There’s a controversy brewing in the UK’s literary community, one that divides opinion and leads to heated arguments. Battle lines are drawn, no quarter is given, and celebrity writers find themselves in the firing line…
…But I’m not talking about the recent glut of famous people releasing ghostwritten novels 😉 That’s a legitimate issue, to be sure. But there’s another, one more immediately pressing to me, and mostly focused on a single celeb – who emphatically does not use a ghostwriter, by the way – a certain Mr Osman, Richard.
You know Richard Osman. He’s the bloke off Pointless and House of Games, the tall one with the glasses. He’s also now a bestselling author, with his Thursday Murder Club series racking up 5 million+ worldwide sales. Last week his new book, The Last Devil to Die, became the fastest-selling hardback novel by a British author in UK publishing history. Ever.
The Thursday Murder Club books star a group of elderly folk living in an English retirement village, solving murders that baffle the police in a light-hearted and amusing manner. There’s no excessive gore, swearing, or brutality, the characters are all larger than life, and each book ends with the murderer brought to justice and order restored to the world.
In other words, they’re ‘cosy crime’.
You may not have heard that term before, but you’ve almost certainly come across examples of it. MC Beaton’s creations, Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth, are two of the best-known in British fiction. In America, Kate Collins’ Flowershop Mysteries are bestsellers. TV shows like Midsomer Murders, Father Brown, Rosemary & Thyme, Mystery Woman, and Murder, She Wrote are exemplars of the genre.
Outside of these obvious examples, opinion on classifying Agatha Christie vacillates between ‘golden age’ and cosy, while some (including me) argue that Inspector Morse and its many imitators are cosy crime without the humour. Heck, even Columbo can be viewed through the same lens.
So where’s the controversy? Well, it turns out Osman doesn’t like being called cosy.
(Taken from this BBC piece, which is by no means the only one. There have been several recent profiles of Osman and his books where he or the interviewer makes a similar protest.)
This complaint isn’t new. Cosy crime has been around for many years, as has the term, and if you put two cosy authors in a hotel bar it won’t take long before they start protesting that actually, their books aren’t very ‘cosy’ at all. But Osman’s profile and reach, and the increase in popularity and awareness his success brings to the subgenre, means the debate is finally reaching the mainstream.
I sympathise… but I also think everyone involved is tilting at windmills.
I sympathise because the complaints are valid. There’s nothing really ‘cosy’ about crime or murder, no matter how much focus you place on a detective’s puzzle-solving rather than blood and grit. Many authors writing what I call ‘New Cosy’ don’t shy away from issues around class, race, gender, sexuality, violence, and injustice, either. Even my Dog Sitter Detective books, which are certainly at the cosier end of the market, touch on such topics. It’s impossible to write something set in the modern world without doing so, and why would you want to anyway?
One great thing about the New Cosy movement, in fact, is its breadth and inclusiveness. Cosy crime is a broad church, and never more so than right here in 2023. Crime fiction in general is one of the most diverse and inclusive genres around, both in content and authors, and cosy is no exception.
(That’s not to say we don’t still have a long way to go, because we do. But crime is at the forefront, and we can be proud of that.)
So why do I think cosy authors are tilting at windmills? Believe it or not, it’s because of my experience in comics.
If you’re new to this newsletter, and my career, you may not know that I spent 15+ years writing comics and graphic novels. And ‘graphic novels’ is the instructive term.
You see, technically, most of the graphic novels you see on book and library shelves… aren’t. They’re collections of comics that were initially published as serialised monthly issues, and in the industry we call those ‘trade paperbacks’ (or ‘trade collections’ in hardback). Many classics like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns fall under this heading.
By contrast, ‘graphic novel’ strictly means a complete comic story first published as a single book – i.e. it was never serialised. A lot of my own comics work, like Atomic Blonde, Julius, and Daredevil Season One fits into this category.
But… nobody cares. Readers, booksellers, and librarians decided long ago to call any comic with a spine a ‘graphic novel’. Some in the industry argued the toss, but the battle was futile. Everyone now knows what is meant by ‘graphic novel’, and if you call them anything else people just get confused.
As ‘graphic novel’, so ‘cosy crime’.
This battle is equally futile, and for much the same reason: everyone understands what it means, and it’s a convenient way for readers to find what they’re looking for. Booksellers, librarians, and in this case marketers too, have once again decided upon their favoured term.
That’s why I’m quite happy for the Dog Sitter Detective books to be called cosy crime. The point of a genre label is to help readers find my books, and how can that be a bad thing? Those readers don’t expect my stories to be exactly the same as something from Osman, or SJ Bennett, or Suk Pannu, any more than they expect a Mark Billingham book to be exactly the same as one by Ian Rankin or Ann Cleeves. But the cosy label gives them an idea of what to expect, and frankly I’m flattered to sit alongside those authors on the shelves.
I’d rather focus my energy on reclaiming the ‘cosy’ term, and expand what people understand by it. I want to help readers realise that New Cosy is a vibrant and contemporary subgenre brimming with fresh ideas, entertaining stories, and modern sensibilities.
So for the sake of argument (and with tongue somewhat in cheek) let’s call this a New Cosy Manifesto. It needn’t be long:
We, the New Cosy authors, assert that cosy crime can handle everything from humorously light-hearted sleuthing to serious social commentary, and all points in between, so long as there isn’t too much blood and everything works out in the end. Now put the kettle on and let’s have a cup of tea.
In fact, I’m currently planning a project to showcase and celebrate that very breadth. It’s very early days, so more on that later, but the point is that I believe we should embrace the cosy badge. There are, after all, 5 million+ readers out there who are perfectly happy to.
On which note I’ll remind you that The Dog Sitter Detective Takes the Lead is out in January, as is the paperback edition of The Dog Sitter Detective itself, and both are available for pre-order now. This second book is quite Cosy, but also very New, I promise 😉
To read why I think cosy crime is enjoying a resurgence overall, check out the ‘Getting Cosy’ article I wrote for Crime Time.
Elsewhere…
The Yappy Hour:
I appeared on Teresa J Rhyne’s ‘Yappy Hour’ show, broadcast live on Facebook. It was a really fun conversation, all about dogs and stories:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=998182577845585
Country Life:
Nobody is more surprised than me to see my name in a Country Life cover feature 😅 Katy Birchall was kind enough to not only chat to me about lurchers for her piece; she even plugged The Dog Sitter Detective, too. Thanks, Katy!
Little Miss Morfett:
I also chatted with Donna Morfett about The Dog Sitter Detective for her podcast:
The Luke Deckard Show:
And finally, I recently spoke to Luke Deckard about my work and career, from Atomic Blonde to Resident Evil Village and, inevitably, The Dog Sitter Detective:
Through this Windless City
Right now, authors are all scrambling to figure out which social media platform will eventually ‘win’ the ongoing battle for supremacy. For the moment, you can find me on just about all of them.
Search for my username @antonyjohnston, or check the Contact & Follow page of my site for links to the most popular networks: https://antonyjohnston.com/contact/