What Is a Cozy?

Home , Aaron Elkins, Agatha Award, Anthony Awards, Barbara Mertz, Barbara Neely, Blook

WHAT IS A COZY?

KATHERINE HANSEN CLARK

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Dissertation Adviser: Dr. William H. Marling

Department of English

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

May 2008

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES

We hereby approve the thesis/dissertation of

______

candidate for the ______degree *.

(signed)______(chair of the committee)

______

(date) ______

*We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any proprietary material contained therein.

To my father, Col. Claude L. Clark, who introduced me to the stories of Poe and stories about Sherlock Holmes,

and to my mother, Judith Dunn Clark,

who had me read everything else

Table of Contents

List of Tables ...... ii

List of Figures...... iii

Acknowledgements...... iv

Abstract...... x

Introduction...... 1

Chapter One ...... 24

Chapter Two...... 62

Chapter Three...... 97

Chapter Four ...... 146

Chapter Five...... 190

Conclusion ...... 238

Appendix A: Survey Questions ...... 267

Appendix B: Focus Group Questions ...... 287

Appendix C: Figures...... 290

Endnotes...... 296

Works Cited ...... 320

List of Tables

Table 1 Top Authors by Number of Copies at Borders ...... 73

Table 2 Mysteries Read Per Month and Year by My Survey Takers ...... 149

Table 3 Political Beliefs of Mystery Survey Participants...... 160

Table 4 Responses to Survey Question, “What mysteries did you start with?” ...... 166

Table 5 Responses to Survey Question, “How often do you purchase mysteries?”

...... 167

Table 6 Responses to Survey Question, “What types of mysteries do you enjoy

reading?”...... 169

Table 7 Responses to Survey Question, “Who are your favorite authors?” ...... 171

iii

List of Figures

Figure 1 Borders’ Mystery Copies by Subgenre ...... 291

Figure 2 Proclivity to Read Outside Own Demographic...... 292

Figure 3 Income of Mystery Readers ...... 158

Figure 4 Education of Mystery Readers ...... 293

Figure 5 Religions of Mystery Readers ...... 294

Figure 6 Reading Habits of Mystery Readers vs. General Readers...... 295

Acknowledgements

I have so many people to thank and don’t know how to do it adequately. I have said all along during this process that it takes a village to write a dissertation, and my village has certainly come through!

First, I wish to thank my committee. Professor William Marling has been a tremendous coach on this journey. He was excited by my ideas for the dissertation and has constantly pushed me to do more, think more, and to write better and more gracefully. Without Professor Kim Emmons, I would not have been able to handle the requirements of our Institutional Review Board. More importantly, she helped me understand what to do with the data I collected in my survey and always offered encouragement. Professor Mary Grimm is a dream reader and fellow lover of mysteries.

She asks great questions that prompted me to think more deeply and elaborate more completely. I appreciate as well her kindness in listening to my fears about the dissertation process. Thanks as well to Professor Henry Adams of the Art History department for being a reader of my dissertation. I appreciated his comments during the prospectus and defense meetings.

I need to thank Professor Judy Oster as well. Many years ago I had planned to go to law school, but Judy pointed me towards being an English major and urged me to consider becoming an English teacher. I especially appreciate her asking me to assist her in English as a Second Language (ESL) curriculum development. I never stop learning from Judy. Professor Bill Siebenschuh has been a wonderful Chair. His enthusiasm for

v my topic and for my work have encouraged me. My mentor, Professor Walter Strauss, died before I fulfilled this part of my dream. He hoped I would change my dissertation topic, but he was always supportive and willing to argue about it with me. I miss him.

I could not have done this work without my friends. Intellectually, perhaps, I’ve been preparing to do this work on the mystery since at least third grade, but emotionally and psychologically it wouldn’t have been possible without my friends. Joe Flatico has been there with me from the beginning. He claims that he knew I was cut out for bigger things than law school as early as 1984. Joe read drafts of most of my chapters, and spent countless hours over the years talking to me about my dissertation. Professor Michael

Altschul has been my friend since I was an undergraduate at CWRU. He has fed me physically with many lunches and dinners over the years, and emotionally with classical

CDs and lots of advice. At times when I felt like I was going to give up, he gave me the fortitude to continue.

Donna Caputo has spent years sharing her love. The night before the defense, she and her daughter Chuck (a.k.a. Mara Caputo-Benitez) pampered me and made me feel I could succeed. Laura Weldon has been sending me care packages and witty email messages for years. She is such a fine writer and keen observer of life that she inspires me. Dr. Barbara Burgess-Van Aken has been a terrific friend, and most recently, mentor.

I helped her prepare for her written and oral exams, and she helped me know what to expect from the final stages of the dissertation. With constant exhortations to breathe and believe in myself, she helped pull me through.

Arleen Hartman, my newest friend, has been outstanding. She has taken care of my dog, Harvey, my cats (Tiny Little Kitty, Mad Otto Drunk with Power, and New

Kitty), my house, and me. She has typed up quotes and given me material to read. Tim

Gilbride and Carolyn Getson have also taken care of Harvey. Carolyn’s wonderful remark when we had our first serious discussion about the dissertation was “God,

Katherine, you’re writing a book?!” That’s how I’ve felt during this entire process.

Judith Olson-Fallon gave me my second favorite motto: “So fix it.” Whenever I felt overwhelmed by my inability to tackle yet more problems with my dissertation, I heard

Judith say very quietly, “So fix it.” So I have. Lisa Ochenduski gave my very first Ph.D. gift; before I even began writing, she brought to my house a box packed full of office supplies. What a dream! She also read chapters of the dissertation giving great comments. Laurie von Mehren, my best librarian friend, kept me supplied with mystery texts weeded out of the library, helped me with obscure library references, and aided me with introductions to librarians.

Dr. Marjorie Keil, despite having a killer workload, read a chapter of the dissertation, and always gave terrific advice. Dr. Sean Martin read and commented on a chapter as well, and was kind enough to call my fears “crazy” assuring me that I was going to be fine in the defense. Anke Schreiber and her husband Mike Mitroff were always encouraging, sending emails and gathering folks together for movies and meals.

My Little Sisters, Tiffany and Kayla Gianetti, helped me coordinate information, organize materials, and type information that landed in the dissertation. Shelby King, one of my favorite former students, has been my constant cheerleader and fan. Debbie

Hrouda sees in my journey her own. Every step I took towards mastery, she praised. She will someday have her own Ph.D. Dr. Susan Lohwater and Mara Hegedeos, my chairs in

ESL at Tri-C, have been wonderful and eager for me to succeed. It makes it even more

vii wonderful that Susan is a huge mystery fan herself! Dr. Liz Sirkin Mason went through the Ph.D. process in the CWRU English department just a few years ago. For her great advice and kind words before my defense, and for her attainment of that nearly impossible dream, a tenure track job, she has become a model for me.

My long distance friends have been there as well. My second oldest friend, Nina

Ryerson, called from London every few weeks and left messages of love on my voice mail. Margaret Schuster sent emails and phone encouragements quietly stating that I would succeed. Dr. Kirsten Komara was one of my models to finishing a dissertation even when things are difficult. She exhibited true grace under fire. She coached me for my Orals and talked me through my anxiety many times over the years. Dr. Anne Hines sent frequent words of encouragement and even asked for updates when preparing for overseas journeys. Jenny Sopcak, in our conversations, would always have an interesting twist on anything that I would say to her. Her partner, Mel Tomlinson, gave me perhaps the most exciting gift I’ve ever received: her truncheon from her years as a Scotland Yard

Inspector. Mel smuggled this through customs from England so that I would have it in time for my orals. It worked as my talisman, and I brought it with me to the defense.

Dr. Jessica Branch gave me my favorite motto: “Done is better than good.”

When I was preparing for a difficult seminar meeting in which I had to present a chapter of my dissertation, she sent me in preparation for it a Nancy Drew Journal and Nancy

Drew note cards. Jessica was always available with wry advice. In addition, she connected me with her librarian mother, another mystery addict, who not only gave me great interviews, but over 500 mysteries! Tony Martin provided another important gift; his home has become a haven of comfort and peace for me. I spend time with Tony

viii watching movies, foreign television shows, and eating gourmet food. We have witty, intense conversations, and I feel renewed after our visits. My friend Brian came to my interview in Richmond, Virginia, and at a later visit gave me what may be the best piece of future job advice I’ve ever gotten. My oldest friend, Beth Miller, claims to remember the time when I didn’t speak English (only Japanese), and has always been certain I could achieve my Ph.D. Her mother, Ginger, has pushed me ever forward by saying that she wants to call me “doctor.” Ginger even dedicated a song to my dissertation on the night of the defense.

My family has been incredible. My mother was the first reader of the dissertation, labeling it, among other things, as “wordy and repetitious.” She was right, and now it is better. Every time I saw my mother before the dissertation’s completion meant more book suggestions from her and more articles to read about mysteries. My sister Jessie has been a constant source of support telling me in the face of my anxiety that I could do this.

She shares my love of mysteries and is always eager to discuss favorite writers and experiment with new ones. My sister Becky still doesn’t quite understand what a dissertation is, but she called weekly to ask about how the work was going. My sister

Debbie said of course I could do it because it is something I love. My brother Jason compared my being rid of the dissertation to Inigo Montoya’s killing the murderer of his father. Jason said that at least Inigo Montoya could become the Dread Pirate Roberts.

The problem is that I don’t want to become a pirate. Something to think about.

My Aunt Joanne gave me Harriet the Spy and my first Nancy Drew book. (Nancy

goes to Scotland!) She was the first reader of my non-academic writing, and I miss her.

My Aunt Sally is as big a fan of mysteries as I am. She took my survey and passed it on

ix to many others, and has long been a source of mystery books that she kindly passes on.

Most important, she gave me my first Helen MacInnes novel. My first cousin once removed, Dr. Diane Obenchain was on my “defense committee” and sent prayers and advice. My cousin Nancy has been a wonderful and enthusiastic cheerleader, happy with every success of mine, and supportive in the down times. I have been inspired by my cousin Simon (another mystery lover) and his work for Oxfam. Simon’s work saves lives in war zones and has put my own work in perspective. I admire him greatly.

The person I am most indebted to though is Mark Schumann. I could not have done this project without him. He has been my technical wizard and is the only one who has read not only the entire dissertation but the entire dissertation many times over. I think in some ways he is better at stating what my dissertation is about and what its place is in the world of ideas than I am. Mark’s enthusiasm for my work frequently overwhelms even my own love of it. Mark is my greatest champion, and I am so grateful to have him in my life.

What Is a Cozy?

Abstract

KATHERINE HANSEN CLARK

To find out why readers love the mystery genre and its popular “cozy” subgenre, and inspired by Bourdieu and Radway, I conducted interviews, focus groups, and wrote a

54 question survey that received 734 responses.

Chapter One is the history of the traditional mystery (forerunner to the cozy) and establishes the polarization between it and the hardboiled detective novel. In the 1960s and 1970s, publishers and critics believed that readers no longer wanted to read cozies, and it appeared that the subgenre would disappear.

Chapter Two concerns the distributors of mystery novels. I discuss the impact that big box bookstores and chain stores have had on mystery publishing. I analyze how bookstores categorize mysteries and market them to their customers. Unlike big box bookstores, independent mystery bookstores aid both midlist mystery writers and avid mystery readers. Further, I show how libraries are no longer depositories of mystery literature but are weeding out mysteries.

Chapter Three shows how the cozy survived and thrived. Feminist “advocacy groups,” particularly Sisters in Crime, the Malice Domestic Conference, and the

DorothyL listserv combated bestsellerdom and encouraged support of the cozy.

Chapter Four is the core of the dissertation. I compare results from the NEA’s reading study (2002) with the 734 responses to my survey. I explore their reading histories, purchasing habits, library visits, and preferences for particular subgenres. The term “cozy” is valuable and necessary to cozy readers.

Chapter Five uses the business model observed by Chris Anderson in The Long

Tail to discuss how technological innovations are altering mystery publishing. A long

tail model of business would fulfill readers’ desires for niches, while supporting midlist

writers. Small presses and independent bookstores fill many needs for readers that larger

publishers can’t.

In conclusion, I view the cozy from a generic perspective. Categories and

branding are necessary. I explore “subsubs” of cozies: historical, niche, chick-lit, and

woo-woo and their impact on parameters of the cozy. I show where the cozy appears to

be headed, and speculate on how mystery writers could strengthen not only the cozy but

the mystery genre.

Introduction

What Is a Cozy?

Academics recognize that the mystery genre is worthy of examination, which is why for over one hundred years they have written more studies on it than any other genre.1 Yet, scholars in the past have preferred to speculate about the audience for

mystery novels rather than interview the sources directly and find out why mystery fans

love the genre. These researchers conclude that the mystery is an inherently ideologically

conservative genre.2 Not talking to mystery readers has led scholars to several erroneous

conclusions concerning mystery reader’s political beliefs, class affiliation, and social

mores. Most academics recognize the value of some hardboiled and noir mystery fiction,

but mystery’s bestselling subgenre, the “cozy,” has been either disparaged or ignored.

The large publishing industry, including the seven major publishers and their middlemen, also do not recognize the value of the cozy. Hardboiled and noir texts are highlighted and their authors promoted, while cozy books receive little in the way of promotion.

This is a mistake on the part of the publishing industry. Because so many mystery

readers are avid, publishers have a built in market and could be making more money on

book sales, as well as better pleasing their readership. In communicating with actual

readers and experts in the field—bookstore owners, librarians, small press publishers, and

mystery writers—I have discovered through surveys and interviews that mystery readers

read everything, and read along a continuum of subgenres. Cozies are a necessary staple for some readers, and an equally necessary supplement for those who prefer darker fare.

Studying the cozy subgenre is valuable because of what it shows about the formation of genre; equally important is noting the differences in how publishers,

2 writers, and readers define a subgenre that they love (or loathe). The “cozy” has hazy boundaries. Observing its practice of genre blending (combining the mystery with, say, history) reveals additional information about the constant adjustment of publishers to readers’ tastes.

I’ve observed that publishers promote the books they perceive as bestsellers in the broad mainstream market to the detriment of the books desired by dedicated readers.

Publishers’ overemphasis on promoting bestselling books and authors has diminished the status of midlist mystery writers, with negative effects on the genre as a whole. Rather than succumbing to the whims of publishers, readers find the books they want to read even if it means circumventing those publishers. It is in the best interest of readers, authors, publishers, and distributors to promote cozies.

First, a definition. While the word “cozy” suggests many possibilities (warmth, cuddliness, a tea cozy3), in the context of the mystery novel, a cozy is a sub-genre that

suggests gentility and manners. Cozies deemphasize sex, violence, and profanity, and are

written for readers who want to avoid unpleasant surprises. Many mystery readers want

to be surprised—they want puzzles and initial chaos, and obstacles for the protagonist to overcome—but they do not want unpleasant surprises that involve, among other things, torture, violence (especially towards children or animals), or any kind of gore. Also known (incorrectly) as traditional mysteries, cozies tend to be light and humorous, with

mysteries that are solved by amateur detectives with “real” jobs (not positions in the justice system) and with an emphasis on relationships, especially the family and friends of the protagonist. Cozies are escapist. The reader trusts that the protagonist will emerge safely from events. In hardboiled and other types of mysteries, on the other hand,

3 protagonists are usually changed by events; family, friends, and the surrounding community feel profound effects.

The cozy is fraught with boundary problems, and no one seems to be able definitively to state what a cozy is. The description above seems simple enough, yet there is debate among readers, writers, mystery booksellers, editors and publishers as to what is and isn’t a cozy. Over time, some of the rules for cozies have changed. For example, many readers now accept premarital sex for cozy protagonists, as long as it is alluded to and not depicted; a small and declining number of readers adhere almost religiously to the old standards of no premarital sex. To complicate things further, there is a great deal of genre blending. Cozies sometimes are dark, question the status quo, and have protagonists who are shaken by ethical dilemmas. Some readers are uncomfortable with these more serious cozies, and other readers regard these as non- cozies; in fact, some cozies are so dark as to be described as “cozy noir” by publishers uncertain about how to label them.

