My Favourite Cosy Mystery Writers

Went back and revisited this review. Thank you as always🥰

This was so helpful, Miranda. I'm new to 'cosy mystery', so it was great to have a little guidance. With many thanks -- Carol

A very useful list. Thank you so much for posting this.

Miranda, I love that era of writing. Mainly English but Elizabeth Daly from the US is great too.

A Christmas Party was the first cozy mystery book that I read, just last Christmas. Now I’m hooked on cozy mysteries, but Georgette Heyer in particular. I love her wit, and her attention to detail. I’ve also started branching out to her regency romances which I love as well.

Your videos are so charming! I absolutely love listening to you talk about books.

Hi! Thanks for sharing these favorites. I am ashamed to say... I have never read Agatha Christie...😮
Do you need to read them in order?
Thanks!❤

Have you read the Woman in White?

Love all your choices and have read most of these. I think you and your audience would love Patricia Moyes. There are a lot in the series and are great fun!

I really love your videos and Agatha Christie as well! Thanks for your effort and greetings from Austria!

Not doing this very well but meant to say how much I enjoyed your murder mystery episode and how much I agree with your choices. Have you by any chance done an episode on Cosy Christmas murder stories - preferably from the Golden Age?

Got cut off! Your childrens’ literature episode was so good as well. Fully agree with all your books although I missed The Little Princess and The Secret Garden and especially, the What Katy Did books! But just wanted to suggest here the Miss Seeton books by Heron Carvic, which I have only just discovered myself. I think you would like them, they are another Miss Marple look alike

I have only just discovered your channel and love it. I really enjoyed your Childrens’ Literature

I would add Nero Wolfe novels by Rex Stout, set in New York, they are great to read and reread.

Have you had time to read The Mitford Murders by now? I enjoyed book 1 and book 2 very much and the audiobooks are well narrated. Thank you, as always, for this inspiring video 🌻

My favorite mystery of all time is The Nine Tailors. I think it’s the most ingenious murder solution ever written.

Love this video. I listed several books to look at. I have a vintage cozy recommendation for you. The Cat Who series written by Lillian Jackson Braun. I find them quite fun to read. I am fairly new to your channel. Have you ever done any tea reviews? I would be interested in any recommendations you may have. 🥰

Another wonderful and funny writer from 30s and 40s is monica dickens

😻📚😻📚

Great roundup of classics, thanks. If you love strong, smart, independent heroines in period settings, written exquisitely -I recommend Alan Bradley's Flavia DeLuce series beginning with Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. Especially wonderful if you love the history of science and British political history. Wry, humorous, sarcastic-edged stories that captivate a reader emotionally. Bradley is a genius imo.

*Do you consider Alexander McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books cozy mysteries?
**I really enjoyed the first two or three books in Martin Walker's Chief of Police Bruno series set in the French countryside, but as the body count and gruesomeness grew with each succeeding novel I am no longer so keen on these mysteries.

Cannot beat Dorthy L. Sayers.

Georgette Heyer mysteries are favourites of mine so happy to see how much you enjoy them. Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers are perennial favourites of mine and I re-read them all the time. I have just purchased several of the Mitford mysteries but not tried them yet and I have not heard of Josephine Tey or T.E. Kinsey but will certainly have a look. Cheers from Canada.

Miss Pym Disposes is very possibly my favorite mystery of all time, and it’s certainly the book that got me started on my obsession for books with an academic setting, e.g., Lucky Jim, Prep, The Secret History, and, of course, Gaudy Night, among many others. Love Christie and Sayers, and Allingham as well. Have never read Marsh. I was wondering if you enjoy M.C. Beaton’s Agatha Raisin series? VERY light, but fun to read!

Thank you for some new authors to try. Have you ever read Ann Granger? I love the Mitchell and Markby mysteries specifically. (She has 3 or more other series.)

New sub. Great reads. Blessings.

I love Agatha Christie also!

Lord Peter... has a BBC series.

Agatha Christy is a storyteller and she is about blue collar smarts.

