Death Be Not Cozy

Our own Sunil Patel observed that he’d love to live in the Arconia except for the part where he’d be the victim in about season fifteen. He is not wrong in either particular. The Arconia seems like a nice place to live—even the West Tower apartments of Season Four are pretty good by New York standards. It’s a fun, vibrant community full of whimsical characters, and watching the show feels as comforting as taking a nice, warm bath. Except for the part where residents of and visitors to the building die with alarming frequency. That building alone is driving up the Manhattan murder rates.

“Cozy mystery” is its own IMDb category, and many of the most popular shows and movies in the genre are in it. Columbo, with its kindly detective. Murdoch Mysteries, with its turn-of-the-last-century Canadian charm. The mysteries of Benoit Blanc, Gentleman Sleuth. There is nothing quite like a cozy mystery, and we consume them by the dozen. Agatha Christie was a one-woman industry for the things, and every fan of the genre can produce an example of it and speak in quiet rapture about the town, the supporting characters, the detective’s quirks, and, oh, yeah, the murders. So many murders.

It’s long been a joke that Jessica Fletcher, the Grand Dame of the Cozy TV Mystery, is in fact a serial killer. Where Jessica goes, death follows. But despite the murder rate higher than New Orleans (which has the highest murder rate per 100,000 people in the US), there’s a definite charm to Cabot Cove, and if you could guarantee that this week’s guest star wouldn’t kill you, it would be nice to spend a vacation there. Its charming country doctor. Its law enforcement in the first seasons was literally Tom Bosley. And thanks to the generous nature of Angela Lansbury, there was a better-than-even chance that you’d get to rub shoulders with some forgotten legend of the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Humans like a mystery. We like the puzzle, and we like to believe in an ordered world where the mystery has a solution. It’s part of the popularity of true crime, too, I suspect; most true crime aficionados like a crime where the person was caught and for preference served a lengthy sentence. Or was executed, if you’re of that bent. When there isn’t a solution, we like the mystery to be old enough so that we can’t think about the families of the dead and their agony of uncertainty. Or where we don’t think about the families at all—did the Ripper’s victims have families? You don’t know. Neither do I.

A cozy mystery gives us the opportunity to solve the puzzle in an environment we enjoy. Whether you prefer Death in Paradise or Miss Fisher, Charade or Jonathan Creek, Jessica Fletcher or Miss Marple, you can enjoy thinking about how much you like the detective and the location. You can imagine yourself in that time and place, among those people, and you can see if you can beat the detective to resolving the case. Play Oh Hell in the West Tower of the Arconia; get to know Howard and his assorted pets. Just be aware that your quirky neighbours may have a secret you don’t like.