Why does a distinction between the cozy and other subgenres matter? It matters because the mystery is the fourth best selling genre in the United States after inspirational, romance (a billion dollar industry), and science fiction/fantasy.4 Recently,

mystery was the number two genre in terms of sales, and the reason for its slippage bears

looking at as well. Although sales of mystery novels has fallen off in comparison with a

few other genres, some industry observers suggest that the mystery genre has surpassed

the romance genre in sales in certain venues. For example, more people download audio

mysteries than download audio romances.5 In addition, more mysteries appear on the

New York Times bestseller list than books from any other genre, including literary

4 fiction. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, only 23% of Americans visit bookstores and fewer than 20% of Americans buy books, but mystery fans read anywhere from one to fifteen mysteries a month, far surpassing the average American in books read.6

The continuing and growing popularity of the subgenre cozy, despite the loss of

sales for the mystery genre is one reason to study this subgenre. Within the mystery genre are numerous subcategories, which run the continuum from a catchall term like “thriller”

(apparently randomly and routinely applied to anything that an editor can’t pigeonhole) to

extremely specific designations like the appellation “outdoor mysteries” for Nevada

Barr’s books.7 Of all the categories, cozies are the best selling. Booksellers say that of all

the subgenres, cozies have always maintained their popularity. What is the appeal? Why

is it that, while they’ve been around for over 50 years, cozies are the best selling and

most popular subgenre? How have cozies adapted? One explanation has it that cozies are

successful because they are constantly expanding their focus and creating new niches to

explore.8 For example, as new professions open, the cozy market explores and exploits

them. Readers read cozies in large part because they want to explore new geographical locations, new professions, or nascent and/or exotic lifestyles. More importantly, cozies provide readers with a particular emotional ambience; in particular, cozies create a sense of safety and comfort for the reader.

The designation “cozy” was first used in 1958 in a London Observer article, and

has been used ever since (Oleksiw 97). For many years though, the term was used only

by a few critics and publishing insiders. When I first began doing research on my

project in 2005, most people could not answer the question “what is a cozy?” Even the

readers who were the biggest fans of the subgenre were usually unfamiliar with the term.

When I explained how the publishing industry defines cozy, most readers knew what I

meant and were able to list several mystery titles and authors. What was particularly

interesting was the variety of texts mentioned; it quickly became clear that there wasn’t a

consistent view as to what cozies were, even among their most ardent fans. A second

interesting fact I discovered during my research is that in a very short period of time, just

a matter of a few years, the term “cozy” became quite common on listservs and blogs on

the Internet. Mystery fans talk about cozies frequently and comfortably. Now there are

even websites like Mystery Most Cozy and The Cozy Library. It will be interesting to

see if this sophistication of fans about not only the publishing, but the marketing of the

books they love will have an impact upon the industry. This is one of the areas I begin

to explore in this dissertation.

Cozy mysteries are positive mysteries, and cozy is a positive term. Cozies are about comfort. Cozies are also about amateur sleuths who are usually female (though this is changing). These female protagonists catch murderers and other criminals through the use of their wits and compassionate personalities. Cozies in many ways are pro- female, pro-friendship, and pro-family. They are also pro-animal (and many cozies have cats on the cover or in the story).9

For insiders and outsiders the mystery world, however, cozies are silly and

unworthy of being included in the mystery genre along with writers such as Chandler,

Hammett, and Doyle. Critics in general, and of the mystery genre in particular, view the genre in binary terms. Rather than embracing the myriad aspects of the genre, critics have tended to emphasize the differences, (usually with the desire to prove that their particular

6 subgenre is the superior one) and the key division seems to be that of traditional, classic, mysteries (which became contemporary cozies) vs. “realistic,” hardboiled, crime novels.

Perhaps publishers were listening to the critics, for writers were discouraged from writing cozies from the early 1960s to the late 1970s. When the cozy returned, according to many bookstore owners, it became the best selling subgenre by far. It is possible to see the cozy’s origin in the debate over when the mystery genre began, and how it progressed. In the arguments between writers, historians, and critics can be found the differences and similarities between the subgenres. In tracking these differing viewpoints, and in particular how they are distinguished from other subgenres, one sees that the subgenres that receive more literary and academic respect are the American hardboiled school and noir.

In the early 1980s, publishers once again began publishing cozies, and they gradually built up audiences apparently hungry “for the more genteel mystery…or murder among nice people” (Bourgeau 10). In 2008, cozies continue to be the bestselling mystery subgenre.

Despite the fact that cozies are the bestselling subgenre, debate continues about the use of the word. Carolyn Hart, an Agatha award winning mystery writer, despairs of the word “cozy” and wishes the word were stricken. She requests that her books and others like them be called traditional, or classic mysteries.10 Hart is apparently not alone

in her aversion, for it is difficult to find other mystery writers who use the term. Mystery

critic Howard Haycraft certainly didn’t use the term in any of the versions of his classic

criticism.11 Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller’s reference book 1001 Midnights: The

Aficionado’s Guide to Mystery and Detective Fiction (1986) never uses the word cozy to

7 define a text. They rely instead upon words like “whodunit” and “English country house mysteries.” The term “cozy” is known and used in other reference books, but seems to be inconsistent in critic usage. The term “cozy” for critics (and for publishers and readers as well) seems to be understood as something where the viewer knows a cozy when she or he sees one. The use of the term “cozy” by publishers also has a random aspect to it. It isn’t always clear that publishers know or care about what the term means. Publishers will use the term cozy as long as it helps to sell books—and so far that is exactly what is happening.

The term cozy isn’t just disparaged by writers and critics because of the novels

though. Another reason for intense dislike of the term is because it is considered to be a

publishing label or brand. Many mystery writers prefer that their books simply be placed

in the general category of mystery rather than in a particular subgenre. Other writers

recognize that with close to 2,000 mysteries published every year in the United States,

they are unlikely to become bestsellers (Huang, Drood 1). Their best chance of getting

their books into readers’ hands is if the books are labeled and identified with a particular

category. Labeling a book as a cozy is a way to make sales. Bookstore owners and

librarians have confirmed this. Is branding solely a marketing decision, and thus bad, as

so many writers seem to think? I take the radical approach of suggesting that all

mysteries should be branded, in part for the sales, since I care about the plight of the

mid-list writer, but also because I care about readers.

This dissertation is primarily about readers. This is not a dissertation that critiques

the cozy. I am not going to argue that cozy writers are or are not the equal of Chandler,

Hammett, P. D. James, or Agatha Christie.12 I am not going to argue for or against

8 hardboiled mysteries over and above or below traditionals and cozies. Rather, I look at the mystery world and its various subgenres, at why and how the cozy has survived despite concerted attempts to destroy it. I suggest that it is to the advantage of the publishing world, and mystery critics, to stop worrying about which mystery writers are great writers of Literary Fiction who “transcend the genre” and which are superfluous, because that isn’t the point. Most mystery readers don’t evaluate mysteries that way, and most don’t need to.

Fans will read mysteries whether academics give them the seal of approval or not.

Mystery readers read for entertainment. They like having a plot, they like having a

story, and they like having ongoing series’ characters (Surveys). They don’t care if the

works are taught in college. They often also read the great writers—Austen, Bronte,

Shakespeare, Eliot—but they read mysteries for different purposes (Surveys).

Why Does Defining the Cozy Matter?

Janice Radway’s Reading the Romance (1984) was initially attacked because

many of her colleagues believed that romance novels were unworthy of scholarly study.

Radway argued that “the form itself is subsequently deplored, then, because most mass culture critics can show how the consciousness created by popular literature reconciles

readers to a social order dominated by others” (6). The assumption is that readers will

read the texts in the same way as the critics have. I agree with Radway, and believe that

readers, especially of mystery fiction, should not be viewed as merely unwitting cultural

consumers who will be ideologically swayed by reading mysteries. Much of what critics

9 believe about readers of popular literature comes from their own speculations about why readers read as they do rather than from direct survey of the readers. Radway argues that

Because readers are presented in this theory as passive, purely receptive

individuals who can only consume the meanings embodied within cultural

texts, they are understood to be powerless in the face of ideology. The

text’s irreducible givenness prevents them from appropriating its meaning

for their own use just as it thwarts any desire on their part to resist its

message.[…]In this theory of mass culture, ideological control is thought

to be all pervasive and complete as a consequence of the ubiquity of mass

culture itself and of the power of individual artifacts or texts over

individuals who can do nothing but ingest them. (6)

Because she felt so strongly that readers were the most important part of any kind of interpretative cultural strategy, Radway designed a whole project around what romance readers do when they read a romance novel. She met Dot, a life long romance reader and bookstore assistant, who had purveyed her knowledge of romance novels into a business.

Dot became recognized as an expert on romance novels, and readers regularly consulted her to recommend titles. She then became a consultant to editors and publishers of romance novels, and edited a newsletter for readers of romances. Dot brought together twelve female romance readers, whom Radway named the “Shipton readers.”

Radway spent sixty hours interviewing Dot and the other readers over the course of a year. She arranged for both group interviews and individual meetings, and also had over sixty women fill out three short surveys over the course of the year. After studying the women’s accounts of why they read romances, including such issues as what they

10 considered the ideal romance to be, what good romances should never contain, and what made the best heroine and hero, she applied a feminist critique to the women’s responses.

She admited a feminist approach did bias her interpretation and analysis. Radway’s belief, which she stated ten years after the publication of her ground-breaking book, was that ethnographic studies are essential to any understanding of genre. 13 In her

introduction to Reading the Romance she argues that

To know, then, why people do what they do, read romances, for instance,

it becomes necessary to discover the constructions they place on their

behavior, the interpretations they make of their actions. A good cultural

analysis of the romance ought to specify not only how the women

understand the novels themselves but also how they comprehend the very

act of picking up a book in the first place. (8)

Radway is concerned that too much can be read into texts without the input of the actual

readers.

Influenced by reading Radway’s work and moved by her arguments that critics

need to know why readers read what they do, I was surprised to discover that nobody had

done such an ethnographic study for the mystery novel. After doing research, I further

discovered that while the mystery genre has been and is being studied by researchers, no

work at all has been done on the cozy subgenre.

Bourdieu

Just as I was influenced by Radway to go directly to the mystery readers to find out why they read what they do, and to discover whether the readers’ responses to mystery texts would correlate with the claims of the genre critics, I was influenced by the work of Pierre Bourdieu and his concept of habitus and cultural and social capital. In

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, Bourdieu attempts to explain

how the value of cultural productions is determined. He argues that there is a class basis

for determining what he calls “cultural capital.” A monied elite defines what should be

socially valued, and guards against other classes who might believe themselves capable,

either through education or other talent, of determining cultural value. Bourdieu states

that “Sociology endeavors to establish the conditions in which the consumers of cultural

goods, and their taste for them are produced, and at the same time to describe the

different ways of appropriating such of these objects as are regarded at a particular

moment as works of art, and the social conditions of the constitution of the mode of

appropriation that is considered legitimate” (1).

Bourdieu argues that the only way to understand cultural practices is to

understand that “cultural needs are the product of upbringing and education…and

preference in literature, painting or music, are closely linked to education level[…]and

secondarily to social origin” (1). Bourdieu attempts to figure out how people learn to

acquire culture: how they develop their tastes for certain things and why taste differs. He

argues that “taste classifies and at the same time it classifies the classifier” (6). He

believes that there is a “science” of taste and cultural consumption. Bourdieu’s work is

important for many reasons, but chief might be this, that “taste, [is] one of my most vital

stakes in the struggles fought in the field of the dominant class and the field of cultural

12 production” (11). In other words, taste is often the key factor in determining social power. The way that Bourdieu satisfies his project is through determining a person’s habitus.

For Bourdieu, the body is a mnemonic device upon and in which the very

basics of culture, the practical taxonomies of the habitus, are imprinted

and encoded in a socializing or learning process which commences during

early childhood. This differentiation between learning and socialization is

important; the habitus is inculcated as much, if not more, by experience as

by explicit teaching….[In addition] the power of the habitus derives from

the thoughtlessness of habit and habituation, rather than consciously

learned rules and principles. (Jenkins 75-76)

This determination emerges from a number of different factors, including knowledge of the individual’s family background, i.e., educational levels of the parents

(length of schooling, degrees), professions of the parents, location of home or homes, as well as questions for the survey taker about his or her educational background, leisure time activities, and aesthetic appreciation (frequency of attendance at movies, concerts, museums, etc.)

Bourdieu contacted 1,217 people over three years to complete this project, and he states that

The survey sought to determine how the cultivated disposition and cultural

competence that are revealed in the nature of cultural goods consumed,

and in the way they are consumed vary…from the most legitimate areas

such as painting or music to the other personal ones such as clothing,

furniture or cookery, and within the legitimate domains, according to the

markets—academic and non academic in which they may be placed (13).

Bourdieu asked 26 questions in his survey, all of which were quantifiable data. In other words, there were “canned” responses for the survey taker to respond to. An example: “Which of the opinions below is closest to your own view?” The survey taker had the following choices for answers: “Classical music is complicated. Classical music isn’t for people like us. I love classical music but I don’t know much about it. I like classical music, Strauss waltzes for example. All music of quality interests me” (517).

One of the more interesting conclusions Bourdieu reached is that simply by knowing the parents’ (usually the father’s) occupations and the educational level of the survey taker, he could determine with great accuracy which classical music composer would be a favorite, how often the person attended museums, which paintings she or he would admire, and which films the person would prefer. Bourdieu states

Two basic facts…were established. On the one hand, the very close

relationship linking cultural practices (or the corresponding opinions) to

educational capital (measured by qualifications) and, secondarily, to social

origin (measured by father’s occupation); and on the other hand, the fact

that, at equivalent levels of educational capital, the weight of social origin

in the practice and preference –explaining system increases as one moves

away from the more legitimate areas of culture. (13)

One of my major interests then is this: Does the enjoyment of mysteries reflect something about a person in a Bourdieuvian sense? 14

Many critics since Radway and Bourdieu have understood that it is necessary for readers to be consulted. Cultural critic David Buckingham observes “There has been hardly any empirical research on the ways in which real audiences might understand genre, or use this understanding in making sense of specific texts” (137). And Daniel

Chandler notes that

How we define a genre depends on our purposes; the adequacy of our

definition in terms of social science at least must surely be related to the

light that the exploration sheds on the phenomenon. For instance (and this

is a key concern of mine), if we are studying the way in which genre

frames the reader's interpretation of a text then we would do well to focus

on how readers identify genres rather than on theoretical distinctions.

Defining genres may be problematic, but even if theorists were to abandon

the concept, in everyday life people would continue to categorize texts.

(“Problem”)

“Genres only exist,” argue social critics Hodge and Kress, “in so far as a social group declares and enforces the rules that constitute them” (qtd. in D. Chandler). What are these rules that define the mystery genre in general, and in particular, the cozy subgenre?

I set out to discover what readers think.

Methodology

In order to learn who mystery readers are, I began by interviewing mystery bookstore owners, and I asked them (among many other questions) what I initially thought was a naïve question: Is there a type of person who buys mysteries? So far I

15 have interviewed bookstore owners in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;

Baltimore, Maryland; Richmond, Virginia; Lyons, Colorado; Columbus, Ohio; and

Carmel, Indiana. The booksellers all agree that there is a type of person who reads mysteries: female, over the age of 30, usually professional, usually politically liberal, and usually someone who enjoys reading anything. Next, I set out to find out if the above information was true and to create a general snapshot of the American mystery reader.

When I began the process, I had paper surveys, but I found this to be quite onerous and expensive. A friend suggested putting a link to my survey on the Internet, saving postage costs (the survey is fourteen pages long) and making record keeping and analysis easier.

I first sent the survey link to any friend or acquaintance of mine who had ever expressed any interest in the mystery. I urged these people to send the survey link to others who might be interested. After receiving permission from the moderators of the DorothyL listserv, a 3000+ member mystery reading group started by librarians on the Internet in

1991, I placed a link to my survey on it. Within the first twenty-four hours, I received eighty-one responses. I also inquired of Sisters in Crime, a feminist mystery writer’s advocacy group begun in 1986 by Sara Paretsky, if I could place a link on their listserv.

From these two sites, list visitors sent my link information to their friends, and soon my survey link was placed on personal blogs and general literary sites. I also asked the mystery bookstore owners to pass on the link to their customers, and a few print publications and Internet publications, including Mystery Readers International Journal

and Writer’s World, published the survey address. As of February 15, 2006, I had

received 734 survey responses, with an astonishing 93.9% willing to respond to a second

survey. Important information has been conveyed by the large number of people who

16 have responded to this survey in such a short period of time. There is obviously something that drives people in this genre to want to discuss it and support it. In

Appendix I is a copy of the survey.

This is not a scientifically designed survey. In Chapter Four I have 734 quantifiable responses. My current qualitative results and interpretations are preliminary, based on trends I have observed among the randomly selected 300 surveys I have qualitatively analyzed to date. I have no way of knowing the total number of surveys that were circulated, since those who participated in my project were self-selected. For this

same reason, I cannot cite a return rate for my surveys. Given that I was studying readers

of mysteries, the question of establishing a control group did not arise. When I designed

the survey, I did not think in terms of having a blind study group to compare my findings

with. Not having a blind study, some of my conclusions have to be speculative,

especially in terms of understanding how usual or unusual mystery readers are in terms of

the amount that they read and the types of themes that they find interesting. I use the

NEH survey to sketch broad comparisons between cozy readers and general readers, but no doubt valuable information could be found by comparing dedicated mystery readers with non-mystery readers.

