books usually have amateur detectives,
but cosy TV shows more often have
cops — Morse and Lewis, Tom and John
Barnaby in Midsomer Murders, or the
hugely successful American cosy sleuth
Jessica Fletcher, played by Angela Lans-
bury, in Murder, She Wrote.
The defining feature of cosy is that
the killer is always captured and, in the
words of Agatha Christie, “very few of
us are what we seem”. In other words,
we know we’re going to get there in the
end, but we don’t know how.
With the killer caught, the rest of the
cast may not live happily ever after, but
they are granted closure. And the
reader closes the book satisfied, doubly
so if they had cracked the crime
themselves. This feeling of completion
is the aesthetic heart of cosy. It pro-
vides the comforting illusion that all
will be well, everything will go back to
normal. It is obvious why this makes
cosy especially attractive now. We have
an endless pandemic and relentless
lockdowns — sales of crime and thriller
books rose by 18 per cent from March
to October 2020 compared with 2019.
Disease seems to be a bestseller. On top
of that, there are Cold War levels of
international tensions, a world made
alternately incomprehensible and out-
raged by the internet and culture wars
of increasing bitterness. Perhaps cosy
is, if not a cure, at least a palliative.
“Maybe the last couple of years
we’ve wanted to feel a bit safer,” Hallett
says. “With the fiction that we have — I
mean psychological crime — whether
that’s books or films or, you know, The
Girl on the Train kind of thing, it’s so
dark. And so awful. Maybe in the last
couple of years we’ve wanted to be a
bit safer and I think cosy crime is just a
safe space to experience some of the
worst aspects of life and of humanity.”
Juliet Mushens, Osman’s agent, has
said: “Readers want to escape from
their lives and the uncontrolled reali-
ties of the pandemic into narratives
where you can usually presume that
things will be wrapped up at the end.”
Anthony Horowitz, the creator of
Foyle’s War and, for me, easily the
greatest of our crime writers, thinks it
goes deeper. Certainly the world has
become more difficult and compli-
cated, but the real problem is that it has
become unknowable. “It’s a paradox,”
he says, “that 24-hour news and the
endless supply of news on social media
has led to an unprecedented age of
uncertainty. We know almost nothing
for sure. How did Covid begin? HowaDE a BLOODY KILLING
dangerous is Omicron? Will we be able
to celebrate Christmas? What really
happened in Downing Street on
December 18 last year?
“So I’m not at all surprised,” he con-
tinues, “that people are turning to so-
called ‘cosy’ crime, which presents a
gentler, more ordered world where
every question is answered and abso-
lute truth always wins the day. The
detective arrives in a troubled commu-
nity. There are secrets and lies. But at
the end of the book everything is
known, the killer is apprehended and
the healing process can begin.”
And the great cosy detectives have a
moral status no longer to be found in
our politicians. Horowitz takes conso-
lation from the good, although fic-
tional, detectives of Cosyworld. In
short, cosy is a kind of paradise, flawed
by violence, but always restored by rea-
son and justice. In this sense it feels like
the natural form for the book. It’s a
comfort you can carry with you.
Admittedly, murder isn’t what you
would first associate with comfort, the
US publisher Michelle Vega says, but
it is more about solving a puzzle.
“In a cosy the reader is with the
protagonist every step of the way
as each clue is revealed... It is
escapist perfection.”
Can cosy’s purity (absence of
sex, swearing or violence and
the virtue and brilliance of the
great detective) survive? There
have certainly been attempts
to make it catch the internet
generation’s eye, with Hallett’s
cyber-epistolary style and the
staggering number of characters
in The Appeal, and Osman’s highly
stylised, almost comic-book covers.
Is cosy back to replace psycho-
logical thrillers? The literary agent
Jonny Geller thinks they will coexist.
“I’ve seen no loss of appetite for psy-
chological thrillers with writers like
Lisa Jewell, Alice Feeney, Lucy
Foley, so cosy crime seems to have
expanded the market rather than
diminished it.”
The point of the cosy is that it is
an extraordinary event in ordinary
circumstances. The basic cosy is a
kind of simple, secular prayer, a
plea that it will all come out right in
the end. The bad guy will be caught
and the detective who catches him
will be pure because, in the words
of Raymond Chandler, the supreme
crimeist, “Down these mean streets
a man must go who is not himself
mean, who is neither tarnished
nor afraid... He is the hero, he
is everything.” cAgatha Raisin
The PR guru turned amateur
sleuth played by Ashley
Jensen has planned a
peaceful festive season in
this special episode, but it
soon goes awry when a rich
man is murdered and she
can’t resist getting involved.
Bonus points for Raisin’s
colour-coordinated gloves
and lipstick.
Dec 21, Sky MaxA Ghost Story for
Christmas: The
Mezzotint
It’s 1923 and curator
Edward Williams receives
an engraving of a country
house. Yet every time he
looks at it, the image
changes. A moustached
Rory Kinnear stars in this
Mark Gatiss adaptation
of an MR James story.
Christmas Eve, BBC2Death in
Paradise
The first
Christmas
special for this hit
series —
Ralf Little and co
investigate the
suspicious death
of a billionaire on
their fictional
Caribbean island.
Boxing Day, BBC1Shedunnit
Writer Caroline
Crampton delves
into the mysteries
behind detective
stories in her
compelling
podcast.
On Apple, Spotify
et alSusannah
ButterCOSY AT CHRISTMAS
MARK BOURDILLON/ACORNTVGentle thrills Ashley Jensen is Agatha
Raisin. Below: Richard OsmanKEN MCKAY19 December 2021 13