Fun at the Volunteer Firefighters Spring Faire comes to a stunning end when a vendor is electrocuted. It quickly becomes apparent his death wasn’t an accident. Many vendors, volunteers, and firefighters disliked him but not enough to kill him, at least that’s what everyone thought until amateur private investigator Pat Pirard discovers his dark past.
Admittedly, I have a love-hate relationship with cozy mysteries. I write them and love them because there’s nothing like solving a mystery without the gore associated with a police procedural and often a traditional murder mystery. If romance is part of the story, all the better. In fact, the type of cozy mystery that appeals to me the most is one where some romance is thrown in to enrich it.
In the first series I wrote, Regan McHenry Real Estate Mysteries, the protagonist was already happily married as the series began and she stayed married to the same man even if there was an occasional bump in their relationship. Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying there isn’t romance between married couples, because there is, but it’s not the same as that first fluttery surge of emotion that comes at the beginning of a relationship when there are so many insecurities that needing sorting out and so much to be discovered about one another.
For the series I’m writing now, PIP Inc. Mysteries, the protagonist, Pat Pirard, is single at the start of the first book, “The Glass House,” and her best friend, Syda Gonzales, who is happily married to deputy sheriff Greg Gonzales, is determined to rectify that “situation” even if Pat doesn’t think that’s necessary. Syda tries unsuccessfully to introduce Pat to potential suitors all of whom Pat rejects.
Pat is interested in a gorgeous recently divorced attorney that she has met in her job as Santa Cruz County Law Librarian and she thinks he’s showing some interest in her. After she is downsized from her job on her thirty-fifth birthday and decides to print up business cards declaring herself private investigator Pat in the hope that she and her pets, a ginger cat named Lord Peter Wimsey, and a Dalmatian named Do won’t starve, he’s the first to hire her as a researcher to help with his defense of the owner of the glass studio where the murder happened. All looks promising as far as Pat’s concerned.
Enter deputy sheriff Tim Lindsey who not only takes her statement after the murder, but tries to ask her out. Initially, she’s not interested, but as is the case in so many cozy mysteries, as the mystery unfolds, he looks better and better and the protagonist becomes conflicted about a choice between two interesting men.
This is where the love-hate of cozies comes in and where some cozies can lose me. Okay, that indecision can go on briefly, but not in book after book at least not with the characters I write. My protagonist is a decisive, clearheaded adult women capable of eliminating one of her suiters as she gets to know both of them better. By the end of the first book in the series, Pat has made her decision…which brings me to the next cozy mystery book phase, the forever involvement without real commitment.
To me, the will-they-or-won’t-they dance gets stale pretty quickly. I’m an impatient person, and therefore, an impatient reader. I want results, and I don’t mind if the female in the relationship is the one who directs it. That’s why in “The Corpses Secret Life,” even though her love is carrying an engagement ring in his back pocket, Pat thinks he’s taking too long to get down on one knee, so she does the dip and proposes to him. They both wind up on their knees on the floor which works for me and makes an entertaining and somewhat humorous scene.
But I don’t believe in book after book of engagement, either. When I told fellow writers I was planning a wedding for my main characters, or at least an attempted wedding, in “Dearly Beloved Departed,” they told me not to do it, that having my characters marry would be the end of their story. I decided to do it anyway.
It turns out having a courting couple become a married couple isn’t the end of anything. Marriage just presents a new set of issues to be sorted out as the new marriage progresses. In the latest installment of the PIP Inc. Mysteries series, “A Faire to Remember,” a recurring character who knows both of the main characters asks Pat if she and her husband are competitive. When Pat says they both are, the friend asks how that’s going to affect their marriage. Material for conflict, welcome aboard.
Pat and her new husband are going to have issues to sort out, especially as their careers come into conflict, but I’m looking forward to exploring how they work them out as a couple. My mind is already a several books ahead of my typing fingers. Cozies are so much fun to write.
Nancy Lynn Jarvis wore many hats before she started writing cozy mysteries. After earning a BA in behavioral science from San Jose State University, she worked in the advertising department of the San Jose Mercury News, as a librarian, as the business manager for Shakespeare/Santa Cruz, and as a Realtor.Nancy’s work history reflects her philosophy: people should try something radically different every few years, a philosophy she applies to her writing, as well. She has written seven Regan McHenry Real Estate Mysteries; seven PIP Inc. Mysteries; a stand-alone novel “Mags and the AARP Gang” about a group of octogenarian bank robbers; edited “Cozy Food: 128 Cozy Mystery Writers Share Their Favorite Recipes,” and short story anthologies, “Santa Cruz Weird,” and “Santa Cruz Ghost Stories.” She also has an ebook on Amazon which she keeps adding to as she writes more short stories.
Her newest out-of-comfort zone experience was recording “The Glass House,” the first book in the PIP Mysteries series for Audible. She still has some free downloads available if you send her your email address
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