I have so far analyzed my surveys by looking for umbrella themes for each question, and then coding the responses. The information is then placed in an Excel file.

Mystery readers tend to be highly educated and articulate, so responses on qualitative questions ranged from the short one-sentence response to several paragraphs. By allowing the survey taker to write his or her thoughts, I have gained a much richer portrait of the mystery reader, and the correlation with the quantitative data is all the

17 more interesting as I note areas of resonance and contradiction. In addition to the surveys and the interviews, in April 2006, I began a series of focus groups in Ann Arbor,

Michigan, and at the Malice Domestic Conference in Crystal City, Virginia. I conducted a total of seven focus groups, with an average number of five participants in each group.

Information from these focus groups is included in this and other chapters of the dissertation. Questions for the focus groups are located in Appendix 2. All of the information from interviews, focus groups, and surveys allowed me to find out exactly who mystery readers are, how they define the cozy subgenre, and what it is they want in the mysteries that they read.

Summary of the Chapters

In my first chapter I detail the disputes over the origin of the mystery genre, uncovering different critical strategies in defining the genre of mystery. Were Cicero’s speeches the beginning? Or are there mysteries in the Bible? Dorothy L. Sayers made the argument that mystery fiction can’t occur until people believe in law and order; thus, the true origins of the mystery novel emerge from the founding of the police forces in France and England. If we accept this premise, the first mysteries emerge piecemeal from

Godwin’s Caleb Williams, which studied the nature of crime, the criminal, and the

pursuer; from Dickens, who portrayed the first police detective in Bleak House; and from

Edgar Allan Poe, who created the first private detective. Of the three, Poe’s impact on the

genre has been the greatest, since his stories created a series of “rules” that have been

followed by most mystery writers ever since. Following Poe, the Sensation novelist

Wilkie Collins (The Moonstone 1868) promoted the amateur detective further, and the

18 psychological exploration of character.15 Conan Doyle created a masterpiece with

Sherlock Holmes, who combines a razor sharp logic and an artistic bohemian intellectual

with a strong share of irrationality.

Holmes leads us directly to the Golden Age and the creation of the traditional

mystery (the forerunner to the contemporary cozy). In a Golden Age novel, reason reigns

supreme, puzzles are key, and characters are drawn from the upper classes. Golden Age

mysteries were very popular, only to be overshadowed by the creation of the hardboiled

novel in America, which some readers considered more “realistic” than Golden Age

novels. After World War II, some historians of the genre have argued that men returning

from war desired grittier fare, and thus police procedurals became the genre of choice,

though they were soon overtaken by psychological thrillers.16 With the great success of psychological thrillers, and the continuing demand for hardboiled and police procedural novels, cozies fell into decline. While there were a few publishing successes, most notably books by Amanda Cross and Jane Langton, publishers and critics argued that readers no longer wanted to read cozies. At the end of the 1970s, it appeared that the subgenre would disappear. Chapter One creates a timeline for the genre and suggests some of the reasons for the initial success and then decline of the traditional and cozy novel.

In Chapter Two I turn my attention to the distributors of mystery novels and

discuss the impact that they have made and continue to make on the genre. In 2004, I spent three weeks at one of the largest Borders bookstores in Northeast Ohio and analyzed its stock of over 5,000 mysteries. In the first half of this chapter I discuss the

impact that big box bookstores, like Borders and Barnes & Noble, and chain stores like

Costco and Wal-Mart, have had on mystery publishing. I also use my Borders experience to analyze how bookstores categorize mysteries and market them to their customers. I argue that big box stores and independent bookstores have very different approaches to books and to customers. Big box stores are mainly concerned with bestsellers and what’s new and hot; most independent bookstores are more concerned about the browsing customer who has time to savor. I also explore independent mystery bookstores and show how their services aid both mid-list mystery writers and avid mystery readers.

Mystery bookstore owners venerate “hand selling” and knowing readers’ needs and desires intimately. While bookstore owners understand the need to know their customers, they are frustrated that publishers don’t appear to know the reader as well. I also look at libraries and how they are changing. They used to be preservers of culture with all books kept. Now that libraries have expanded into computer games, DVDs, and CDs, etc., there is less space for the old and what some consider obsolete, so collections of books are disappearing. It is important to look at libraries for another reason: more books are bought by libraries than are sold by bookstores, making libraries a very attractive market for publishers. I end the chapter by describing how the practice of “reader advisory,” a process that assists patrons in finding books for pleasure reading, is often denigrated in library hierarchy.

In Chapter Three, I explain how the cozy not only survived, but thrived. I use the feminist scholarship of Carol Gilligan, Kimberly Dilley, Judith Fetterley, and Kate

Millett to discuss how feminists began to question what literature is valued. Female mystery writers and readers created what New York Times book reviewer Marilyn Stasio

calls “advocacy groups” to fight not only for improved treatment of female mystery

20 writers and their books, but for their preferred subgenres, the traditional and cozy. I describe three significant advocacy groups—Sisters in Crime (SinC), the Malice

Domestic Conference, and the DorothyL listserv—and show how the ideals of the women’s movement aided in creating structures used to combat bestsellerdom and preference for the hardboiled school in mystery publishing. These women created these structures because they knew that women wanted these works, and that women (and some men) wanted to create these works, so they provided “institutional” support for such to happen. In 1986, SinC was created to aid female mystery writers who were not receiving their share of reviews, awards, and publishing contracts. Malice Domestic, a conference for cozy and traditional writers and readers, was created in 1988 and was the next step in creating a structure in support of cozies. Malice gives awards for cozies and traditionals—awards that now match in prestige and sales strength those given by the premier mystery organization Mystery Writers of America. In 1991, DorothyL became the first mystery listserv on the Internet. Begun by librarians, the goal was to provide a place for mystery lovers to share their opinions about their favorite mysteries. DorothyL has become a place where readers can influence what becomes successful and what is produced, and where writers can both educate readers about the publishing world, and sell their books.

Chapter Four is the core of the dissertation. I open this chapter with information from the National Endowment for the Art’s (NEA) 2002 study, which surveyed over

17,000 people and found that Americans are reading and buying fewer books. I contrast the NEA snapshot of the typical American with a snapshot of the typical mystery reader.

The NEA stated that an “avid” reader, its category for those who read the greatest number

21 of books in its survey, read a mean number of 18 books per year. The mean number of mysteries read per year in my survey was 50; this does not include other books read in other genres. In the first half of the chapter I discuss the 734 responses of the survey that

I conducted. I reveal who mystery readers are, including their political and religious beliefs, educational and class background, and sexual orientation. Throughout this chapter I contrast the readers with both the NEA studies as well as with Janice Radway’s

Shipton romance readers. Next, I explore the reading histories of those surveyed, showing what series readers began with, when they began reading, and how long they’ve been reading. I then discuss the survey takers’ purchasing history and library visits, further contrasting them with NEA figures for average American readers. I then discuss why mystery fans read and prefer mysteries, and what types of subgenres and authors they prefer. Throughout this chapter, I use charts to codify this information.

The major conclusion I derive is that the word “cozy,” while flexible and thus for some critics meaningless, is also valuable and even necessary to the people who read cozies. The term “cozy’ itself aids its readers in finding the material that they most want to read at the moment while at the same time prevents them from reading material that would be disturbing to them.

Chapter Five uses the business model observed by Chris Anderson in The Long

Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More as a way to discuss how technological innovations in publishing are changing and could alter mystery publishing.

Anderson reports that, of the 1.2 million books that were sold in 2004, nine hundred and fifty thousand sold fewer than 100 copies (75). Anderson argues that less than 5% of goods produced become hits. Thus, 95% of everything are not hits: yet these non-hits

22 make up a sizable percentage of sales in their own right. A long tail model of business would enable readers to fulfill their desires for niches, and would preserve the jobs of midlist writers. I explore the recent history of major publishing, beginning in the 1970s when writers selling thousands of books were considered successful, and there were many publishers. In contrast, in 2008 writers are expected to sell over 50,000 immediately, and control of publishing is in the hands of seven major companies. I discuss the influence of bestsellerdom on books, using Wal-Mart and Borders as examples, and show how retail stores have great influence on the major publishers in terms of what and how many books get published. Anderson argues that because of the

Internet and print-on-demand possibilities, and the fact that shelf space is no longer a necessity, what he terms “aggregators” like Amazon can now flourish. While the Amazon model is exciting, there are problems, including its competition with brick and mortar stores. In part due to major publishers sometimes ruinous practices, as well as to the changes that technological advances will bring, I point out the role that small presses and independent bookstores play particularly by filling many needs for readers that larger publishers do not. Self-publishing and epublishing are other routes that some writers take in order to fight against the power of the big publishers.

In my conclusion, I point out that no previous scholar has looked at the cozy from a generic perspective. I examine what separates cozies from traditional novels, and why this difference matters, arguing for the necessity of categorization and against mystery authors’ distaste for branding and generic categories. I discuss other popular mystery subgenres: the historical, niche, chick-lit, and woo-woo and their impact on the parameters of the cozy. Finally, I argue against the concept of “gendering” genres, and

23 challenge the notion of the mystery as being a male genre. This leads into a discussion of the possible changes to the cozy subgenre caused by the growing number of male authors producing texts. Some female mystery writers are concerned that male authors will ultimately change the cozy for the negative, though they also think that it might improve the numbers of men who read cozies. In conclusion, I show the directions the cozy appears to be headed in, and speculate on how mystery writers could strengthen not only the cozy, but the mystery genre.

Until my dissertation, nobody had attempted to record why mystery readers read what they do, and perhaps more importantly, why they love the genre, and in particular, the cozy subgenre. When I listened to actual readers and experts in the field—bookstore owners, librarians, small press publishers, and mystery writers—it seemed to me that academics have been blinded by their own biases and assumptions. In part because of these biases, nobody has ever studied the cozy subgenre, since it is considered by most academic professionals to be less worthy than the hardboiled novel. The antagonism between cozy and hardboiled is unnecessary as is the struggle between “literary” fiction and genre fiction. Pleasure reading itself is a valuable activity, and at least in the case of reading mystery novels, I show that it has a positive impact on the community in the form of fomenting cross-cultural ties and understanding.

Chapter One

A Short History of the Mystery Genre and the Beginning of the Cozy

According to MysteryNet.com, one of over 2,000 mystery sites on the Internet,

the mystery genre began with Cicero, the Roman orator. The site creators explain that

Cicero “was not only a great orator but a writer as well[…].” His speeches were written

down and circulated, and since there were no newspapers at the time, the speeches were read as entertaining stories. In two of these “stories” involving murder and theft, Cicero discovered the true criminals, and his arguments set innocent men free.1

MysteryNet.com concludes by stating, “Some say that in these cases and others like them

lie the true beginnings of the public’s unending fascination with mystery and crime.”

Dorothy L. Sayers, the distinguished critic and mystery writer, mentions some

other possible origins of the mystery tale, including the tale of Susanna in the Apocrypha,

in which Daniel tricks the Elders into revealing Susanna’s innocence, as just one of

several Biblical stories in which puzzles are unraveled and justice is done.2 Other

contenders for the first mystery prize include a story in The Arabian Nights,3 and an

episode in Voltaire’s Zadig.4 Ultimately, Charles Rzepka suggests that these are best

looked upon as “protomysteries” (n.p.). They certainly aided in the development of the

genre, but they were all missing key ingredients of the mystery genre.5 Julian Symons

argues that all the above examples merely “involve the use of natural cunning rather than

detective skill” (19). Sayers further suggests that before detective fiction would be

acceptable, much less popular reading for the general public, the public needed to be on

the side of law and order. This couldn’t happen as long as the populace admired “the

cunning and astuteness of the criminal. This must be so while the law is arbitrary,

oppressive, and brutally administered” (74-75). As Rzepka adds, before the creation of

police forces “justice,” or rather order, was maintained through a “bloody” code. People suspected of crimes could receive the death penalty for myriad offenses on little or no

evidence. This “criminalization of the poor” led to the creation of criminal heroes (n.p.).

Broadsheets read by the working classes (including the Newgate Calendar that recorded

“actual” histories of the lives of criminals, most prominently those of murderers who

were to be hanged) published accounts of crimes and exploits often in a way that showed

admiration for the cleverness of the criminals (Rzepka n.p.). The criminal as hero was

adapted and popularized in the works of Bulwer-Lytton6 (Panek 21-22). The drift away

from criminals as heroes began with the publication of the memoirs in 1828-29 of Eugene

Francois Vidocq, a former criminal and police informant turned police officer. The success of the Sûreté (an organization that Vidocq both began and ran for many years) inspired the creation of other police forces in London and in major cities of the United

States. Symons sees the development of police forces as necessary to the development of the crime novel. He believes the political novel Caleb Williams by William Godwin

published in 1794, and the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe concerning the amateur

detective Auguste Dupin begun in 1841, to be the literary forerunners to the modern

crime novel.

Some critics argue that Caleb Williams is the first real detective story.7 A servant

to aristocrat Falkland, Caleb has accidentally discovered that his master (whom he

admires and loves) is a murderer; not only that, someone else has been falsely accused of

the crime and executed for it. Caleb has discovered this through snooping, motivated by

intense curiosity. Once Falkland has discovered that Caleb knows his secret, Caleb

26 becomes the victim and is pursued mercilessly all over England, his reputation destroyed, and his future uncertain. Caleb’s quest for the truth, and his refusal to relinquish it despite issues of class and reputation, seem admirable, yet Godwin was not so sanguine.

Certainly Godwin is opposed to Falkland’s crime and subsequent cover-up, but it is also clear that readers are to criticize Caleb’s pursuit of Falkland’s crime. Godwin implies that pursuit is not always a good thing and that Caleb’s actions are nearly as black as the original crime that produced them. Martin Priestman has suggested that

One of the book’s great puzzles is its deep ambivalence about the initial

act of detection: while on one hand Caleb’s persecution is clearly unjust,

on the other, great stress is laid on Falkland’s nobility and the guilty nature

of Caleb's curiosity. The message is partly, then, that the extirpation of

crime in high places will necessitate change in the whole social order; but

also that the older feeling of ‘cursed spite/that ever I was born to set it

right’ remains valid for the individual whose knowledge pits him against

that order. (12)

Godwin proposed two endings to the book; the first suggested that Falkland remains in charge, and Caleb is ruined. The ending that Godwin published though has Falkland breaking down and confessing in a “trial” situation. Caleb does not appear heroic, and wonders if he did the right thing to bring down a great man. Caleb’s curiosity and his pursuit of Falkland, despite the danger to himself, brings down not only Falkland, but

Godwin feared that metaphorically such real life pursuits had the possibility of bringing down a whole class system.

Rzepka believes that while Caleb Williams is important, it lacks the key element

of induction (n.p.). Without that, Caleb Williams is a novel of pursuit rather than a novel

of detection. Panek argues that Caleb Williams is more a tale of tragedy than of detection.

He states: “Falkland’s crime as Godwin makes clear in his account of the book, derives from his virtue, his genius, benevolence, and concern for honor. Caleb likewise, brings persecution on himself by a virtue magnified until it becomes a vice: his intellectual curiousity becomes nosiness” (15). Panek further argues that another reason for this not being a detective story is that Godwin is actually against law enforcement and shows his own fear about police spies. Rather Panek suggests that Caleb Williams is an “anti-

detective” novel (15-19).

Most critics argue that Edgar Allan Poe is the real father of the detective genre.8

Bruce Cassiday states that in three short stories—“The Murders in the Rue Morgue,”

“The Mystery of Marie Roget,” and “The Purloined Letter,”—Poe “laid down the rules for the detective story. He took what Herodotus, Voltaire, Vidocq, Hoffman, Bulwer-

Lytton and others had all toyed with, and formulated it into a primary story element. [By doing so, Poe] created the detective short story, the tale devoted exclusively to the solution of a criminal problem” (95). J. R. Christopher notes that Poe was not only the first to emphasize deduction as the centerpiece, but also originated most of the

“traditional features” of the detective genre. For example, Poe introduced the concept of a scribe who would act as the reader’s intermediary to the great detective. This was continued with Watson in the Sherlock Holmes stories and with Hastings in Christie’s

Poirot stories, etc.9 Poe’s detective C. Auguste Dupin was able to amaze his unnamed

secretary by apparently being able to name his thoughts; Holmes does this as well. Dupin

is an eccentric detective; Holmes, too, is eccentric. This becomes a seemingly necessary

character trait that is continued into the Golden Age.

Poe introduced other features as well. Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue” is a

“locked room” mystery10, and Dupin’s goal is to clear an innocent man who has been

wrongly arrested. Dupin solves the crime in part from a fingerprint and tuft of hair, and

Christopher suggests Poe may be the first scientific detective (20-21).

