The American Cozy-ish Mystery Renaissance

Solvability

I am obsessed with murder mystery shows. I am fascinated by why people keep making, watching, and luxuriating in shows about murder. I like cozy mysteries the best, but even moody the shows are relaxing. It’s a bit fucked up, really, to be so comforted by murder shows. But murder mysteries are all narrative, the opposite of real life. Unlike life, every frustration, every question, and every narrative gap is solved by the end of the episode.

I know I’m not the only one obsessed with murder shows because there are so many of them. It’s a popular refrain to ask: why doesn’t Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) of Murder She Wrote notice that her hometown has a murder rate one hundred times the national average? Is she committing them herself? To me, the pull against the realism—the absurdism of the sheer number of murders in the “cozy” mysteries—is the draw. The absurdity is comforting, because it lulls us into a false sense of safety. Something that ridiculous could never happen to us. Real life is a confusing nightmare. In murder mysteries, we get answers.

Murder Mystery Expertise

I started watching murder shows in June of 2020. It was the height of the pandemic and I had just graduated with an MFA in creative writing and had no job or any ideas. I was numb and terrified.  I discovered the absurdist cozy mystery show Agatha Raisin, based on the books by M.C. Beaton. A fabulously dressed woman named Agatha, played by the hilarious Ashley Jenson, moves from London to the Cotswolds, an area of the English countryside made up of small, rural villages that are very quaint and beset with horrific murders. Once there, she solves a murder she was accused of, and then becomes an amateur detective. With a band of colorful sidekicks and a tense relationship with the bumbling local inspector, she solves all these shocking murders, uncovering everyone’s secrets along the way. It’s a goddamn delight.

I watched and watched, consuming murder+solve, murder+solve while I slotted jigsaw pieces into place. (Literally: I’ve put together at least fifty puzzles since then. My husband bought me a puzzle board. I glued some and put them on my wall. I’m thinking of starting a puzzle library.) I watched cozy mysteries, comedy mysteries, dark and gritty crime procedurals, noirs, and everything in between. Now, almost three years later, I am an expert of the genre. I have a lot of thoughts about why we crave mysteries, which ones are worth watching, and the narrative power of the case-of-the-week structure.

Write your obsessions. That was the advice a wonderful writing professor in grad school gave me. With this newsletter, I will embrace it. I will share this obsession. I’ve written about murder mysteries before. Here, on my blog which I am transforming into this newsletter, and here, in Bitch Magazine. If you’re into mysteries, or are dipping your toe into the American Cozy-ish Mystery Renaissance, or just want to read my thoughts on fictional murder, you might enjoy this newsletter. Every edition I’ll discuss at least one new murder show I’m watching and ruminate on some aspects of the genre: copaganda, detective tropes, fun hats, our culture’s weird ideas about justice, how comedy and murder can work so well together, and more. I will share a lot of recommendations, do some research, and explore all the various themes—mortality, relationships, class, etc.— that emerge from this surprisingly expansive genre.

What I’ve Been Watching: Poker Face

Poker Face is one of the latest, buzziest, and best additions to what I’m calling the American Cozy-ish Mystery Renaissance. Overseas, cozy and cozy-ish mysteries are abundant. I highly recommend subscribing to BritBox and Acorn so you can watch all the offerings from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and others. But here in the states we’ve had a long string of crime procedurals in the last few decades, in the vein of Law and Order and all the CSIs, which are not the same thing. Tonally, a cozy mystery is fun, light, and often comedic. The juxtaposition of the tone with subject of murder is part of its charm. The other important component of a cozy is a focus on character and setting. Each murder is an opportunity to introduce a bunch of interesting characters in a specific and intriguing setting, and allow the unraveling of the mystery to reveal their secrets, desires, and foibles.

I believe Rian Johnson’s film Knives Out kicked off the American Cozy-ish Renaissance. It’s of a blend a cozy and an Agatha Christie type locked-mansion mystery, and it reminded American audiences of the delights of the fun mystery: the character study, the humor, the quirky detective, the class critique. Then came Only Murders In the Building, a cozy which smartly wove in our obsession with true crime (I will get to true crime, don’t worry), and then the under-sung but pretty fun comedy-mystery, The Afterparty. 

Rian Johnson also makes Poker Face, this time teaming up the always delightful Natasha Lyonne and her incredible hair. Poker Face draws on the classic cozy: it is fun, comedic, and thrives on character. But it has some edginess and darkness in it, and it plays with tropes of noirs and more serious mystery genres. Lyonne plays Charlie, a charming people person with an ability to tell when someone’s lying and a habit of stumbling upon murders. She’s on the run, after solving her best friend’s murder and making an enemy of her powerful boss in the first episode. She moves around from town to town, taking odd jobs and making friends. Every episode is a new setting, a new cast of fascinating characters and fantastic actors to play them. She solves the murder of a drummer of a metal band, a barbeque master, a racecar driver, and so on. After each mystery is solved, Charlie says her goodbyes and moves on.

The structure of Poker Face is unusual and mimics that of Columbo apparently (I actually haven’t seen it, but clearly need to.) The audience watches the murder happen in the beginning of the episode, and then we spend the rest of the episode watching Charlie methodically put it together. But what really sets Poker Face apart is the fact that Charlie is not a detective. She’s not just not a cop—my preferred kind of detective—she’s not a private detective or even an amateur detective or a journalist. She has no structural or systemic power over the people she catches. Sometimes she does turn them over to the cops, if she has enough evidence, but other times she brings them justice in other ways, such as the loss of status. Ruining the career of the murderer, when the murderer’s whole identity is built upon their career and status, and the preservation of that status was the motive for the murder in the first place, is a fascinating kind of punishment.

It’s a similar narrative device to that of Johnson’s Knives Out follow-up, Glass Onion. The detective Benoit Blanc knows there isn’t really any justice for billionaires in this world, besides the loss of power. And Charlie understands that status, fame, and power are the motivations of the murderers she catches. She knows these flimsy markers of success are what they have built their identities on. The murderers of Poker Face, whether they are trying to be the best race-car driver, regain their fame as actors, or remain in power as the CEO of a special effects company, destroy themselves in their desperation to preserve that power and status. Charlie, in her quest for justice, makes sure that destruction is complete.

Charlie herself has very little social status. She drifts through town, on the run from someone who want to kill her. She has to stay under the radar, but everywhere she goes she makes friends.

And somehow, despite running into a murderer every week, Charlie keeps showing up, smiling, ready to get to know more people. Unlike a noir detective, Charlie doesn’t become bitter. But as the show goes on and the murders pile up, Charlie, unlike the cozy queens Jessica Fletcher and Agatha Raisin, is not entirely immune to them. She begins to feel the emotional weight, and the threats to her safety get more intense. Even so, the show comes back to humor. Even after Charlie’s darkest moment, when all seemed lost, the moment we end on is one of Charlie laughing. Her optimism and love of people is what keeps the show moving. The beauty of the cozy-ish mystery, and the case-of-the-week format, is that returning. Starting over, ready to be delighted. So, grab some wine, tea, or coffee, maybe a puzzle or a sudoku, and stay tuned.