The rise of cosy crime: Why murder that’s as comforting as a warm cup of tea is suddenly everywhere

There are those who like their fictional crimes bloody, violent and graphic. Give them a mutilated corpse or three, an alcoholic cop with a dark past and a landscape bleaker than a Russian novel and they’re happy. Then there are those of us who like it a little cosier. We’d like a story set in a small town or an isolated country house, perhaps. An amateur detective, ideally. A brain-tickling mystery, definitely. Violence and sex are allowed but the goriest bits happen just out of sight. The so-called cosy crime genre isn’t new. But it is having a moment. Surfing the current wave of cosy crime is its undisputed king, UK author Richard Osman, whose Thursday Murder Club series broke literary records to become the fastest-selling adult crime debut in history. The impending screen adaptation stars an improbable who’s who of British acting royalty, from Helen Mirren and Ben Kingsley to David Tennant and Richard E Grant. The influential Crime Writers Association has added a “cosy” category to its annual Daggers awards, while Antony Johnston won last year’s Barker Book Award — not a crime-specific fiction award — with his cosy crime novel, The Dog Sitter Detective, suggesting the sub-genre has gone mainstream. Netflix is adapting Agatha Christie, the queen of cosy crime, for a new TV series, while Rian Johnson’s third Knives Out film arrives next year and Steve Martin’s comedy-drama, Only Murders in the Building, is a smash-hit heading for a fifth series. Full disclosure: I have a vested interest in celebrating the return of cosy crime to bookshelves and screens, having just published a young adult cosy crime novel. My Family and Other Suspects checks the boxes for what I think of as cosy crime: a murder takes place in an isolated Dunsborough farmhouse (tick) filled with colourful characters (tick) and everyone’s a suspect (tick) as a teenage girl with a love of Agatha Christie investigates (tick). I know why I love cosy crime: it’s as comforting as a warm cup of tea, gets me scrambling to solve the mystery first and eschews the blood and gore I can find in the news any day of the week. But to understand why the world seems to have fallen for the genre, I turn to the experts. Johnston is a New York Times bestselling author, graphic novelist and former vice-chair of the Crime Writers Association, whose Dog Sitter Detective series, about a retired actress who takes up dog-sitting to make ends meet and winds up investigating murders, is the very definition of cosy crime. He says it seems like “every other week a new modern cosy series is announced”. “You can’t discount the ‘Osman effect’ — his books are so popular that people who hadn’t read a modern cosy before are now seeking out similar books, which benefits everyone,” he says. “But cosy crime is also a comforting escape from our increasingly-chaotic real world, something a lot of people want right now. “As a reader, I like that cosy doesn’t take itself too seriously, and emphasises the puzzle of the crime over gory grimness. The characters are larger than life, there’s always time for a joke, and there may even be romance in the air. But you can be sure that in the end, justice will be served. “I call the new strain ‘modern cosy’ — including authors like Robert Thorogood, Alice Bell, and Hannah Hendy — because it happily upends what we think of as traditional cosy conventions with stories that are modern, diverse, and socially aware. I believe that contributes a lot to its popularity.” That the latest surge in cosy crime has coincided with global turmoil — a pandemic, war in Europe and the Middle East, the rise of far-right extremism — feels like more than a coincidence. Alexander Thorpe is the Perth-based author of Death Leaves The Station and Death Holds The Key, a series that transplants golden-age cosy crime to a 1920s Australian wheatbelt setting. “Cosy crime is timeless. It’s a tried-and-true formula, equal parts puzzle and character-driven drama,” he says. “Having said that, it also rose to popularity in a specific context — the interwar ‘golden age’ of detective fiction — and I think we’re living through a remarkably similar period of history now. Economic turmoil, the rise of populist ideologies, big shifts in social attitudes; these are all things that helped foster the rise of cosy crime early in the 20th century, and they’re all present now. “I think we’re all looking for a bit of escapism, a bit of distraction and something with a soothingly familiar structure. That’s not to say that cosy crime is boring, but it has a recognised set of conventions and rules which can be reassuring, or can be subverted to play with readers’ expectations. “I love everything about cosy crime. I love the twists and the red herrings — they make reading feel like more of an interactive experience. When you’re