In “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” Dupin solves the story without leaving his

room, thus creating the concept of the “armchair detective.” The story is based on an

actual case; Christopher believes that “The Mystery of Marie Roget” may be the first

time that an author proposed a solution for a real case in a fictional form. Finally, by

writing this second story, Poe had established a series character (21).

“The Purloined Letter” is the most famous of Poe’s cases. Christopher suggests

that there are five conventions that first appear in the story. They include: 1) the use of

psychological detection; 2) evidence in the most obvious place; 3) an artificial diversion;

4) a denouement in which the detective explains his brilliant deduction; and 5) the

detective being asked by the state to intervene in a case (21-22). Christopher and Sayers

argue that other Poe stories also present important features of the detective story. Sayers

believes that the use of a cipher in “The Gold Bug” becomes a standby for detective

stories (85). Christopher argues with Haycraft (who thought only two of the Poe stories

were detective stories) that “Thou Art the Man” is a detective tale too. In it, Poe

introduces the concept of making the least likely person the culprit (24).

Sayers believes that what Poe created were the two strands of the detective story,

“the Romantic and the Classic, or to use terms less abraded by ill-usage, the purely

Sensational and the purely Intellectual” (83). Because of his ability to combine the two approaches in one story, the detective genre was born. E. S. Dallas, a critic writing in the

1860s, observed that “In the novel of character man appears moulding circumstances to his will, directing the action for himself, supreme over incident and plot. In the opposite class of novel [sensation] man is represented as made and ruled by circumstance; he is the victim of chance and the puppet of intrigue” (qtd. in Gilmour 187). Poe’s stories would appear to be perfect examples of the man of character who directs the action in the tale. G. R. Thompson suggests, “Dupin is the man of reason and intuition, poet and mathematician, whose imagination provides a hypothesis, whose reason controls its application, and whose observation verifies it” (3). Dupin is not a coldly calculating machine, but looks at problems intuitively and rationally.

Mystery stories regularly have detectives who solve crimes with their wits, hence the accusation that “mysteries prize intellect above all” (Holquist 160); yet, detectives also prize intuition and emotional triggers. Poe’s detective is comfortable in both the rational and irrational world, and this is his strength. In fact, Scott McCracken argues that

Detectives like Sherlock Holmes and Dupin are the epitome of the modern

individual. On the one hand, they are supremely rational and able to

engage expertly with the modern institutions and structures that confront

them. On the other, they are introspective and alienated from the rest of

society to the point where they are considered abnormal by conventional

standards. (59-60)

McCracken further states, “The modern detective tale negotiates between an idea

of modern life as ordered and comprehensive and the fear that such an order is fragile,

and that a pre-existing disorder will break through” (52). This could explain the appeal

of the detective story for readers. Poe’s expertise though, was in the short story, and he

wrote very few detective stories. It was left to writers in England to take what Poe had

started and to create novels from his devices.

In 1853, when Dickens wrote Bleak House, police forces had just been formed in

London. D. A. Miller contends that Dickens was a “propagandist” for them (74).

Dickens created as a representative of this new force, Inspector Bucket, the first public detective recorded in an English novel.11 Dickens’ task was difficult: it had yet to be

determined what the role of the police force was to be. How were the police to interact

with the different classes? And would they be fair? Bucket is in an ambiguous position.

Whom does he serve? Initially, it appears he is in the public employ, but later it is

apparent that he is serving in a private capacity, as a private detective. As a publicly

employed detective, one of his jobs is to find people wanted by the police, even if the

wrongs are minimal. In this capacity, Bucket tracks down a poor old man, Gridley, who

is dying (Dickens 404). As a private detective, he works for the lawyer Tulkinghorn,

one of the villains in the novel, and in this capacity aids in the pursuit and eventual death

of Lady Dedlock. Miller notes “Bucket induces an ambivalence even in those he works

for. Depending on the regularity of corruption, his profession has the doubly offensive

aspect of speculation on human weakness that happens also to be invariably justified”

(94). By pursuing Gridley as a public official, and pursuing Lady Dedlock in a private

capacity, Bucket is upholding law and order. In the case of the hunt for Lady Dedlock he

is upholding the social order as well, though he is not aware of it, for Lady Dedlock bore

an illegitimate daughter and the only one who possesses this knowledge of her “sin” is

Tulkinghorn, who has been blackmailing her.

While pursuing the unfortunate Gridley, Bucket appears unsympathetic and a tool

of the state. Dickens used him well to show how unfortunate the poor were against the machinations of the rich and powerful. But while Bucket pursued Lady Dedlock

apparently in the pay of an evil man, the reader discovers that in fact Bucket wished to

save the lady. Despite some despicable methods, he became heroic. Alas, he was too

late. He next appears in disguise and takes into custody George, a heroic figure, for the

murder of Tulkinghorn. Once again, it is unclear whose “side” Bucket is on. As it

happens, the arrest of George was a ruse to discover the real murderer, and Bucket

succeeds. It is this very ambivalence in regards to the members of police forces that

foreshadows the contemporary mystery novel, especially that of the cozy.

Cozies are concerned with the ordinary citizens’ involvement with crime. In the

first novel of a cozy series, the characters have usually never been involved with a major

crime before. Part of what the cozy explores is what happens when ordinary citizens

come in contact with the police. A common trope is for the heroine to be accused of the

crime. In the better-written cozies, there is quite a bit of evidence and reason for the

heroine to be involved with the crime, and a major focus of the plot is her dealing with

the authorities in an attempt to remove suspicion from herself. The forces of the law are

always regarded with suspicion in these first novels; in most cozies though, the heroine

establishes, if not eventually a friendly (or even romantic!) relationship with the police, at least one based on a type of grudging respect.12

The amateur sleuth, another key trope of the contemporary cozy and traditional

mystery novel, was created by Wilkie Collins in the The Moonstone, (1868), which T. S.

Eliot and Dorothy L. Sayers both considered the greatest mystery ever written (Collins

flyleaf; Sayers 89). Miller suggests that in the Victorian novel the police were always felt to be a disruptive force (3). Initially, the Victorians felt that middle class society could solve its own crimes without the interference of the police. This is the case with the upper middle class Verinder family in The Moonstone as it takes two people to solve the

crime: one a professional police officer, whose chief success occurs at the end of the

novel, and the second, an amateur detective who truly goes to the heart of the mystery.

In The Moonstone, Rachel Verinder receives a jewel from her uncle for her

birthday. The next day, the irreplaceable jewel is gone and Rachel appears sullen and

incommunicative. Everyone in the house agrees to allow his or her wardrobe to be

searched, except for the person most affected by the crime, Rachel. Sgt. Cuff (and some

readers) decides that indeed Rachel must have stolen her own jewel.

In yet another way, The Moonstone foreshadows the contemporary cozy by

emphasizing the importance of domestic relationships.13 Rachel’s refusal to participate in

the search confuses everyone. Rachel must either have done the crime (if so why? what

does it say about her mental state?) or she has information she is unwilling to share. As

the story unfolds, Rachel breaks off her relationship with her fiancé, Franklin Blake, and

doesn’t disclose her secret to her mother, even when her mother sickens nearly to death.

Relationships throughout the story are ruined by this event. Rachel’s behavior makes no

sense, and the mystery widens. No longer is this a mystery of who stole the jewel; it becomes the mystery of why Rachel won’t talk.

Another trope of the cozy is presumption that the police are unable to solve

crimes when the crime occurs outside their usual milieu; this presumption allows the

reader to believe that when a crime occurs at a dog-grooming salon, or in a bed and

breakfast, the best detective is the one with specialized knowledge. The official detective in The Moonstone, Sgt. Cuff, initially fails in his search for a solution. Cuff doesn’t

understand the mores of the upper middle class, nor does he understand what might

motivate Rachel. Unlike a properly skeptical reader, Sgt. Cuff jumps to the wrong

conclusions. This is in large part Collins’ project. What stories are to be believed?

When should observations be trusted? How closely can other’s perceptions of events be

relied upon? The very fact that Collins has readers both admire Cuff’s methods (for he

makes many important discoveries) but also question the use to which he puts these

discoveries, suggests some of the continuing ambivalence that the Victorians had for the police. The figure of Sgt. Cuff is also a sly way for Collins to indicate difficulties with the class system. Sgt. Cuff is hamstrung from the very beginning because of the workings of class. His appearance in the household provides a strong sense of dissonance and distraction for the reader.

Franklin Blake is ultimately the “real” detective in this story, for he solves the more important question of Rachel’s secret and participates in a possibly dangerous experiment, one that copies the events of the fatal evening. Blake is not concerned for his physical safety; rather he fears that his version of the events could prove to be false, and thus he could lose his reputation and his love. Peter Thoms argues that “as Caleb

Williams and Bleak House suggest the joint activities of detection and story-making may

operate not so much to prove another’s guilt as to affirm one’s own innocence” (93). Lyn

Pykett is right that Rachel’s secrecy is a more important mystery than who stole the

moonstone, but in essence, who is guilty and who is innocent are even more important

issues for this novel. By allowing Franklin to solve the important mystery of Rachel,

Collins casts aspersions on the police and their ability to solve crimes. Cuff is able to

unmask the ultimate criminal, but without Franklin’s amateur detective help, nothing would have been resolved. This novel, because of its skillful use of the amateur detective, the multiple narratives, the violence that is done “offstage,” and the country house atmosphere of the crime scene with its very particular set of suspects, is seen by many (including Sayers) as a harbinger of the English traditional mystery. Thus, it is also an important precursor to the cozy.

Since the profession of detective was so new, there was no standard way for a detective to behave in the forerunners to the detective novel: Caleb Williams, Bleak

House, and The Moonstone. Rather, it is difficult to predict what Bucket or Cuff will do.

Professional police forces were well established by the time of Sherlock Holmes so it is also interesting to wonder why private detectives were even necessary. The very creation of such a profession suggests that the public police forces were not accomplishing all of

their ends. Either one could see the creation of such private detectives as a criticism of

the police, or that employers of private investigators had other ends. Richard Alewyn

suggests that

...[W]here the professionals make fools of themselves, the amateur shines.

If anything at all is supposed to be glorified here, then it is certainly not

the criminal, and not the state and police either, but instead the individual;

and if we are looking for a political and sociological position for the

detective or the detective novel, then it would make more sense to think of

the liberalistic spirit of self help which has been so impressively

developed in the Anglo-Saxon countries and which has often enough not

been especially pious towards the state. (67)

Alewyn’s idea of self-help literature as a way to understand the interest in the detective, amateur or otherwise, is useful. The amateur who persists to act even when police forces are on the scene is an important convention of all traditional (cozy) mystery literature.

The amateur detective is usually an empowered figure who is not diminished by the state.

In a chapter entitled “Literature and Ideology” in The Pursuit of Crime, Dennis Porter

advances the Foucauldian view that the modern police state was created in order to

“control through surveillance” (124). He states:

What was needed was an interlocking system founded on comprehensive

surveillance and bureaucratic reporting with the prison at its center. The

new science of criminal investigation was, in fact, based on bureaucratic

techniques of description and location that were supported by a developing

technology, including eventually statistical analysis, forensic medicine,

and the discovery of blood types [and] photography[...]. At the time of

Doyle, the Great Detective of fiction had himself the essential qualities of

the unseen seer, who stands at the center of the social Panopticon and

employs his ‘science’ to make all things visible on behalf of the force of

order.[...] The detective story promotes the ‘heroization’ of the agent of

surveillance in his struggle against threats from within. (124-125)

While Sayers believes Poe is the father of the mystery genre, she argues that Sherlock

Holmes had achieved the greatest measure of respect and “has earned as his reward the supreme honour which literature has to bestow—the secular equivalent of canonization”

(78). Porter too focuses on Sherlock Holmes because Holmes is the model of the detective figure. All detective fiction bears Holmes’ influence; and whether the subgenre is the English traditional mystery or the American hardboiled school, all must acknowledge a debt to Sherlock Holmes.

According to Porter, this new “hero” was an agent of the police and authority, even when that hero was an amateur detective like Sherlock Holmes. Porter’s assumption is that no matter what role the detective plays in the novel, even when revealing corruption in the upper classes, he is supporting the status quo (125). Porter is right that a large part of what the detective does, whether the mystery is premised on

“whodunit” or “howdunit,” is surveillance, for only by intense observation and the ability to put the clues together can the detective find the solution. But I argue that rather than surveillance per se, the issue is why and for whom the detective desires to find information.

While Porter disdains the concept of “heroization” (205), Alewyn and other critics argue for the positive social changes that can emerge when the detective is an unusual character with an agenda that differs somewhat from the current status quo. A few critics

(Porter and Kathleen Klein included) believe that Holmes was himself achingly

conservative, and set the trend for a conservative genre.14 Michael Holquist argues that

“Holmes is less a detective than a machine”15 (159) and Porter argues that

Holmes is a class hero before he is a national hero. He embodied the

heroic qualities of an ascendant middle class that had learned to groom

itself for an imperial role under the influence of a variety of ideological

state apparatuses, including particularly the public schools, the press, and

the middle brow literature[...]. Holmes may appear to be a somewhat

idiosyncratic figure with romantic propensities; nevertheless his

investigative adventures are capable of matching[...] frontier heroics[...]and

the exploits of the heroes of the Empire itself[...]. (157)

Ken Millar (Ross Macdonald), who was also a scholar of the Victorian era, suggests that

“permeating the thought and language of Conan Doyle’s stories is an air of blithe

satisfaction with a social system based on privilege”; yet Macdonald further points out

that “…Holmes was the portrait of the artist as a great detective” (298). While it is

possible to see Holmes as representative of the middle class, it is unnecessary to argue

that Holmes embraced all aspects of that class.

Holmes exemplified many of the positive and negative values of his class, but he

would very likely not be held up as a model. Holmes suffers from fits of depression,

which he gives into. He was frequently lazy and a cocaine addict. It is possible to read

Holmes from quite another perspective than Porter’s. Albert Hutter suggests that

What saves Holmes and Dupin from sterility is that the relentlessly logical

process of ratiocination is thrown into question by a deeper

irrationality[...]. With Holmes, there is always the presence of some

profound personal disturbance which impinges on the apparently objective

vision of the detective [...]with his need for seclusion, his addictions, and

depressions” (232).

Roger Caillois asserts, “that since Sherlock Holmes, the detective has been an esthete, if

not an anarchist, not at all a guardian of morals and still less of legality” (qtd. in

Champigny 44). Holmes is brilliantly, logically, rational, but he is also emotional and

bohemian. He does become the model of later eccentric detectives who do not rigidly

follow rules of the state or of a class.

Sherlock Holmes is a poor role model to represent supporters of law and order.

These issues are key, because they foreground the criticisms that many critics have

applied to the later Golden Age novels. What Porter and Holquist say about Holmes and his privileging of the intellect over emotion and Holmes’ class bias, are criticisms levied against the traditional and cozy mystery novels as well. While certainly some of their criticisms are apropos, they tar with too broad a brush. To presume that a novel with middle class characters cannot attack issues of class is specious. Holmes is both a middle- class English gentleman and an artistic intellectual. He frequently does the unpredictable, just as the great writers of the Golden Age novels fooled their readers by playing on their prejudices.

Porter and other detractors argue that Holmes represents and even personifies middle class values, including slavish devotion to law and order. As Martin Roth argues,

“...detective fiction slavishly upholds authority” (61). Holmes says to Watson, “Once or twice in my career I felt that I have done more real harm by my discovery of the criminal than ever he had done by his crime. I have learned caution now, and I had rather play

tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience” (“Charles” 150).16 Thoms

suggests, “the detective becomes part of that shadowy world, a figure whose ambiguity is

often emphasized by his resemblance to the criminal” (7). Holmes frequently makes his

own decisions regarding what laws are to be obeyed and when. In fact, Priestman points

out that in 45 of the punishable cases that Holmes solves, only 18 result in arrest and legal punishment of the criminal offender (78). So much for the contention that the mystery genre “slavishly upholds law and order.” These legally ambivalent actions by

Holmes, whether simply in the Milverton case, or in the 27 cases in which murderers and other criminals are allowed to go free will resurface again in cases solved by Golden Age detectives, and later detectives in contemporary cozies. Amateur sleuths in the Golden

Age and in cozies continued the suspicion of law and order as represented by the police establishment, and just as Holmes often flouted the Law, it became standard behavior for the amateur sleuth who blithely (though perhaps with pulse quickening) practiced

“breaking and entering,” hiding clues, and deciding to withhold relevant information from relevant authorities.

Peter Brooks also sees Holmes as a multifaceted character who doesn’t have everything figured out.

