The Hardboiled Cozy...

[Steven Torres]

Is it an oxymoron to say that I write Hardboiled Cozies? There is violence, but the stories are set in a small town with a sheriff who knows everyone and the killers are generally people he's known all his life. To my mind, there's a way of looking at even Dame Agatha's books and saying "That's Noir." What's more noir than the ending of Murder on the Orient Express? Not to spoil the story for anyone who hasn't read it...this is your chance to stop reading...but "Everybody stabbed him" is pretty sick if you think about it.

Is there a particular level of violence that we can't read about on the page that disqualifies a book from being a cozy? Okay, one of my books has a finely honed axe taken to a man's shins. That's pretty bad. Still, the axman and the victim were related by marriage...That should take some of the sting off, no? Make it less hardboiled?

This then seems to be part of the trouble I've had with some reviewers. I honestly think they are sometimes surprised to see violence described on the page (in John Woo like slow motion, I might add) in a small town setting. In the tropics, no less, where life is known to be perfect and no one gets mad enough with anyone else to whack them with a baseball bat...

I've done booktalks at libraries where I've explained how one book has a bit of ax swinging and I've still been asked if they have violence in them. Apparently, the fact that the book is set in a village in the hills in the tropics where the locals are so backwards they actually speak Spanish and I, the author, have to translate what they say and think into proper English, makes some listeners think that if an ax was swung at someone's shins, it must have missed. Kind of like the "safety protocols" on the holodeck on STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION.

In any event, this has turned more into a rant against my own readers than the serious question I wanted to ask. I think of James Lee Burke as a writer of Hardboiled Cozies. Dave Robichaeux often finds out that the killer is someone he grew up with - someone he's passed on the street everyday for decades. How's this for a question: Are there any other writers out there writing Hardboiled Cozies?

[I. J. Parker]

Quite right. Murder presupposes violence. Violence is a fact. Books about crime should remain realistic. It seems to me dishonest to have the ugliness happen offstage so that nobody gets offended. Murder should be offensive. The same goes for other violent crimes.

[Elaine Flinn]

Everytime I hear or read a discussion about 'cozies' - I always ask 'What the hell is so cozy about murder?'

[Steven Torres]

Love "Serrated cozies".

When I started writing and until a couple of years after my first sale, I didn't know a thing about sub genres at all. Did not know my books were police procedurals because I had never heard the term. Now I am wiser and sadder...

[Jeff Markowitz]

I love reading authors who push the boundaries of established genres. Hardboiled cozies? Sure. Bring 'em on.

[Christa M. Miller]

Julia Spencer-Fleming calls hers "cozy-cum-thriller." I'd agree with that. I'm not much for cozy but her endings manage to contain both resolution and ambiguity, which I like, despite everyone knowing everyone else. And, although her amateur sleuth is backed up by a police chief, it's less procedural than it could be.

[LJ Roberts]

For me, those could either be a traditional mystery--police investigator but murder happens off scene--rather than a police procedural where the murders do happen on scene and the story is more graphically violent. Louise Penny's books are ones I classify as Traditional Mysteries. But that's just me.

[Pari Noskin Taichert]

Steve,
I don't think of your work as cozies as much as police procedural . . . in a way at least. It's not because of the violence (at one time, I used to say I wrote "serrated cozies" -- now I know I write "witty suspense" whatever that is) . . .

To me, a traditional mystery usually includes an amateur sleuth and yours is anything but . . .

Hey, everyone who might be reading this: Steve's a darn fine writer.