|
In a soft-boiled or cozy novel, the crime usually
occurs off-stage. The murder is typically planned. The cozy contains
little description of violence and few gory details, and little or no
explicit sexual content. Language and deportment are generally educated
and refined. Right and wrong are clearly defined and widely accepted.
The society in a cozy is highly moral and the word “genteel” may be used
as a descriptive term. The protagonist may be either an amateur or a
professional, and is often a woman. Plots are intricate and
intellectual, and the author provides numerous clues. The criminal is
caught and punished.
The traditional novel contains elements of both the
cozy and the hard-boiled, although it is closer to the cozy than to the
hard-boiled. As G.W. Niebuhr wrote, in a traditional novel “the action
uses violence to establish the seriousness of the crime without
trivializing or glorifying its horrific effects” (Make Mine a
Mystery, 8). Violence may take place on stage, but the details are
not described. Obscene language is rare, as is explicit sexual content.
The intent of the protagonist is to seek justice and to punish
wrongdoers. The plot is intricate, and layered. As in a cozy, the guilty
person is caught and punished.
Of the three types of mysteries, the oldest and the
most enduring is the cozy. The term “cozy” as a descriptive term for a
mystery is believed to have been used for the first time in a 25 May
1958 review in the Observer (London) of an obscure novel,
Long Shadows, by Carol Carnac, in which the reviewer described the
book as a “Cosy little murder mystery about a super-luxury country
nursing home.” But the subgenre existed long before May 1958. It became
popular in the Golden Age of mysteries (1920-47), and is thought to have
originated with Agatha Christie (1890 – 1976), whose first novel, The
Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920. This book
was the first of 34 mystery novels and five collections of short
stories, which feature Hercule Poirot.
The books were immensely popular. Christie’s
plot-driven mysteries, crammed with puzzles and misdirection, fascinated
her readers, even if many of them disliked her featured detective.
Poirot was pompous, vain, physically unattractive and one of many
arrogant and egocentric male detectives perhaps patterned after Sherlock
Holmes. It was not until Christie introduced Miss Marple in 1930 in
Murder at the Vicarage that she captured the female audience who
were to become her greatest fans. According to Rosemary Herbert, Miss
Marple was the “quintessential” detective in cozy mysteries (The
Oxford Companion to Crime & Mystery Writing, 278). The other Golden
Age female authors never wrote about a female detective: Ngaio Marsh
(1895-1982) wrote about Inspector Roderick Alleyn; Dorothy L. Sayers
(1893-1957) wrote about Lord Peter Wimsey, who was constantly bailing
out Harriet Vane; and Margery Allingham (1904-1966) wrote about Albert
Campion. Meanwhile, Jane Marple, who was between 65 and 70 when Christie
introduced her, was not only a woman, but an old woman, who
ended (at least in mysteries) the necessity for the stereotypical male
detective. Since Miss Marple’s debut, most cozy mystery detectives,
writers and readers have been women.
Agatha Christie is one of the world’s best known and
most read writers. Her sales have been exceeded only by the Bible and
the works of Shakespeare, and her work has been the inspiration for
hundreds of other writers.
Many critics have marveled at Christie’s enduring
ability to captivate readers, criticizing her for underdeveloped
characters, inadequate and unrealistic settings, and a host of other
faults. But those same critics all agree that she had a genius for
plotting, and that her ability to trick the reader, to keep the reader
in the dark as to “whodunit,” is nothing short of phenomenal.
Robert Barnard, a successful mystery writer, wrote
A Talent to Deceive: An Appreciation of Agatha Christie, in which
he analyzes her works and identifies many of her “strategies of
deception.” He provides the reader (or student of mystery writing
techniques) with a guide to them. His list, gleaned from her books, is
shown below:
-
The narrator is the murderer.
-
The assumed victim or the presumed pursuer or the
initiator of the investigation is the murderer.
-
The investigator or the sidekick (“Watson”) is the
murderer.
-
The domestic triangle. In Christie’s books, the
intruder/other woman is typically deceived and/or the victim.
Christie usually keeps the marriage intact.