The urgency of the task of interpreting plot in order to analyze social

pathology is nicely suggested by a remark of Sherlock Holmes at the

conclusion of a case called ‘The Cardboard Box’: ‘What is the meaning of

it, Watson?...What object is served by this circle of misery and violence

and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by

chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing

perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as

ever.’ (269)

Brooks suggests here that the Edwardian detective novel does not tie everything up neatly. The detective is a force for good and a means of restoring some justice, but the

detective is not infallible, and is not a replacement for social change. Cozy novelists posit a world that is not ruled by chance, but rather a world where even one person exerting energy to solve a problem (in the case of the cozy, the amateur detective) can create order where once there was disorder, and salve psychological and emotional wounds. Golden Age writers, who truly learned from the great detective, learned as well that they would not be able to merely create an eccentric detective genius, but could as well use their novels for critique of society’s norms/values.

Golden Age

The Golden Age is the period in England between the First and Second World

Wars, roughly 1920-1940. The American Golden Age began a little later in 1926 with S.

S. Van Dine’s The Benson Murder Case.17 According to Symons, the key practitioners

of the Golden Age in England were Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Nicholas

Blake. In America, Symons suggests the most important practitioners were S. S. Van

Dine, John Dickinson Carr, and Ellery Queen. Many critics believe the works of the

Golden Age, also known as the traditional or Classic English mystery, to be direct

descendants of the Sherlock Holmes stories. In a Golden Age novel, reason reigns

supreme, which leads in many Golden Age works to the primacy of plot over character.

Roger Caillois argues that in such detective fiction “the intellectual character of the

detective novel is well established: rigorous reasoning has replaced frantic pursuit; the

detective no longer disguises himself, but thinks [...]. At bottom, the unmasking of a

criminal is less important than the reduction of the impossible to the possible, of the

inexplicable to the explained, of the supernatural to the natural”(1-3).

Caillois is partly right about what some novels of the Golden Age became. The

desire on the part of its practitioners was manifold. First, they took Jacques Barzun’s

injunction to heart that the novel should be about detection.18 To that end, Sayers suggested (and others echoed) that there should be no love interest in mysteries; or, if the writer wished to use romance, it must always be secondary to the plot. In addition,

Golden Age writers wished to create a sense of control and balance in the world. H. R. F.

Keating states that the Golden Age tradition “stipulated in principle that crime novels be written to a strict and consistent formula bearing only the haziest true relation to life as it was known at that time in Britain” (“Conventions”186). Many of the leading writers viewed these novels as a form of glorified escape and created fantasy realms.

Golden Age novel writers also felt the need to create narratives that would engage the readers intellectually, and they saw the mysteries as puzzles. Studying the works of

Doyle, the writers realized that he did not play fair with the reader. Frequently clues were left unstated, and Holmes’ solutions at the end were sometimes spectacular but unsatisfying, as the reader, left without all the information, was unable to come up with a solution. Thus, many Golden Age writers agreed to operate under “Fair Play” guidelines.

The reader of a Golden Age novel would be rival to both the criminal and the detective.

The reader would be given all the information necessary to solve the crime. Such information might include maps, glossaries, and even blueprints of mansions.

Monsignor Reginald Knox, himself a successful mystery writer, wrote a list of 10

rules (which S. S. Van Dine later expanded to 20) that members of The Detection Club

would adhere to when writing their mysteries. 19 These rules included “All supernatural

or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course”; “Not more than one secret

room or passage is allowable”; “No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he

ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right”; and most famously, “No

Chinaman must figure in the story” (Knox 194-195).20 Even when Knox was recording

the rules, he wasn’t always clear why they were included. These were simply guidelines

that were already set (to guarantee fair play). Or were they?

Golden Age writers wanted to present an intellectual conundrum to their readers.

A writer was successful if able to create a situation that would stymie the reader. The

“locked room” mystery perfected by John Dickinson Carr is a primary example of the

puzzle novel.21 The goal was to have the reader be surprised by the ending, and pleased at

not figuring out the solution.

Such concern (even obsessiveness) about fair play brought much criticism, and

this criticism is directed against contemporary cozies as well. Even in the midst of

defending Golden Age texts, Sayers mentions some difficulties with it: there are often too

many one-dimensional characters, a lack of love and of depth of plot. She later became

so disappointed at the lack of depth in mystery novels that she abandoned the genre. Like

Christie before her, she chafed under the restrictions, and gradually Sayers altered her

own rules. In the last Peter Wimsey novel, Busman’s Holiday (1937), she not only introduces love but marriage; and she reveals a quite fallible Peter Wimsey, broken by his experiences with trench warfare.22 Symons suggests that the rules often acted as strait

jackets on the writers. Chandler, in his famous essay “The Simple Art of Murder,”

suggested that such rules led to incredible artificiality. He admired Hammett in large part

because “Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not

just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not with hand-wrought dueling

pistols, curare, and tropical fish” (234). While Chandler has a point, there are several

aspects of Golden Age novels that bring pleasure and are worthy of attention. Hanna

Charney suggests that the best way to read Golden Age novels is as “novels of manners,”

a tactic of use for the cozy as well. She states that

The detective novel is the opposite of sensation: deliberately,

systematically and inherently. Its emotional effects are distanced in a

manifest and self-conscious way, often through parody or through

aesthetic analogues[…]. The question that turns through the detective

novel is something like this: What can a man or a woman do to understand

crime and thus bring order back into chaos, as Caillois says? In works by

Chandler or Hammett the question seems to be: How can a man resist and

fight crime and, in the process, still enjoy himself in his own bitter way?

Will and action are primary here. In detective fiction, as I understand it,

action, necessary though it is, is still refracted by the mind. (xxiii-xxiv).

Charney argues that the distance the reader feels from the characters in a traditional mystery is deliberate, as is the sense of a hyperfictionalized plot. It is these two factors in large part that allow for many Golden Age novels to be considered novels of manners.

Charney gazes ironically at these novels, and urges readers to do the same, for she suggests that this is what the authors are disposing the readers to do.

Some Conventions of the Golden Age Novels

Despite the drawbacks to these Golden Age novels, even at the time that they

were written, they remained until the end of the Second World War extremely popular

with the reading public. Keating points out that one leading convention was that “murder

should not be, or appear to be, graphically violent” (“Conventions” 89). The mysteries

were written as a sort of game, and were to be entertaining. To maintain a sense of

entertainment, then, the mysteries needed to be “sanitized” so as not to be too disturbing.

In most contemporary cozies, such remains the case. In the occasional modern cozy,

violence does intrude, but as this is a deviation from one of the “rules” about violence,

such mysteries are often labeled as “cozy noir.”23

Another convention that Keating mentions is that of the final drawing room scene

in which all the suspects are brought together so that the detective can explain his or her brilliant solution (“Conventions” 90). The significant aspect of such a device, of course, is that Golden Age mysteries suggested that crimes had solutions, and could be solved if

a brilliant detective would only apply his or her wits to the problem. Golden Age

mysteries suggest that evil can be pinned on somebody, and that evildoers can then be

rooted out. Mysteries do not go unsolved, and conflicts do not go unresolved in traditional mysteries, and that continues to be the case in most modern day cozies. The readers of such mysteries often reach for such stories because of the assurance that wrongs will be righted and that the hero will emerge physically and psychologically unscathed.

The detective in Golden Age novels is usually an amateur. Certainly, Poirot

continued in the Holmes tradition of private enquiry agent, and Ngaio Marsh’s

protagonist is a police inspector, but these are not the norm. Art Bourgeau suggests that despite Poirot’s PI status, and Marsh’s Inspector Allen’s police status, both series should still be labeled as traditional mysteries (110;166).24 This creates some problems for the

author, of course, since how is it that the amateur is involved in the case in the first place?

Amateur sleuth mysteries relied on family and friends as victims or people otherwise in

need of assistance. Keating also suggests that this led to the convention of the idle, rich

intellectual who engaged in the solving of mysteries as a challenge (90). In contemporary cozies, writers find themselves in the same quandary of explaining why and how the talented amateur involves herself so frequently in crime. Jessica Fletcher, the amateur sleuth in the TV and novel series Murder, She Wrote had to be moved out of

her fictional neighborhood of Cabot Cove and into the city of New York because her

small village over the years was decimated by deaths. Modern cozy writers have resorted

to an unfortunate but understandable device of having their amateur sleuths (usually

women) fall in love and develop relationships with members of the police force (or some

other related field of crime fighting) in order to have an excuse to mess around in crime.

Such devices are now frequently derided by readers who suggest that there is a glut of

such books on the market.25

The murderer and victims in Golden Age novels follow several conventions.

Frequently, the murderer is someone that people dislike (so as to not cause too much

angst at his or her apprehension) and the victim likewise is often someone “whose death

would not upset the reader” (Keating “Conventions” 89). It sometimes becomes a

question of why the victim was allowed to live so long to tyrannize others. This

convention actually became a difficult obstacle for many mystery writers, as another

convention was that the murderer must be the least likely suspect. This results in

something of a contradiction: If the victim and the murderer are both dislikable people,

then it can become obvious quickly who the murderer is likely to be, yet if the murderer

is the least likely person, then the murderer must be pleasant and charming, which may

distress the reader. Many authors ended up telegraphing who the murderer was, since

readers had been trained to look for the least likely suspect. It is for reasons like this that the true innovators in the genre, like Christie, broke the rules. Writing a mystery that stumped the reader was otherwise nearly impossible.

The murder is often a blessed release for some of the characters, making detection difficult for the detective. This is yet another convention: How to resolve a murder when so many people wanted that victim dead! This might be an area in which contemporary cozy writers have actually improved the genre. In the contemporary cozy mystery, the murderer might be the most delightful person in the story; further, modern mysteries are filled with victims whose deaths cause distress to the reader. The modern cozy writer still creates dislikable killers and victims, and other characters the reader may wish will be killed, but are unfortunately spared. In the hands of gifted mystery writers, people the reader admires, who are quite innocent and loving and good, are killed. Often it is the emotional connection, the friendship or family bond between the amateur detective and the victim, that gives the sleuth the rationale for entering the mystery in the first place.

The so-called unbreakable alibi is yet another convention of the Golden Age that is less likely to be used by contemporary cozy writers. In a Golden Age novel, the reader

would be inundated with train schedules and would need to spot the irregularity.

Haycraft, himself an admirer of the Golden Age of mysteries, prefers what he calls “The

Moderns,” a movement that began in 1930. Haycraft casts aspersions on “mechanical

murder devices” including locked room scenarios and unbreakable alibis, and prefers

character driven texts with more plausible puzzles. Examples of successful “modern”

practitioners, according to Haycraft, are Marjorie Allingham, Michael Innes, Nicholas

Blake, and Ngaio Marsh. In many ways it is these authors (along with Christie and

Sayers who initiated many of the mystery conventions but also regularly broke the rules)

who are the bridge to the contemporary cozy.

Teaching readers the rules, and playing by the rules, can lead to something else in

the hands of skilled author. The Golden Age novel was an intellectual puzzle, but not

only in the sense of creating locked rooms and impossible to detect murder methods. By

knowing the rules intimately, the brilliantly creative author can manipulate and break

them to great effect. Such playing has many results, including pleasing the reader who is

truly surprised, as well as re-training the reader to recognize that perceptions must

constantly be questioned. Christie was a master of this. With The Mysterious Affair at

Styles (1921), Christie introduced her amusing Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Many

mystery readers who dislike Golden Age novels mock this character and laugh at what

they see as his foolish pretensions. What these readers miss is that Christie deliberately

created a detective, a masterful one, who was in part successful because he played on the

xenophobia and insularity of the British. Poirot makes a mockery of this prejudice

against foreigners in every book that he appears in. This may be subtle, but what Christie

did in 1926 was shocking. She continued to break rules to knock readers’ prejudices

throughout her long career. Her subversion of the mystery formula was cemented with the publication of The Murder of Roger Akroyd (1926), in which Christie broke one of the key rules laid out by Knox, which was that the narrator may not be the murderer.

That novel launched many more in which Christie stood the rules on their heads. Christie made her readers work for their solutions and question their values and prejudices at the same time.26

Sayers toyed with the rules in a different way. Whereas Chandler argued that

characters in Golden Age novels become “puppets and cardboard lovers and papier

mache villains and detectives of impossible gentility” it is possible that he cannot see the

problems in his own subgenre (232). Much of his criticism is true, but he does not

acknowledge the successes of the Golden Age. In Strong Poison, for example, Sayers

introduces Harriet Vane, a mystery writer from the lower middle class, who is a much

more successful female character than the femme fatale of Hammett’s The Maltese

Falcon. Brigid O’Shaughnessy is a typical female of the hardboiled school. She has

“been around.” She is a user of men for her own needs and wants. She is seductive and

dangerous. She is a type. Harriet Vane, on the other hand, is complex and interesting and

unpredictable; she is not a femme fatale. By creating her, and placing her in an

interesting dilemma, Sayers was taking a risk. Harriet Vane becomes the chief murder

suspect. Her crime? The murder of her lover, the man she had been living with without

the benefit of marriage for the past several months.

In Hammett’s allegedly more realistic text, Brigid behaves the way we readers

expect the femme fatale to behave. No surprises. What is interesting is Sam Spade’s

behavior. Spade is a lively, unpredictable, and realistic character. When it comes to the

49 depiction of women, though, Brigid is a cliché. Sayers is willing to risk the alienation of her presumably middle class audience. Not only does Harriet Vane live with her lover, but she never apologizes for her actions, which she doesn’t think are wrong. The only time Vane is flustered is when her lover (before his death) asks her to marry him in an attempt to achieve respectability for himself. Vane is shocked and angered by this, as she feels that marrying at this point would be hypocritical. It is during this dispute that Vane is set up as a murderer. Sayers took a bigger risk than Hammett, and then took an even bigger one. Peter Wimsey falls in love with Harriet, saves her quite dramatically by figuring out who had actually committed the murder, and asks her to marry him. She says no. Vane’s reputation could have been “saved” by this gesture, yet she turns it down. She is a truly independent woman who must stand on her own.

Golden Age mystery novels are about the puzzle, and the complex relationships between the characters, but more importantly, they are about escape. Bourgeau states, “In truth, no one really cares who did it. What we are interested in is the opportunity to return to the simplicity, sanity, and serenity of the English countryside. If you disagree, you can prove me wrong by simply naming five well-known or even reasonably well- known, English mystery novels which take place in Liverpool, Manchester, or

Birmingham” (129). Similarly, Ross Macdonald suggests that

Nostalgia for a privileged society accounts for one of the prime attractions

of the traditional English detective story and its innumerable American

counterparts. Neither war or the dissolution of governments and society

interrupt that long weekend in the country house which is often with more

or less unconscious symbolism cut off by a failure in communication from

the outside world (298).

Bourgeau and Macdonald are right that attraction to the English traditional mystery is

perhaps inspired by nostalgia. If mystery fiction is an escape (and even Chandler

acknowledges that all reading is an escape), what is wrong with returning to narratives

that tell a story, with a beginning, middle, and end, which suggest that no problem is

beyond the pale of intellect? William Aydelotte suggests that “The detective story uses

crime not to make life more horrible but to make it more cheerful[…].[and it] does not

reflect order but expresses in the fantasy level a yearning for order[…] (312-324).

Hardboiled Fiction

Haycraft argues that the English mystery was far superior to the American mystery until the emergence of S. S. Van Dine forced American mystery writers to improve their practice of the genre and become competitive with their British forebears.

According to Haycraft, what Van Dine did for the American Golden Age novel, though admirable, was to polish a genre created by other writers (Murder 168). Dashiell

Hammett, on the other hand, who was writing at the same time, was “a creator of the first

rank,” a true innovator who changed the genre and created uniquely American mystery

(Haycraft, Murder 169).

With the publication of Hammett’s Red Harvest in 1929, the mystery genre

changed. Priscilla Walton argues that “The hardboiled form, subverted[ed] the rules of

the British cosy, [and] gave rise to a new sub genre. Shifting the locale and the

ideological moment of the British formula, the originary hard-boiled transferred the class

stratification of the story from an upper-class to a lower-class milieu, and to an urban, as

opposed to a ‘country house’ environment” (261). Novels by Wilkie Collins and stories by Doyle dwell predominantly on the middle and upper classes, with people of working and lower classes usually playing minor roles. Such continued to be the case with

Golden Age novels, an issue attacked in essays by both Chandler and Macdonald.

Significantly in hardboiled fiction, as Walton points out, the milieu shifts and the classes from which the characters are drawn alters dramatically, even to the extent of including a working class protagonist. Further, unlike most Golden Age mystery novels with their amateur sleuth protagonists, hardboiled fiction featured professional detectives. Red

Harvest, though, does more than simply alter the setting; Hammett subverts the form of

the mystery itself and uses it for his own ideological purposes. While Klein and Porter

argue that what the mystery novel does is support the status quo by creating a “happy”

ending by returning events to “normal,” Hammett reveals that what is “normal” is itself

as bad as any crime. If what society accepts as normal is tainted, than what does that say

about the status quo?

