Getting cozy

Cozy mysteries generally share these features:

• The main characters get involved in sleuthing and crime solving, sometimes much to the dismay of the professionals.
• Cozies are often set in charming small towns where readers like to imagine living or visiting. They may include multi-generational families, romances, and lifelong friendships and rivalries.
• Rather than focusing on gruesome or lurid details of crimes and crime scenes, cozies provide character development and satisfying endings.
• Cozies offer escapism and very often appeal to specific interests of readers including cooking or baking, pets and other animals, gardening, fabric arts, and other creative crafts and hobbies.

I like a wide range of fiction, and cozies are among my favorite books to read for sheer pleasure. Last year I read the debut novels in two different mystery series: An Escape Goat in the Zen Goat Mystery series by Janna Rollins; and Hammers and Homicide in the Hometown Hardware series by Paula Charles. (The same writer is the author of both series, and she’s deftly developed a distinctive voice and setting for each.) When the second books in both series were released, I immediately ordered them from Houston’s Murder By The Book.

Are the second mysteries as good as the first in each series? As I’ve done little else but read both of them to their conclusions since my brother left, I think it’s obvious they are, if not even better.

Goats Just Wanna Have Fun brings back Callie Haybeck, whose goat yoga classes are scheduled at the county fair in the small town of Bobwhite Hollow, New Hampshire. There’s a little family drama, a little romance, lots of fair “cuisine,” carnival rides–and Bugsy the goat is up to his usual mischief. Bugsy’s not the only one, as Callie discovers when the proprietor of the Hasty Hogs Racing Pigs is murdered in front of a crowd of spectators. Callie and her cousin Tristan are determined to clear the name of one of the town’s business owners and find the real killer.

There’s a lot of fun in this mystery and several viable suspects, but I do also enjoy the growing relationships between Callie and her previously unknown family she discovered in An Escape Goat. Can’t wait for book three.

In Axe Me No Questions, the quaint small town of Pine Bluff in the mountain region of Oregon is ready to host the annual Timber Festival. It’s autumn, a time of pumpkin pies, steaming chili, and lots of red and black flannel shirts as the Lumberjacks and Lumberjills gather to compete in various activities for pride and prizes. The series’ amateur sleuth is Dawna Carpenter, widowed mother of three adult children who owns and runs the local hardware store after her husband’s death. Her daughter April has returned to Pine Bluff to keep an eye on her mother and start her own business. In the series debut, Dawna took to sleuthing much to the dismay of the local law enforcement. This time around, when she literally falls over the body of a murdered lumberjack, she gets a broken wrist, a resurgence of her curiosity, and even grudging permission from the law to “keep her ears open” and let him know anything she finds out.

Dawna does all that and much more, sometimes putting herself in jeopardy, and I like everything about her. She has wit, an intelligence as sharp as her tongue, an abundance of kindness toward others, and a strong sense of community. While I’m not nearly as brave as Dawna, I share her affection for the TV series “Ghosts.” We both like the show’s quirky characters, but Dawna also has a secret. She sometimes senses the presence of her late husband, sees her deceased cat Lilac, and in this second book, maybe even spots another late relative.

I look forward to my next visits to Bobwhite Hollow, Pine Bluff, and all these friends I’ve met along the way.

Thanks to Tom for taking these photos. I’d told Paula I’d do them (other readers were sending her their photos) because I remember when a lot of our TJB readers and the Coventry romance readers sent us shots while reading our books. It was fun as an author to see the books that way.