"Cosy murder"

[Woollypullover]

Why is it that we love murder mysteries? Why do we find Agatha Christies, Minsomer Murders etc, such 'cosy', light entertainment, when surely the subject matter is quite the opposite?
Aren't we weird?! 🤣

Same, I stopped watching not long after the change. I like Neil Dudgeon, but not the new stories.

Yes they literally solve death. Plus real crime is endless but the superior skills of uncommon detectives in the stories create satisfying resolutions which defeat the threat of crime and restore social order. There's an excellent analysis of the golden age by Colin Watson (who wrote the fabulous Flaxborough crime stories) called 'Snobbery with Violence.'

Absolutely!

The murders in these cosy stories are just the "MacGuffin". We're watching for the other things; Miss Marple's village, Poirot's friendship with Hastings, Poirot's idiosyncrasies, the looking up of the next train in Bradshaw's, which is a steam train. Preferably there's a country house setting, with a wealthy or titled family, maids, butlers, people dressing for dinner in the 1920s or 1930s etc etc.

There's a reason why so many of the David Suchet Poirot's were filmed in stunning art deco houses, the Miss Marple's in chocolate box cottages. We are attracted to the lifestyle. The puzzle is almost incidental.

Yeh, as so many have said already: It's not about the murder itself.

Sherlock Holmes is perennially interesting to people for this reason. And now everyone's raving about Ludwig. We love seeing a mystery being solved.

This and the Chesterton discussion for me

I still find comfort in rewatching or rereading familiar stories, even ones containing murder and/or crimes I’ve been put through in rl

it is a bit like wishful thinking for a small moment - this person cared enough to solve the crime, this perpetrator was brought to justice, this victim/survivor was granted a resolution

I have watched rl stuff ‘at long last solved’ in a similar vein - I suppose also thinking that at some stage, even if long after I am gone, the truth will be known

it’s a form of self-comfort and I expect that is true for anyone who hasn’t been affected by crime too - the hope that should the worst happen that someone like Poirot or Marple will be on the case

not someone like David Carrick or Wayne Couzens

And others get continually harassed for years by production companies threatening them, contacting partners, their workplaces and friends and telling them that if they don't participate, they'll concentrate on things 'you might not want your parents to see'.

Friend of DP's gets this every couple of years because he was a surviving victim in a horrible crime that has lots of juicy derails for a TV show.

Don't forget the Caribbean for Death in Paradise.

For me it is about solving puzzles.

Exactly. It’s happening to a colleague of mine and her husband at the moment — her FIL was killed in a particularly horrible, much-reported way last year. There is absolutely nothing in this for them, other than the knowledge that people are trying to monetise a horrible death to slake the apprentices of dead-eyed ‘true crime’ ghouls who like to delude themselves that their prurient interest has any more value than gawking at a car crash.

Christie also downplays the stark reality of death by having her characters react without much emotion to the news - "I say! Murdered? Never thought I'd see the like in St Mary Mead!" etc. People's may be shocked, or fearful, which provides the drama, but we hardly ever see anyone actually grieve. This sets the tone for the reader and helps establish that feeling of escapism and slight unreality, which is part of what makes her books so appealing, I think.

There's a huge American tradition of cosy crime writing. I particularly enjoy Donna Andrews' Meg Langslow series, set in small town and rural Virginia, with Meg and her family and friends all likeable and quirky, and the victim and the criminals always being people we already dislike.

Predictable but fun and the settings are inventive enough to give variety (Meg's perfectionist mother provides a lot of comedy, as do the llamas, doga, ducks etc etc etc).

perfect comfort reading.

www.goodreads.com/series/41805-meg-langslow

Of the English mid-century ones, I like Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver (who was already knitting her way through crimes before Miss Marple started).

I seem to remember Paul Eddington talking about playing Rev Leonard Clement in The Murder at the Vicarage and that it was against the Christie norm because he played it that his character was very much affected by finding the body of the hated Colonel Protheroe in his vicarage study.

It's from 1986, so quite old, but it's worth watching imo and is often repeated. I think Eddington's performance is the stand out feature.

Elizabeth Peters books set in Egypt are very light

Not a Christie fan but I'd watch it for Paul Eddington!