The back cover of the Vintage Crime Red Harvest edition states, “When the last

honest citizen of Poisonville was murdered, the Continental Op stayed on to punish the guilty—even if that meant taking on an entire town. Red Harvest is more than a superb

crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain.”

Hammett uses the genre to attack corruption in society. Contradicting Holquist’s claim

that mysteries are reassuring (in that they produce no anxiety (164)) Hammett’s novels

create a world similar to Kafka’s, a paranoid view of a society marshalled against the

individual. In Hammett’s fictional world, as in Kafka’s, these forces distort and destroy

its characters. Hammett’s mysteries are not reassuring but warnings. Hammett’s hardboiled school is in direct contrast to both the frothy confections of most Golden Age

novelists and to the usually happy endings of the contemporary cozies.

Hammett’s novels offer a mythos, a way of explaining how 1920s America

worked. H. R. F. Keating goes so far as to suggest that Red Harvest “can be seen as an

allegory, or a morality story” (Crime 35). William Marling explains that films and newspapers were rivals of “pulps” for readership during the Depression. To counter this,

the publishers of pulps wanted to provide something new that the newspapers and films

weren’t offering to readers. According to Marling, one thing that pulps offered “was

cultural coherence, an explanatory myth or interpretation of modern life. They also

capitalized on the backlash against the ‘yellow’ journalism of Hearst, Frank Munsey and

others, which led the detective novel to contend that ‘real’ reality lay behind the surfaces

reported by other media” (114). Hammett was able to achieve a sense of authenticity in

his work not only because of his personal history (he had been a Pinkerton operative) and

not only because of his politics (Hammett was a Communist, and much of his writing is

influenced by such a political outsider’s view) but also because, as Stephen Marcus

points out, Hammett was interested in “the ethical irrationality of existence [and] the ethical unintelligibility of the world” (200).

In Red Harvest, the Op discovers that there isn’t just one criminal or gang of

criminals to roust, but rather a whole town that is corrupt. Marcus suggests that

Personville (pronounced “Poisonville”) is representative of Prohibition America. “The

respectability of respectable American society is as much a fiction and a fraud as the

phony respectable society fabricated by the criminals. Indeed, [Hammett] unwaveringly

represents the world of crime as a repudiation in both structure and detail of the modern

capitalist society that it depends on, preys off, and is part of” (205). Hammett depicts

Personville as a town that is run by corrupt gangs and bridges this fictional world with his

own view of the “real” America. Keating suggests another link between Hammett’s text

and reality: “The Op is shown as being, despite his immunity from bullets, liable to fail.

It will be a failure from within. He recognizes in himself a growing tendency to go

‘blood simple.’ He begins to see in every common object a deadly weapon, an ice pick, a

length of wire, a lighter that could be filled with gelignite” (Crime 36). The detective in a

Hammett novel is not untouched by the criminal decay surrounding him, but slowly

becomes so immersed in it that he too eventually succumbs. It is because these writers of

hardboiled fiction explore issues of corruption and see the world as a dark place that

Symons suggests they are “realistic” in their depictions of actual crime, whereas Golden

Age traditional mysteries are the opposite: artificial and insignificant.27 On the other

hand, Sayers argues that while she admires hardboiled fiction, she sees it as the more

“sensational” branch of the genre. Rather than realistic, she suggests that it is actually

histrionic. John Dickinson Carr goes further and argues in “The Grandest Game of All,” his defense of the Golden Age mystery novel, that hardboiled fiction isn’t even detective fiction, but is more in the adventure school vein. He adds that the hardboiled novel is just the Golden Age novel with more action and fewer clues. Bourgeau points out that

Hammett himself wrote a Golden Age novel in The Thin Man.

Most mystery writers, especially of the hardboiled school, presume a world in

which evil exists, chaos is common, and the role of the detective is to ameliorate things

and to bring some justice to those who need some help. It is Frederic Jameson’s

contention that Raymond Chandler’s detective Philip Marlowe is “searching for

knowledge of the underlying reality in America” (122). Most of the contemporary

mystery novelists (cozy or otherwise) neither suggest that the world is a perfect place, nor

that once peace is restored no more harm will occur. In an interview, Sara Paretsky has

stated that

The most important part of the hardboiled form for me comes out of the old

western, the loner trying to establish real justice, since the corrupt and

wealthy have taken over the institutions of justice.[...] My heroine also is

chivalrous; she’s trying to establish real justice for a few people. But she’s

not able to transform society; the world remains a frontier like in the old

westerns. (Sanders)

The hardboiled novel is a western of sorts focusing on the solitary hero forced to stand alone against the villains of the town with a recognition that the hero could lose, or lose so much that winning isn’t worth it. Chandler said, “But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid” (237). Chandler asserts that this man is a hero, and also argues for this man as a redeemer. Macdonald suggests that such a view, the detective hero as redeemer, is a “backward step in the direction of sentimental romance, and an oversimplified world of good guys and bad guys” (300). He suggests this can be as much a strait jacket on a good narrator as the rules of Golden Age writers. What Macdonald looks for is an “internal realism and a quality of mind” (304). Perhaps the key difference between hardboiled work and Golden

Age work is a recognition in the hardboiled that usually corruption can’t be overcome,

and that happiness and order and calm may not be restored, if they ever existed in the first

place.

After World War II

After World War II, the mystery genre underwent a change. Hardboiled fiction

was still popular, but Golden Age mysteries began to go into decline. Jeffrey Marks

argues that

During the long years of the Second World War, the traditional mystery

lost popularity. American men who had fought in Europe and the Pacific

no longer cared for cozy, estate home murders. They had seen war and

death in reality. Their new fiction had to reflect the darker, harder life the

soldiers had seen in Europe and in the Pacific. […] By 1945, the middle

class returned to the US greeted by rising incomes and unprecedented

demand for consumer goods. After sixteen years of depression and then

rations, American buyers wanted new and improved everything, including

fiction. (2)

This immediate need for a grittier, yet realistic fiction was met first by the police procedural, and a little later by the psychological crime novel. Symons argues that while mysteries from the beginning have contained superintendents and inspectors, what makes something a police procedural is that the crime is described from the point of view of the police, and the investigation is detailed in a realistic fashion (Bloody 231). According to

John Reiley, “The police procedural features a collective such as a homicide squad as

leading protagonists. Their detection methods derive from their real-life counterparts in

56 organized police forces: interrogations, lots of legwork, digging into bureaucratic records, forensic technology, the use of informants, and trial and error. Unlike the fully imaginary detectives, procedural characters take cases as they come, rather than by choice” (342).

Though inspectors and constables and police chiefs were present in earlier mysteries, and certainly in Golden Age novels, the mere presence of police does not mean that one has a police procedural. Rather, what police procedurals show is the plodding work of the police officer as he (in the beginning police officers were primarily male) trudges through paperwork, investigations, and scientific evidence. Symons suggests that police procedurals are actually more successful when presented on the screen, as it is difficult to excite a reader with scientific clues, especially ones that need much explanation to be understood. He also suggests that in the most successful police procedurals, those written by Ed McBain in the U.S. and J. J. Marric in England, soon showed their limitations. In the initial novels it was interesting for the reader to see the detectives working on a number of different cases, linked and unlinked, but after a few novels the novelty wore off. To counter this, writers of police procedurals began to develop their characters more and to give them richer personal lives. This made the books more interesting, but

Symons suggests this also altered the realism of the texts (Bloody 232). The essence of the police procedural should be on the investigation and not on the lives of those conducting the investigations.28 Marks suggests that police procedurals replaced most traditional mysteries. While there was still an audience for Golden Age novels, most readers read Golden Age texts in short story form in digests like Ellery Queen’s

Magazine, or they watched television shows like Alfred Hitchcock’s Presents (Marks 3).

Sales and production of traditional mysteries declined throughout the 1950s.

Symons suggests that the final important subgenre to emerge was the one that

mystery readers had been waiting for—the crime novel. He believes that the genre began heading in the direction of psychological crime with Caleb Williams and Poe, but that it

took a wrong turn in the Golden Age. Patricia Highsmith is “the writer who fuses

characters and plot most successfully” (Bloody195). Symons finds it illustrative when

she states that “criminals are dramatically interesting, because for a time at least they are

active, free in spirit and they do not knuckle down to anyone…I find the public passion

for justice quite boring and artificial for neither life nor nature cares if justice is ever done

or not” (qtd in Symons 197). Highsmith’s books are concerned with social groups,

family structures, and the ways in which the rules of society are inflicted upon citizens.

Highsmith avoids identification as a “crime writer,” yet she is interested in violence and its effects.29 Graham Greene said that her world was “claustrophobic, irrational, and

dangerous. Her protagonists are not ruled by the standards and limits of behavior

regarded as normal” (qtd. in Ashley 228)

Another term for the psychological crime novel is the “whydunnit.” In the

standard Golden Age novel, the goal is to find out who committed the crime. In a

“whydunnit” it is imperative to understand why the crime was committed in the first

place. This is done by understanding the mind of the criminal. In some ways, the

emergence of the police procedural and the psychological crime novel seemed to spell the

death of the traditional mystery. Authors like Phoebe Atwood Taylor and Leslie Ford

continued the tradition in the forties and fifties, (in fact were a bridge to the few cozies of

the 60s), but fewer and fewer writers wrote cozies. More and more writers turned to the

field of suspense. The writers who won Edgar Awards, and were encouraged to publish,

58 tended to be those who emphasized psychological suspense and violence over cozy and traditional mysteries. Golden Age novels for many critics like Symons, seemed to be from another time, a backwards time, a fantasy time.

The Struggle for Existence: The (Sub)mergence of the Cozy

According to the Susan Oleksiw, the first use of the word “cozy” to explain a text was in a London Observer article in 1958. The term refers to “a subgenre of the novel of detection defined by its light tone, element of fun, and closed world” (97). Jay Pearsall, proprietor of the Murder Ink bookstore, says

What is the cozy or tea cozy? The cozy is a branch of the amateur school

in which the violence is limited and usually offstage. There is generally

only one body, all the characters are urbane and civilized, the crime scene

is often in an English country house and tea is almost certainly taken.

Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple’s books are perfect examples of the cozy.

(26)

Both explanations are interesting, but they do not take into account the fact that many scholars do not believe that the Golden Age works are cozies. Agatha Christie, for example, is regarded by many as a traditional or classic mystery writer rather than a cozy writer. Her works contain too many dead bodies, and in some cases, too much blood, to be cozy novels. Some writers have expressed anger that the term cozy is being used retroactively because for many critics and readers, the term is derogatory. The mystery writers are concerned that their books will be disregarded as frothy and unimportant if they are labeled “cozy”.

Some historians of the mystery genre simply argue that Golden Age fiction ended with World War II. Symons calls works written on the Golden Age model

“entertainments.” Of the writer Emma Lathen (1961-1997), whose amateur detective is a banker, he writes that he admires her writing and her themes, but he ultimately dismisses such works as “light and unrealistic” (Bloody 223-225). Symons’ views were reflected in

the publishing world. Bourgeau explains that from the early 1960s to the late 1970s, very

few ”cozies” were published. Publishers believed that these works were undesired by

readers, and instead they promoted hardboiled and the psychological crime novels (10).

In the 1960s, publishers seemed unaware of what readers wanted, and readers had few options if their interests didn’t lie with suspense or the emerging spy/espionage

field.30 Still, though writers were discouraged from attempting the traditional mystery, a few women writers pursued the traditional mystery and managed to extend it. Carolyn Heilbrun introduced her detective, Kate Fansler, an English professor at an Ivy League school in 1964. Written under the pseudonym Amanda Cross, her mysteries are “literate detective novels [that] simultaneously [are] academic mysteries, comedies of manners and feminist fiction” (Klein, “Cross” 112). Heilbrun used the academic cozy as a place to examine women’s position in academia and other areas of professional and intellectual life. She was interested in creating fully fleshed, intellectually and emotionally developed female characters. In hardboiled novels, for example, women characters too often remain undeveloped, and are uninteresting beyond their appeal as victims or floozies. Heilbrun, like other traditional and cozy writers, recognized women as complex human beings fuller than a Brigid O’Shaughnessy. Heilbrun stated in a 1986 article that This move toward androgyny and away from stereotypical sex roles— away, more importantly, from the ridiculing and condemning of those who do not conform to stereotypical sex roles—has, I am proud to say, found

greater momentum in the detective story than in any other genre, and has recently gone further in the United States than elsewhere (248-249). Heilbrun was certainly largely responsible for this alternative view that women characters could play in mysteries. Without Heilbrun, would critics like Scott McCracken see mystery fiction as transgressive in and of itself and argue that “[...]the popular text is successful because it operates on the borders of what is socially acceptable and in order to provoke a widespread interest, the text must, at some level, breach the bounds of that acceptability. It must, in other words, challenge social standards and norms”? (158). Heilbrun anticipates McCracken on the radical possibilities of detective fiction and argues that It’s a safe guess that every detective novelist has been asked why he or she writes detective stories and not real novels. There are many answers, but I think an important one has never been stated flat out: that with the momentum of a mystery and the trajectory of good story with a solution, the author is left free to dabble in a little profound revolutionary thought. In my opinion, detective fiction, often called formula fiction, has almost alone and with astonishing success challenged the oldest formulas of all. (251) Heilbrun was not alone in promoting traditional, classic mysteries, as vehicles in arguing against the status quo. In her quiet, intellectual, and environmentally appealing mysteries, Jane Langton altered the accepted mystery landscape. In 1964, Langton introduced her sleuth Homer Kelly, a professor and expert on transcendentalism, in The Transcendental Murder. Kelly appears to be an absent-minded professor, but this is a ruse. Kelly frequently quotes Melville, Thoreau, and other authors and thinkers, and, by living “plain and thinking high” he manages to solve many mysteries in a low-key way (DeAndrea 191). Langton blends preservation of the

environment, an interest in history, and New England regionalism. Langton showed a way that social and cultural changes could be made successfully and quietly. Cross and Langton (among others) sustained interest in the cozy and traditional mystery at a time when critics and publishers lost interest in the subgenres. Cross and Langton showed, not only in the content of their books, but by drawing readers, that cozies could be relevant and promote new and progressive ideas. Cozies weren’t necessarily simply “locked room mysteries” or novels about a group of upper class people stranded in a mansion on a deserted island. Cozies could examine relationships between men and women, recognize oppression, and sound alarms about harm to the environment. The issue for publishers was whether there were enough people who would want to read these “lighter” mysteries. The hardboiled subgenre was valued by the majority of bookstores, the majority or mystery critics and by academia. In the mid-70s, it wasn’t clear if cozies would continue. It looked to all intents and purposes as if the hardboiled novel, the psychological crime novel, and the novel of espionage had “won.”

Chapter Two

Marketing the Mystery: The Inestimable Value of Bookstores and Libraries

One mystery bookstore owner after another told me that cozies are the bread and butter of their stores. But mystery bookstores account for less than 20% of the sales of mystery novels. What bookstore owners know about their readers’ desires is considered unimportant by the major publishers, and they have limited influence in the mystery marketplace. Over 70% of all book sales occur at chain stores like Wal-Mart and Target and superstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble (Ortiz D1). While cozies are well represented in the superstores, shoppers’ attention is directed to works by hardboiled stars like Dennis Lehane and George Pelecanos. Despite their higher sales, cozies are sold almost surreptitiously. As Ken Gelder has written, “popular fiction is not just a matter of texts-in-themselves, but of an entire apparatus of production, distribution (including promotion and advertising) and consumption” (1). This should remind us that “generic identities flow through these realms in all kinds of ways: determining not just what is inside the actual novel, but who publishes it, how and through what venues it is marketed, who consumes and evaluates it, and how this is done” (1-2).

In order to understand what cozies are, the mechanism of their distribution must be considered. Gelder argues that “For writers of popular fiction, readers are their marketplace, their destination and the providers of their income: it would be impossible not to want to engage positively with this domain, and indeed, the intention here would doubtless be to maximize its potential, to increase the size of that domain as much as possible” (24). Writers have minimal control over what books get put in which stores,

63 and even libraries that once were depositories now are cutting back on book buying.

Readers can only buy or check out books that are available and that they know about.

There is a huge difference between the goals of the chains and superstores, and that of the independent and mystery bookstores and that of the libraries. Cozy and traditional mystery writers and their fans count on the last two not only to thrive, but just to survive.

