Minotaur
Cozy Mystery Subgenres: Making the Perfect Blend
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Cozy mystery is a subgenre of crime fiction. When readers ask what are cozy mysteries, I explain they’re mysteries without on-the-page violence, physical intimacy or naughty words. That’s the quick-and-simple answer. Then I watch as their faces light up with understanding. I love that moment. Of course, people who read cozy mystery novels—also called cozies—know…
The Regency Mystery Arrives to the Ball
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I’d wager a box of my favorite tea that you’ve heard of Bridgerton by now. Maybe even that it’s that occasionally spicy period drama based upon author Julia Quinn’s romance series of the same name. And, most likely, that it’s set during the Regency period and features lots of ballroom dances, courtly manners, a few…
A Murder of Poets: Or, the Inescapable Connections Between Crime Fiction and Poetry
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“Murder will out…” –Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales Poetry and pathology. Verse and victim. Meter and murder and mayhem. Poetry and crime fiction seem to go together like, well, rhyme and reason. Crime novelist and CWA Diamond Dagger winner Martin Edwards has been quoted as saying that the pair share “the importance of form…
How a Trip to a Museum Turned into the Perfect Start to a Mystery
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School field trips. Exhibitions. Guided tours. It might be easy to dismiss museums as stuffy or even boring, but they are far from that—especially to an aspiring crime writer looking to write her first murder mystery. The idea for my debut historical mystery, A Traitor in Whitehall, came to me while standing in the middle…