The "cozy" sub-genre of mystery fiction seems to have arisen in the late 1980s or early 1990s. From my observation, they mostly seem to be pleasantly entertaining stories without much graphic violence or bloodshed. The central characters seem to be almost exclusively women who are not detectives or otherwise involved in law enforcement, most with one or more female side-kicks, and most with some vague male romantic interest in the background. Many of them involve some sort of "Ye Olde Tea Shoppe" type of business or occupation and, sadly, appear to know absolutely nothing about proper police procedure or even much about the legal system, inventing whatever they need to make their plots work.
What set me off on this rant was the Jill Churchill book I just finished re-reading, A Farewell To Yarns. At the end of that otherwise entertaining book the police detective, Mel VanDyne, 1) agrees to not arrest the suspect until after the church Christmas bazaar is over at 6:30 (no arrest warrant); 2) fails to call for backup when his police driver is out of action due to a broken wrist; 3) fails to transport a suspect to the police station for questioning; 4) uses a civilian to witness a suspect's confession; 5) then allows that suspect to move around the house without escort (no search warrant, either); and 6) fails to notice enough bath water running for the suspect to drown. There are undoubtedly more, but those are more than enough to get him fired for incompetence and worse yet, annoy me.
I will probably be adding to this post as I encounter other "cozies" as I progress through my collection, sigh.
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