An Examination of One (and thus all) Borders’ Mystery Section1

In order to get a sense as to how the big box and chain stores deliver mysteries,

and especially cozies to their customers, in June 2004, I spent three weeks surveying the

mystery section of Borders Bookstore in Westlake, Ohio. I chose to examine a Borders

bookstore because Borders is the second largest bookstore chain in the world. Borders

“claims an annual 30 million customers—defined as anyone who walks in and buys a

book, a DVD or a cup of coffee” (Learmonth). Second only to Barnes & Noble, which

had sales exceeding $1.1 billion, the Borders Group (500 Borders bookstores and 800

Walden bookstores) had sales of $885.8 million in 2007 (BISG).2 Together Barnes &

Noble and Borders bookstores “control over 2,000 stores… and account for well over one third of all books sold in America” (Learmonth). Cleveland does not have a mystery bookstore, but in 2004 the Borders’ store in Westlake had the most mystery novels in one place in the city. There were over 5,000 books in their mystery section. According to the

Library Journal, 2004 was a growth year for Borders for the mystery and suspense

segment (Milliot).

The mystery section was made up of head-high shelving and consisted of one and a half aisles of shelves. The first set of mystery bookshelves contained what are known

64 as trade paperback books. Trade paperbacks are the bigger, more expensively produced books that people often give as gifts. Some specialty hard cover books—comprising compilations of three or more author’s works—were mixed into this section as well. The bookcases were approximately four and one half feet high and about five feet long. Each bookcase held six shelves; ten bookcases were arranged end to end. Back to back with these bookcases were ten more filled primarily with mass-market paperbacks. Facing these ten shelves to create an aisle were ten more bookcases also containing mass-market paperback mysteries.

Additional books, mainly bestsellers, were piled on top of these thirty bookcases to draw the eye of the customer. According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, this is customary practice. Too many hardcovers are being printed, and numerous copies are sent to bookstores to be placed in piles in the belief that the more copies people see, the more likely they will be to buy (Trachtenberg “Shelf” A8). Some of these books are set in stands to display the covers clearly.

More piles of books rested on the floor at the ends of the bookcases. Attached to the ends of the bookcases above the piles of books were what are known in all retailing as

“end caps.” These hold copies of particular books, again displayed to attract the notice of

customers. On the bookshelves themselves were occasional notices known as “shelf

talkers,” typed notes meant to draw the attention of customers to a particular book (or

author) that without the help of the shelf talker could be overlooked among the five

thousand other books. Most of these shelf talkers gave the author’s name, the title of a

particular work, and a very brief summary of the novel in 3-4 lines. Some quoted a

65 newspaper review, or a “cover blurb”: a quote from another famous author whose work might be considered similar.

Borders kept roughly three sections or types of mysteries. The trade paperback and hardcover section held approximately nine hundred books. The first bookcase of the mass paperback aisle contained approximately four hundred hard cover books. The books were arranged alphabetically with a few “fronted out” to draw attention. Fronting is another retail term, which means placing a book lengthwise on a shelf so that the cover rather than just the spine can be seen. Fronting is a significant practice because it takes up a great deal of space (which is at a premium), so deciding what gets fronted and what doesn’t can be an important marketing decision.3

By far the largest section of the mystery area was the mass-market paperback

section, which contained approximately four thousand books. These, too, were arranged

alphabetically. Although mass-market paperback sales are declining, Borders’ mystery

section was heavily weighted towards this category. Employees periodically pass through

the aisles of books in the stores and pull the books so that their spines align with the end

of the shelf. This makes the shelves more attractive for the customer, but it also allows for a space between the end of the book and the back of the bookcase. This space

becomes additional storage for books that won’t fit on the shelves. It cuts down the

amount of time that the worker must take to “backstock” or replenish shelves once books

have been bought. Piles of extra books could be found behind books displayed on the

shelves.

My method was to pick a shelf and examine each book on it, including the

backstock. I noted the author’s first and last name, the subgenre of the book, and any

66 particular phrase used by the editor/publisher to distinguish the book from other works.

Among the subgenres, I marked categories such as cozy, humorous, military espionage,

Golden Age, hardboiled, etc. To make these distinctions, I used publishers’ categories as well as my own instincts after reading back cover blurbs and my own knowledge as to individual authors. I also noted what kind of detective was featured in the text; for example, most cozies feature amateur detectives in interesting professions. Hardboiled mysteries tend to have protagonists who are private investigators or cops, or more recently, FBI profilers or other law enforcement types like airline investigators or forensic experts.

I also noted the gender of the detective(s), how many copies of a particular title were on the shelf, and how many books by that particular author were there. I also noted authors of two or more series. For example, Lawrence Block has two prominent series.

The first has as its protagonist an alcoholic ex-cop named Matt Scudder. These books are dark, introspective, and hardboiled. The Westlake Borders had eleven titles in this series, seventeen total copies; thus, some of the titles in the series had two or more copies.

Block also writes a light and humorous series that some of my experts identify as a cozy series. The protagonist, Bernie Rhodenbarr, is a second-hand bookstore owner by day, and a burglar by night. Borders had two titles in this series, and seventeen total copies.

When I began my research, I was uncertain what I would find. I didn’t know if I would find more male or female writers, more cozies or hardboileds. I knew the complaints: that the chain stores didn’t have the depth of mystery bookstores, and that at chains the bestsellers were emphasized. But I was unprepared for the sheer number of different types of mysteries I found. I was also surprised by what was missing.

Figure 1, found in Appendix C, illustrates several things based upon what I found among the mass-market paperbacks. First of all, it shows just how many different kinds of categories there are. I went to the shelves assuming that there would be only a few obvious categories, yet I discovered that there are numerous subgenres, and much of what

I would call subgenre blending. Based on my own parameters, I noted that thrillers and cozies predominated on the shelves, but I also saw “humorous” mysteries, historicals, police procedurals, and legal thrillers. Since everything was simply alphabetized, no distinctions or separate sections were made between military technothrillers and cozy cat mysteries; all books were simply mixed together. Categories seemed straightforward, but actually it was difficult to place some books into one particular category, thus the combinations such as “cozy/Golden Age” and “cozy noir” that I’ve used in the chart.

It was usually clear which books were cozies out of many subgenres represented.

Cozies tended to have cute, funny titles, and brightly colored covers. Sarah Strohmeyer’s

Bubbles Unbound, starring beautician/reporter/sleuth Bubbles Yablonsky, has a mostly

pink cover with a yellow strip off to the right side and a depiction of a pair of sexy

sunglasses. Elaine Viets’ novel Shop till You Drop, which features a protagonist who

must work at dead end jobs, has a more subdued cover: green, red, and white with depictions of shopping bags overflowing with merchandise. Shopping and fashion accoutrement are often themes in cozies, so covers often display upscale shopping bags, shoes, and makeup. Another common trait shared by cozies is their witty titles. Jill

Churchill, whose detective is a stay-at-home mother in a middle-class suburb, is famous for her punning titles, like Grime and Punishment, Silence of the Hams, and A Quiche

before Dying. Despite clues like clever titles and sparkly covers, I discovered that it was

68 sometimes quite difficult to determine categories. Not all cozy writers have colorful covers and funny titles.

Other indicators turned out to be uncertain as well. Having an amateur detective, for example, does not mean that a book is a cozy, and having a police officer as a protagonist does not make a novel a police procedural. Jonathan Kellerman’s books have an amateur detective. His protagonist is a child psychologist who frequently gets involved in criminal investigations through events in his clients’ lives, and later, through the friendship he has with a police officer. This sounds like a cozy series, yet bookseller and hardboiled aficionado Suzanne DeGaetano said that his books were “too bloody”

(Interview). Conversely, M. C. Beaton’s books about Hamish Macbeth, a constable who lives in the Highlands of Scotland, explores the harsh environment, and even harsher religious background of rural Scotland. This sounds like the lead-up to a hardboiled series, yet Beaton writes whimsical cozies. Amateur detectives and police constables do not determine where a book should be placed in the continuum from cozy to noir.

Gender of the author would seem to play a role in determining the subgenre.

Cozies are predominantly a female subgenre: written by women, with mostly female protagonists, whose key readers are women, (though more men are writing and reading cozies now). But more interesting is the growing number of women who write thrillers.

While it would appear that a woman’s name on the book would indicate a particular subgenre, I found that I was frequently wrong with my assessment.

Figure 1 shows that there was a preponderance of thrillers at the Borders, but this is misleading. Many novels are labeled thrillers when the publishers are uncertain what else to call them, and, books are sometimes called thrillers in order to entice purchasers,

69 as thrillers are the latest category to be considered “sure sells.” Some of the cozies I encountered were actually labeled thrillers, which is the antithesis of the term cozy.

While it initially appears that more thrillers are on the shelves, if one combines all the parts of the chart that contain the word cozy, one quickly discovers that cozies surpass thrillers in terms of number of titles on the shelves.

Borders mixes together thrillers and military technology books with anything mystery related. Super spy books by Tom Clancy nestle next to Lillian Jackson Braun’s cat mystery books. Lt. Col. Oliver North’s patriotic military espionage novels are near

Linda Palmer’s soap opera mysteries. Distinguishing thrillers became difficult. I found cozies labeled “thrillers,” police procedurals tagged as “thrillers,” and hardboileds also marked as “thrillers.” How does one distinguish Jill McGown, a British novelist who writes police procedurals and whose books are classified as “novels of suspense” from

Tom Clancy novels also stamped as thrillers with the additional appellation of the front cover blurb “techno mega-suspense”? I also noticed that thrillers had their own set of subgenres: World War II scenarios, techno thrillers, military thrillers, as well as political and psychological thrillers. In order to make sense of these distinctions though, the casual reader would have to know the work of a particular author.

Terminology used by publishers on book covers obscured rather than aided my attempt to categorize the texts. I encountered marketing terms, usually from reviews, set on the front or back cover, such as “classic” to describe the works of a new author—a signal to the discriminating reader that this was a “traditional” mystery? Perhaps. Other guiding appellations included “crime thriller” or “romantic adventure.” “Action thriller,”

“international intrigue,” and “new Noir” are other terms that seem to point the reader in a

70 direction. The problem is that many readers have different interpretations for words like

“intrigue” and “suspense,” and these words conjure up different meanings for the publishers; thus, such categorizations don’t necessarily assist the reader in knowing what she or he is buying.

Further significance of the thriller conundrum is shown in the next chart indicating the top 15 authors by subgenre and number of titles.

While Figure 1 indicated that the thriller subgenre seems to have the most books represented in Borders, this chart shows that cozy writers have far more books on the shelves. Having a preponderance of books in the cozy category is an indication that

Borders thinks it can sell these books. Since many books now are returned after six weeks, books that don’t sell don’t remain on the shelves.4 Borders with its limited space

can’t afford to have books that don’t sell; thus, more of them on the shelf indicates that

they probably sell well. Cozies aren’t singled out and promoted. Despite not being

promoted, cozies sell well. If cozies were to receive a push from the booksellers at

Borders and other chain stores, I suggest that the sales would increase substantially.

There was a time when Borders bookstores had individual book buyers. Until

1995, each store’s managers ordered the books that they thought their customers would

want to buy. This was also the era of employee picks and recommendations. Employees,

who were frequently well read, would read a book, like it, and write up a shelf talker to

advertise a particular book on an end cap. In an article for the New Statesman, Nicholas

Clee writes that

Many book lovers look back in nostalgia to the early 1990s when

Waterstone’s [a large bookstore in London] would make bestsellers of

such challenging works as Nicholas Mosley’s Hopeful Monsters, and

when a shop’s stock would reflect the enthusiasms of its staff. The chain

has a more middlebrow profile now. Variations in the books on the

shelves [today] reflect not the tastes of individual managers, but the

recommendations of sophisticated stock-control systems.

Employees might still recommend books, but they no longer have any power to order these books for store sales. In 1995, Borders and Walden Books merged. At that time, each chain had its own “set of internally developed legacy [computer] systems, including enterprise-resource-planning, forecast analysis, inventory replenishment, warehouse- management, and point of sale software” (Sullivan). In 2002 Borders’ executives decided to “create a common infrastructure that eliminates redundancies and optimizes efficiencies” (Sullivan). Now it isn’t managers who decide what books to buy, but software.

The system analyzes sales and inventory and uses sophisticated modeling

techniques to forecast demand that’s assessed against service-level

objectives such as in-stock rates. The software uses this information to

create suggested order quantities…The browser-based application tracks

progress at the stores, providing feedback to the home office to give

management a better understanding of the total workload at each location

and how to better support stores to drive sales higher. (Sullivan)

There is good business sense in these programs. Software tracks what sells and what doesn’t, allowing stores to cut back on over-ordering and overstocking. Inventories are trimmed, saving space and money, and books that readers buy are kept in stock.

Ordering tends to be conservative because of concerns about overstocking.

“Chain stores are much quicker to exploit a hit book than nontraditional book retailers like Costco or Wal-Mart, which tend only to buy a book after its success is well- established. But the window between them is shrinking, as price clubs and other big retailers use books as a loss-leading marketing tool” (Learmonth). Wal-Mart, because of the deep discounts given to them by distributors, is able to sell books at a very low cost.

Wal-Mart doesn’t usually recoup the money spent on these “loss-leaders,” but the low price of the books can be a draw to the store. Wal-Mart and other stores use loss-leaders to bring customers in to the store and hope to recoup costs with spending on other products that have not been so strongly marked down. Borders and other book superstores also buy the already successful and established writers. According to Gunda, a manager at the Westlake Borders where I did my survey, workers have no say about what gets ordered for their store. It all comes down to a computer in Ann Arbor and one lone mystery buyer, who orders for all 800 stores.

Interestingly enough, what keeps being bought, and what keeps being ordered at the Westlake Borders, are cozies. While the press seems to be obsessed with hardboiled and noir works, at least in terms of reviews and accolades, and while the shelves of

Borders were certainly stocked with many thrillers and hardboiled fare, as one can see by

Table #1, cozies far outranked hardboileds and thrillers. The author with the most books was Golden Age (and some would say cozy) writer Agatha Christie with 104 books on the shelves. Robert Ludlum, the spy thriller writer, had the most books on the other end of the continuum with forty-six books. Nor did he surpass another cozy writer, Elizabeth

Peters, who had fifty-four books, including two cozy series. Borders and other successful

73 bookstores stock the books that sell. We know this because of the return policies and the prohibition against authors whose books don’t sell the required amount. Yet despite the shelf-presence of many cozy writers, Borders did nothing to promote these authors, forcing them to sell themselves. Borders had shelf space taken up with displays of particular authors and books throughout the bookshelves. In the trade section, for example, cozy authors were well represented, but in the more traveled section of mass paperbacks, not one cozy author received extra shelf space to feature his or her books.

During the three weeks that I was at Borders, five authors received extra publicity. Each of the five authors was given a half to a whole shelf with a fronted book or two, and stacks of all the other texts in print by the same author. Each author also had a lengthy shelf talker with quotes from reviews and blurbs from other authors. Not one of these spotlighted authors was a cozy writer.5

Table 1 Top Authors by Number of Copies at Borders

Author Copies Subgenre Christie 104 Traditional/Golden Age Parker 76 Private Eye Peters 70 Cozy Brown 56 Thriller Patterson 55 Thriller Block 51 Cozy/Hardboiled Kellerman 48 Mediumboiled Ludlum 46 Thriller Perry 43 Historical Stout 39 Traditional Clark 38 Thriller Daheim 37 Cozy Myers 37 Cozy Woods 37 Thriller White 36 Thriller

This table reveals other interesting conundrums. Legal thrillers are considered to be one of the major trends in mystery. Scott Turow and John Grisham launched this subgenre into megabestsellerdom (books with sales of over 1,000,000), and some critics have suggested that there is a glut of lawyer books, yet the table indicates that at least at

Borders these books aren’t quite so popular.6 No legal thrillers are listed in the top

twenty. Only when the table is extended to authors with eighteen books on the shelf do

legal thrillers appear.

As I looked through shelves, I discovered a disturbing subgenre, the serial killer

novel. While serial killers in fiction have been around since the Golden Age, in this

“new” subgenre, authors seem to dwell almost lovingly on the torture and murder of the

victims. Serial killer books tend to have law enforcement protagonists who are not only

police officers, but also frequently FBI profilers or forensic anthropologists. Some of

these novels dispense with professionalism altogether and focus on the serial killer and

his crimes, making the serial killer the protagonist. Women are writing a large number of

these titles. This subgenre seems to be growing in popularity, yet serial killer books are

not represented in Table 1.

While examining shelves, I paid attention to how many of an author’s books were

represented. I was especially curious to see if only the latest works were there, or if it

would be possible for a customer to purchase most or all of the novels written by a

particular writer. One of the complaints of mystery aficionados is that it is difficult to get

the “backlist” of particular authors. A backlist is all the works published by the author

before the most recent novel. Borders and Barnes & Noble and other chain bookstores

place their emphasis on the most recently published books by bestselling writers.