-
The conspiracy. Christie frequently uses
conspiracies between two unlikely people, both of whom may appear to
have alibis, and/or may appear to lack a motive. The relationship
between the two may be kept from the reader until the end of the
book, and may be the key to solving the mystery.
-
The extended conspiracy. One or more of the people
is an imposter, and more closely connected to the victim than he/she
pretends to be. (For example, when we are about to scream
“preposterous” because in Murder on the Orient Express we
learn that all of the people on the train are connected to the
victim—we’re right! It’s not coincidence, it’s conspiracy.)
-
Reversing typical responses to certain situations.
Example: an international conspiracy to murder a banker prevents the
reader from noticing the banker’s suspicious behavior.
Another example: In a situation where a bitchy wife is faced with a
seemingly besotted husband, the reader forgets the most likely
killer of a wife is the husband.
-
The stereotype. Stereotypes are typically
discounted by the reader. Frail old ladies, bluff male bores,
children, all seem harmless. Any could kill, but are hardly ever
suspected by the reader.
-
The smokescreen trick, where the reader is
distracted from important matters because Christie has persuaded the
reader to focus on something else. For example, the reader focuses
his attention on the wrong murder, or what appears to be an
attempted murder, which, in fact, is a fake.
Barnard’s list, although a great beginning,
does not contain all of the strategies used in the Miss Marple books. I
have put together an additional list of “Strategies of deception,” List
II, from those books:
List II
-
Switching dead bodies. In at least one case, a
second person is murdered in order to procure a body killed at a
time when the murderers have an alibi. In another case, the body of
a person who has died of natural causes is used to make it appear
that the murdered person has died much earlier than he/she in fact
has. Again, this gives the murderer an alibi.
-
Switching lives. This involves making it
appear that the person who died is someone else, so that another
person can assume the dead person’s identity, usually to steal the
dead person’s money.
-
Theatrical tricks. The murderer arranges an event,
or a distraction, which leads the reader to believe that something
is happening that is totally different from that which is actually
occurring.
-
The “accident.” Example: a woman leaves poisoned
pills in an aspirin bottle on her own bedside table. She then hides
the aspirin belonging to another in the household, and tells the
person she wants to kill to feel free to borrow hers. The assumption
is made that the woman whose bedroom the aspirin was in was the
intended victim, and the other person took it by accident.
-
The “look over the shoulder” strategy, in which an
observer interprets/misinterprets what a character/victim sees, and
the reader excepts the misinterpretations.
Even the two lists combined are probably incomplete,
but they give us an indication of Christie’s originality and cleverness.
Readers of later mysteries will see Christie’s strategies used over and
over. Contemporary writers apparently plunder Dame Agatha’s books for
ideas.
Christie died in 1976. In the years since her death,
the number of cozies published and the number of women writing them has
expanded enormously. Cozies today almost always appear in a series.
Their scope has widened, although the essentials described on page two
remain in place. Certain trends have emerged, notably the “interesting
occupation” of the protagonists, sometimes described as themes. Listed
below are some of the occupations of the cozy investigator:
Antiques
Book, seller of, and librarians
Cooking
and catering
Decorating
Dogs (breeding)
Fashion
Fishing
Gardening
Golf
Inns, Bed & Breakfasts
Knitting
Medicine
Museums or other art-related occupations
Needlework
Quilting
Religion
Teaching
There are undoubtedly many more, and these themes or
occupations will continue to proliferate, as new novelists enter the
market, which, inspired by their own liking for the cozy and its
popularity, they will surely do.
When queried as to why they prefer them, readers answer
with words like “comforting,” “happy endings,” “justice done,” and
“order restored.” In other words, they are cozy.
Works Cited
Barnard, Robert. A Talent to Deceive: An
Appreciation of Agatha Christie. London: William
Collins & Son, 1979.
Herbert, Rosemary. The
Oxford Companion to Crime & Mystery Writing. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999.
Niebuhr, Gary Warren.
Make Mine a Mystery. Westport: Libraries Unlimited,
2003.
|
|
