Crime and mystery: cosy mystery books

If you enjoy a good mystery, an intriguing investigation and a satisfying tying-up of loose ends but can’t stomach the blood, gore and violence of crime novels, then cosy crime could be for you. 

Set in genteel surroundings with an eccentric cast of characters, bungling detectives and an amateur sleuth swooping in to save the day, the crime itself rarely gets a mention. Instead, you can focus on the aftermath, sifting through the evidence and looking for clues that will reveal both the killer and their motive. 

Coined in the late twentieth century, cosy crime specialises in intricate whodunnits and baffling locked-room mysteries that will put all of your sleuthing skills to the ultimate test. Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle and G.K. Chesterton were all early pioneers of cosy crime, creating characters who are still beloved and revered to this day: Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown, respectively. 

More modern authors have carried on the cosy crime tradition, bringing the genre into the twenty-first century. In Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club series, four retired friends who meet to research unsolved murders often find themselves drawn into live investigations and invariably run rings around the police. In The Reverend Richard Coles’ Canon Clement Mystery series, Daniel Clement finds himself torn between serving his parish and catching killers. Molly Gray, meanwhile, finds herself perfectly placed to overhear all manner of secrets in Nita Prose’s Molly The Maid Mystery series. 

Escapism at its finest, cosy crime gives you all the thrills of bringing the guilty to justice with none of the fears that you’ll have to sleep with the lights on. Full of red herrings, unexpected twists, intricate plotting and endearing characters, you’re sure to find something in our awesome collection, so start browsing our thousands of new and secondhand cosy crime books and put your detective skills to the test. It would be a (cosy) crime not to.