I love Agatha Christie's historical insights. Some her observation on doctors... well in our time it is just right on. Got to be an Infj, I believe.

I love cozy mysterious! Laura Child’s is my favorite 🤩

Wonderful list, but how could you have neglected Tey’s The Franchise Affair and Brat Farrar?!

Really enjoyed this video! Have you read anything by Mary Roberts Rinehart? She's considered the "American Agatha Christie" and originated "the butler did it!"

The Maisie Dobbs books are also fantastic! Not so “cosy”, in my opinion, but so moving and such great stories.

I can attest that the Lady Hardcastle mysteries by T.E. Kinsey are wonderful! I have listened to them as audio books and the narrator on audible is also very good. But I’d also like to start collecting them because they are a set I’d like to own. I hope he keeps writing them, because as soon as they are published I gobble them up.

Excellent choices!

Absolutely love similar cosy mysteries too 💚

I read A Christmas Party every year. I now listen to it. This along with the others on your list are perfect for this COVID year. While not, in my opinion, as good as some of these I often reread some Jane Haddam

I also like Margery Allingham , her hero started as a kind of Lord Peter but like Sayers she developed more interest in character development and in showing various areas, fashion houses, the theatre in the thirties and forties.

I really enjoyed this video enjoy cosy mysteries a lot I love to try this first video I watched from you I loved it .grace from Australia .

Thank you Miranda, your vlogs are so enjoyable and informative ! I live in Montreal, French is my mother tongue, but I have always loved British litterature, starting with Jane Austen when I was very young. Re: mystery writers, what do you think of Alexander McCall Smith's The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series?

Hi Maranda,
Love your cosy mystery chat. I love cosy mysteries! Agatha Christie is a goddess! I love Miss Marple too!
I too love Lord Peter & Miss Silver.
I highly recommend Phryne Fisher by Kerry Greenwood. Australia has some really fabulous authors. Hope will get time to read some of ours as well! 📚🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺

I love cozy mysteries! Some of my Favorites are Laura Childs & Ellie Alexander! Thank you for your suggestions! I will definitely be trying them😊

Thank you, great tips. I love these sorts of books, real escapism. I've listened to some of the T E Kinsey books, really good fun!

I absolutely love the Cosy Mysteries section. They are perfect for a lazy Sunday or cold winter on the sofa with a hot cup of tea. I had recently added A Quiet Life in the Country to my Kindle as a sample, but as soon as I get a moment to myself I will give it a read and see how I feel about it. May I recommend Leighann Dobbs, whom I have just added to my Kindle as a sample to look into.

Hi Miranda! I love Tea and Tattle and I am really enjoying your reading recommendations. I heard Rian Johnson interviewed. He directed Knives Out and said he was influenced by Agatha Christie’s writing. Ronan Farrow named her, too, as one of the authors he studied while writing Catch and Kill. Her work really is timeless. I am a fan of Nancy Mitford and look forward to reading the Mitford Murder series. Thank you!

I love love love Agatha Christie!

Miss Marple is MY FAVOURITE as well!

Really enjoying your videos.

I'll give that other one by her a go but I hated Daughter of Time. Perhaps it's because I'm on the other side of the Atlantic and don't know much British history so it was extremely tiresome to follow, did not feel cosy at all. Don't get that same feeling you do with the characters in an Agatha Christie book with all its twists and turns.

This was so enjoyable! Such fun to hear a fellow Golden Age cosy mystery lover wax lyrical about the genre; I loved your infectious enthusiasm! I was also so pleased to hear someone mention "Miss Pym Disposes" - it's a little gem. Have you read "The Tiger in the Smoke" by Margery Allingham? I think it's excellent. Another good read is Martin Edwards' "The Golden Age of Murder"? It's a great portrait of the writers of Golden Age mysteries. Martin has written most of the introductions to the British Library Crime classics which, I'm afraid, I've also found rather hit and miss. I would love to know your "hits" as I've had mostly "misses"!