constantly second-guessing everyone’s motives and looking for clues, you become an active participant in the story, not just a reader. “I also love the way these books are written, often playing with language and flamboyant characters who are never what they seem. And, of course, I like the comfort — I’m a bit of a wimp when it comes to violence and gore, so it’s nice to know there’s not much chance of a graphic disembowelling or anything.” Cosy crime’s revival feels like an antidote to not just the onslaught of the news cycle but the popularity of gritty police procedurals, grizzly true crime and the bleak cynicism of much of the psychological crime genre. Regardless of how the bodies might pile up, a cosy crime story comes with the reassurance that the world is still fundamentally decent. And if it’s served up in a setting that’s just plain pleasant to inhabit, who are we to complain? As The Ringer’s culture writer Brian Phillips put it in his take on Only Murders In The Building: “Hulu’s hit whodunit features a frankly staggering amount of exquisite wallpaper . . . Very often, as I’m watching on my sofa, I’ll catch myself thinking, ‘Holy cow, look at the scale of that floral pattern … why, it’s absolutely fearless … I’d love to hang that in a guest bedroom’ … And 30 seconds will whiz by, and I’ll think, ‘Wait, did I just miss a twisted corpse at the bottom of that elevator shaft?’” Fremantle Press chief executive Alex Allan first noticed cosy crime was mounting a comeback as far back as 2014, with the publication of Robin Stevens’ Murder Most Unladylike series. That popular series followed the adventures of two young boarding schoolgirl detectives. “My daughter was obsessed with that series and it seems to have spawned an amazing and exciting genre of kids and YA crime, most of which are the definition of cosy, because they tend to be set in a more domestic context, without too much gore or violence, with a cast of intriguing suspects and a solvable, but completely unexpected mystery,” she says. “It is no surprise that kids love this genre — we can finally put away our Famous Fives — which keeps you page turning, allows great character expose and ideally has an incredible twist at the end. Some of the most successful children’s and YA authors globally are writing in this genre, so it is wonderful to see our local writers on trend with cosy crime set in Australia.” But with great popularity comes great backlash. Cosy crime critics deride the genre as quaint and simplistic: murder with the dark bits taken out. Author and journalist James Greig criticised Osman’s novels as “criminally bad” in an article for Gawker, while The New Statesman’s Anna Leszkiewicz similarly lampoons what she says are “terminally twee stories”. “Osman’s murder mysteries belong to a class of fiction known as ‘cosy crime’ — a category that includes Agatha Christie, GK Chesterton, MC Beaton and, doubtless informed by Osman’s success, the Reverend Richard Coles’ Murder Before Evensong. It’s a genre Osman performs with unembarrassed literal-mindedness,” she writes. “Here is a cosy location — a luxury retirement village in a rural idyll. But what’s that, coming over the hill? Surely not — crimes!” Perhaps unsurprisingly, those who love to read it — and write it — don’t have much time for the genre’s critics. Thorpe says it is a misconception to believe that “because it’s cosy, it must be tame”. “Cosy crime was one of the first literary movements to be dominated by women, and many writers have used it to quietly challenge and undermine ideas of class, race and gender,” he says. “Hercule Poirot was an asylum seeker fleeing war, and Christie’s early books show him experiencing a great deal of discrimination. Sherlock Holmes was addicted to opium and Dr Watson suffered from what we’d now recognise as PTSD. “A murder mystery shows people at their most desperate and vulnerable, but order is restored at the end; it’s a great way to explore all the complexities of being human.” Johnston also has little time for the naysayers. “People assume it’s all tea cakes and lace doilies,” he says. “But we deal with serious, weighty subjects, including domestic violence, elder abuse, bereavement, corruption, and more. We just do it with a light touch, which personally I find very realistic. Who hasn’t found themselves laughing inappropriately at a very serious situation? That’s the joy of a modern cosy.” My Family And Other Suspects, by Kate Emery, published by Allen & Unwin, is out now. 10 books to cosy up to My Family and Other Suspects (Kate Emery) The Dog Sitter Detective (Antony Johnston) Death Holds the Key (Alexander Thorpe) The Thursday Murder Club (Richard Osman) Everyone in my Family Has Killed Someone (Benjamin Stevenson) The Tea Ladies (Amanda Hampson) The Marlow Murder Club (Robert Thorogood) Murder Most Unladylike (Robin Stevens) Bad to Worse (Robert Edeson) Grave Expectations (Alice Bell)