<\/p>\n
What do you all think? Do too many sleuths have too many police\/private detective significant others?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the end of last month, as MJ was recommending three authors to us, she brought up a really good point about a lot of our sleuths’ love interests. (Keep in mind that MJ liked all three of the authors.) MJ: Re: Author #1: “… has some quirky characters, and the \u2018requisite\u2019 (of many cozy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9587","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-cozy-site-readers-question","7":"entry","8":"override"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pI0sr-2uD","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}