Digital Age Cozy: Cozy mystery can be more than knitting grannies, cats, and cookbooks!

In the detective story, as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the ritual of time) are desirable. Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e., it should be the Great Good Place; for the more Eden-like it is, the greater the contradiction of murder. The country is preferable to the town, a well-to-do neighborhood (but not too well-to-do-or there will be a suspicion of ill-gotten gains) better than a slum. The corpse must shock not only because it is a corpse but also because, even for a corpse, it is shockingly out of place, as when a dog makes a mess on a drawing room carpet."

(The guilty vicarage: Notes on the detective story, by an addict, Harper's Magazine, May 1948)

Every mystery novel I ever read, the great detective was such an arrogant fuck you could replace 70% of his dialogue with 'Are you stupid?' and the conversation would still make sense.

Thieves and liars kill indirectly, unintentionally, and with no other weapon than their tongues and malice.

It is not for me to suspect but to detect.

Time is a terrible thing because it can erase both joys and pains.