A backlist is important because most books published in the mystery genre are in series. Serious mystery readers (who are also usually serious book buyers) want to read a series in order. They might read a new author’s book out of order to test it, but readers then want to begin with the first book of a desired series and read each novel in turn. The first stop for many is the local Barnes & Noble or Borders to find the first few books in the series (Surveys).7

Significant backlists are rare. The Borders in Westlake had some backlist from

recent reprints: 104 Christies were part of a very recent reprint of the author’s oeuvre;

Ngaio Marsh was also represented, as were John D. MacDonald, Ruth Rendell, and

Dorothy L. Sayers. The vast majority of authors in the Borders’ mystery section, however, had no backlist at all.

Backlists are resisted by chain stores for other reasons. If an author produces books that sell slowly, Borders can block the author from being purchased again. A Wall

Street Journal article reports, “Now that retailers can track books sales speedily and

efficiently with point of sale technology, the entire publishing world knows when an author’s commercial performance takes a dive” (Trachtenberg “Name” A1). This has led

to a trend among mystery writers to adopt pseudonyms when sales begin to decline. Cozy mystery writer Leslie O’Kane changed her name to Leslie Cane. This was enough to fool

Borders’ computers (E. Schantz). For the superstores, even mystery writers with proven track records are only as good as their last book, so frequently those are the only books on the shelves. Those are the books that the superstores know can be sold. While this seems like a sound business practice, it is more likely that sales are lost, because

76 frequently what serious mystery readers want are earlier books in the series. If readers don’t think they can get earlier books, then frequently they won’t purchase later ones.

Backlists aren’t the only books that mystery lovers look for. Many serious readers want breadth along with depth. While it would appear that the Westlake Borders with 5,000 books would satisfy the former, their selection had serious holes. I did not find among the mass-market works any books by Ross Macdonald, Dashiell Hammett, or

Raymond Chandler. There were some trade reprints of Chandler and Hammett, but these are more expensive books. There were no books by Edgar Allan Poe or Ellery Queen.

These authors represent some of the most important writers of the genre. Poe is the father of the mystery story but could only be found in the literature section. Ellery Queen was no where in the store.

Walter Mosley, perhaps the most famous African-American mystery writer, only had three books on the shelf. There were no books by award-winning author Barbara

Neeley (who has since lost her contract) nor any by Valerie Wilson Wesley, with her female police procedural series. Crime writer Donald Goines and classic hardboiled writer Chester Himes were also absent. The serious mystery reader, I discovered from my mystery book sellers, will read heterogeneously, writers of any race, religion, either gender or sexual orientation. So exclusion of important (and saleable!) African-

American mystery writers is strange. Also missing from the shelves were significant gay and lesbian mystery writers like Joseph Hansen and Sharon Scoppetone. None of these were in other sections of the store.

Lelia Taylor of Creatures’n Crooks Bookshoppe in Richmond, Virginia, said that her store complements chain stores like Borders. Her book stock comprises four genres:

77 science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mystery. Taylor says that she doesn’t feel at all competitive with the chain bookstores. If they get a customer who wants a mystery or science fiction novel that they don’t have, they call her. She does the same with customers who want general books. Taylor says that Borders and other chain stores have breadth, while what she and other mystery bookstore owners have is depth, and this depth is her backlist.

Independent Book Stores

Most people visit Barnes & Noble or Borders because they have so many books; they are the number one and number two bookstores in the world in terms of sales. Going to independent bookstores is not so automatic for many customers. Independent bookstores need to become neighborhood stores to succeed. “Competition from rivals as diverse as Barnes and Noble, Borders, Wal-Mart stores, Costco and online stores have thinned the ranks of independent booksellers, says Michelle Chandler of Knight Ridder

Tribune Business News. “Membership in the American Booksellers Association, the

trade group for independents, has dropped by nearly 60 percent during the past decade—

from 4,700 to 2,000 today” (“Turning”). Mac’s Backs in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, a

new and used bookstore, thrives because it reflects its community. In a 2005 issue of the

Cleveland Free Times, Harvey Pekar called Suzanne DeGaetano, co-owner of Mac’s

Backs, a “linchpin of the community.”

Mac’s is basically a used bookstore, though it does have new merchandise, and it

does a great deal of ordering for their customers. “Every neighborhood should have a

bookstore if not more than one,” says DeGaetano. “They are intellectual and cultural

78 outposts. People browse in the store to make them think, and the more you can provide such experiences, the better.”

DeGaetano laments what she calls “the death of browsing.” Bookstores are now

“destination” places. At one time customers went to bookstores and spent a considerable amount of time drifting through the stacks, making connections between the books and their own tastes. Now the regular customer appears at the bookstore looking for one particular book. If the bookstore doesn’t have this text, the customer leaves to find a bookstore that has it. This results in fewer impulse purchases, according to DeGaetano, and less of that serendipity of finding the book that the customer didn’t know he or she wanted. DeGaetano said, “If you are looking for something specific, you will not find it here, and if you are looking for nothing you’ll find lots.” Independents cannot provide the breadth of a Borders. Generally, they have less space and money to invest in stock.

Instead, independent bookstores must rely on providing stock and services unavailable in mega stores.

Unlike Borders, Mac’s Backs Bookstore has stock that is a reflection of the neighborhood. DeGaetano trades for books; customers bring in books and receive credit for them. While I was interviewing her, an elderly, academic-looking man brought in a paper bag filled with cassette tapes containing speeches by such political notables as

Barbara Ehrenreich, Noam Chomsky, and Ralph Nader. In the same bag were collections of political books. He simply offered them to her and left, not wanting to receive any credit. DeGaetano says this is not uncommon, and she presumed the man was moving and didn’t want to move these as well. More importantly to her, these books and tapes come from the neighborhood—thus in its twenty-seven year history, the bookstore has

79 become a true reflection of the community. She regularly posts lists on the wall near the door asking for particular titles and authors. And, when customers come in with books that fulfill the list, they receive store credit that can be used towards future purchases.

Mac’s “has a symbiotic relationship with Coventry and Cleveland Heights” (DeGaetano).

She also feels it is important to introduce neighbors to new books they would otherwise be unaware of, but this too is influenced by customers and employees. She regularly reads books recommended and loved by customers, and then buys copies and displays them as recommendations to other customers. One customer, for example, recommended The Alchemist. It has become a favorite of her other customers, and is

another book she “could sell millions of copies of.” In an article in Publisher’s Weekly,

Seth Godin suggests that what happens at Mac’s happens in all good bookstores where hand selling still occurs. “…People can be persuaded to buy and read (or buy and give more books.) A lot more books. We’ve all had the experience of going into a great bookstore to buy one book and coming out with five or six. And that…is the future of bookselling. If someone comes into a store looking for a book that isn’t there and leaves empty-handed, the bookseller has failed.”

DeGaetano is still figuring out what draws people to the store, and tries regularly to anticipate what her customers will want. Michelle Chandler suggests some key ways independent bookstores have found to succeed include: “specializing in a niche, [and] offering a non-conventional line-up of books…” Many come for Mac’s significant mystery and science fiction sections. DeGaetano says the mysteries are very important for several reasons. First, “the mystery genre is so complex. So many different mini genres inside the genre. And there is so much good writing in the field. It is also a genre

80 like science fiction. People read a lot of it. You don’t just read one a year.” Bestselling mystery novels can be purchased below half price here, but more customers come for the out of print books. She says the mystery section is a draw for mystery readers and for casual browsers. Backlist is definitely a significant draw, she says. DeGaetano is always looking out for new mysteries to add. She says that John, an employee and mystery lover, hand sells his favorite mystery writers, so she orders those authors he recommends to supplement the used books in the mystery section. She wants to have the books he hand sells always in stock. Chandler would probably consider John a good example of the other strategies that independent bookstores need to employ. Independents can’t compete with the amount of stock in a mega-store, but they “tout knowledgeable employees, author readings and high-energy customer service.”8

Like any good bookstore proprietor, DeGaetano knows her customers and what

they are interested in. The most popular mysteries at Mac’s are hardboiled and

geographical specialty books. She says people like to fantasize about these places, or

they lived there and want to experience the region again. She said regional books like

those by Cleveland’s Les Roberts are also very popular. Roberts has given talks at the store, as have other local mystery writers, including those who are newly published and relatively unknown. She has noticed that mystery readers seem to be academics and that they are thoughtful. She believes the mystery readers tend to just read mysteries—they don’t cross over into science fiction. She says that “Interest in mystery is increasing and the field is exploding; there are so many new writers that are good and active in the genre.”

DeGaetano’s observations are typical. Independent bookstores know who their customers are and understand what they want. For Borders, books are a commodity, just product. At independent bookstores, the booksellers know and serve their customers.

DeGaetano says Amazon has had a significant effect on sales, and made more of an impact on sales than the superstores have.9 The Internet is huge, convenient, and sales

tax-free. Mac’s sold 175 copies of the 2005 Harry Potter books. Of that, $300 went to

the state for sales tax. Countless books were ordered through Amazon, and none of the

money went for sales taxes. This has consequences for the community, DeGaetano asserts, which consumers don’t even realize. She also points out there are fuel costs

involved in delivering Amazon books to individual customers, but only motivated

customers realize these costs. She wants Internet sales to be taxed.

To succeed as an independent, she says, it is necessary to have educated

consumers. Part of that education is understanding that books are valuable, a necessary

part of existence, and that it is worth seeking out independent bookstores. They will

work to identify what the community needs rather than following the particular tastes of

the moment.

Independent Mystery Bookstores

John Cross, an owner of Foul Play Books in Columbus, Ohio, had to run an

errand. He wasn’t concerned because a student who regularly filled in at the bookstore

was there to help customers. Cross was gone for half an hour. He returned to learn that a

local minister’s wife had been in shopping. Cross knew this woman to be the coziest of

cozy readers, who held firmly to the belief that cozies should contain absolutely no

82 profanity, no discussion and depiction of sex, and no gratuitous violence. The student had placed directly into the customer’s hand a novel by an author that the student had read and enjoyed. The book was definitely a cozy, and, the pièce de résistance, the author was himself a clergyman. Cross immediately called the woman (like many mystery bookstore owners he really knows his customers) and told her not to open the book. What Cross knew that his student assistant didn’t, was that the book contained both profanity and graphic sex. He grabbed a suitable replacement and the money she had paid, and he drove to her home, where he exchanged the books and gave her a refund. A bit extreme? Cross explained that mystery readers know what they want, and even more what they don’t want.

“Customers do not want to be surprised,” said Mary Alice Gorman of Mystery

Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont, Pennsylvania. She explained that while mystery readers want the puzzle, the complicated relationships, and the twisty enigmas, many readers don’t want to read about animal torture, child murder, and sexual violence of any kind.

Such surprises turn them off, and it is the mystery bookstore owner, through careful hand selling, who spares readers these unpleasant surprises. Kathy Harig of Mystery Loves

Company in Baltimore, Maryland, echoes this. “Mystery readers tend to be conservative in what they like—they have their standards,” and it is the mystery seller’s job to know the likes and dislikes of her customers. Harig said, “You aren’t going to find mystery books at Borders or Barnes and Noble unless they are new—and [their booksellers] won’t know the title, etc.”

A former librarian, Harig was trained to do what is known in the library world as

“reader advisory.” A patron can go to the reference desk and state that she likes a

83 particular kind of book or a particular kind of author, and the librarian can find similar books in the genre. Mary Alice Gorman explained how she uses this technique; when customers come in wanting to read books like those by Agatha Christie, she steers them towards Agatha Award winning mystery author Carolyn Hart. Harig says the good mystery bookseller does this automatically. “At mystery bookstores you can help the person who knows nothing-but at a regular bookstore the owner can’t help. You have to be a reader—a regular bookstore owner isn’t necessarily a reader. You need to know so and so writes a certain way; you have to have reference books.” Not only do booksellers need reference books, they also need to know what Internet sites, out of the over 2000 dedicated to mysteries, are useful. When I interviewed Robin Agnew at Aunt Agatha’s in

Ann Arbor, Michigan, and wanted to know the first novel in the series by Karen

Kijewski, Agnew went to the Internet and visited a site called Stop, You’re Killing Me,

which has a base of thousands of mystery authors with all of their series and the books placed in chronological order. This is just one of the tools used by mystery bookstore owners to help their customers, a tool unlikely to be known (or used) by the chain bookstore owner.

Mystery bookstore owners need such tools because their customers tend to be passionate about books, especially, mysteries. According to bookstore owner Mary Alice

Gorman, 17-22% of the people who buy books buy mysteries. A huge percentage of these people (at least 50%) buy their books at Wal-Mart and Target, which only stock the bestsellers. Wal-Mart and Target customers tend not to go to traditional bookstores.

Other people, about 30%, buy their mystery novels from super stores like Borders and

Barnes & Noble. This leaves 20% to buy from independent bookstores. It makes running an independent very difficult.

Lelia Taylor of Creatures’n Crooks Bookshoppe in Richmond, Virginia said, “The true readers come here. People who go to chains are too lazy to come to my store. […]

People who buy best sellers go to chains.” She explains that chains are for casual readers and customers, people who want to save some money. Sometimes they are right, but at a cost. Mary Alice Gorman pointed to further problems for the independents: overall, book buying is declining. Regular bookstore publishers give a book 16 days to be successful, and then it is pulled. It takes longer than that for a book to be “branded” (for the reader to go to a store and ask specifically for that author), yet return policies are set so that bookstores only get money back for unsold books if the books are returned in a specific and very short period of time. Such policies, many owners complain, actually don’t work that well anymore, if they ever did, but they are especially counterproductive for mystery bookstores, which function differently than chain stores. Taylor says their job as mystery booksellers is to educate the customers. Her store has discounts that last for months rather than days and for all kinds of books, not just bestsellers. Most significantly, though for what she terms her serious customers, is that she carries books that chains don’t carry. “Chains have breadth but they can only do two or three books by an author. Creatures ’n Crooks Bookshoppe, on the other hand, does everything in print by a few authors.” She added that while her store was predominantly a “new” bookstore, she and her buyers regularly sought out of print works and carried used titles by authors that her customers loved.

Mystery bookstore owners tend to know their merchandise better than the chain bookstore manager does. While at Borders, I was astounded that books on military technology and high-tech espionage would be mixed in with very cozy mysteries. It made the search for particular books rather confusing. Mystery booksellers understand that there are subgenres within the mystery genre, and that they are different. Harig asks her customers, “What are you looking for in a reading experience? Cozy readers want a certain feeling, a book with a subdued level. This is very difficult to do. M. C. Beaton and Rhys Bowen have a certain setting. You are introduced to their family. [In these books] there is a lot of preparation, a little action, strong setting and character development. It has to be done so well.” She added that when the reader wants this feeling and can’t get it, the reader winds up disappointed. It is the bookseller’s job to try to find books to match the feelings that the reader wants.

While Murder Ink in New York City, perhaps the most famous mystery bookstore, broke down all its books into categories—hardboiled, gay and lesbian, feminist PI, cozy—many mystery bookstores don’t categorize except alphabetically.10 In

this respect, the mystery bookstores are like the chain stores that also alphabetize their

books. On the other hand, bookstore owners recognize the need for different categories,

even if they don’t make the categories obvious. They all state that readers notice differences among the subgenres and demand particular books. Not categorizing creates

a situation in which the bookstore owner must be available to both retrieve the books

requested by the client, and to help find books associatively, thus introducing the client to

new authors. The bookstore owners would hasten to say such does not (or only rarely)

occur in the chain bookstores. All the mystery bookstore owners I have interviewed see

86 this as an important part of their job, but they also stated this was not without problems.

They were almost like doctors in wanting to know their clients intimately, so they wouldn’t inadvertently give them the “wrong” book or an offensive one.

Mary Alice Gorman and her husband Richard said that they do not believe in categorizing books, but they occasionally develop end caps with themes. For example, when Walter Mosley visited their store, they had an end cap of mystery novels by African

American mystery writers, but otherwise they alphabetize and rely on customer service to help customers. I presented them with a brief list of difficult to place authors, which amused them. I mentioned Nevada Barr, for instance, and they both said they weren’t sure what they’d do with her or what they’d call her. Then they thought of some other writers similar to her. This list of alternate reads included C. J. Box who writes about

Joe Pickett, a game warden in the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming; Skye Kathleen

Moody who features Venus Diamond a U.S. Fish and Wildlife agent in Washington state; and Jessica Speart, whose Rachel Porter is also a U.S. Fish and Wildfe agent but in

New Orleans. Anybody I would name, they would think of other authors writing similar books. This is what they do with their customers. If a customer wants a type of mystery, they produce authors. If a customer knows an author and likes that work, they will produce those books, but then will produce the work of other authors writing similar things. For each difficult to place author on my list, they had at least five other choices for me to try.

Agnew does not categorize except to make a distinction between used and new books, and to separate out her historicals and True Crime books. All the bookstore owners said that historicals and cozies were their most popular books, and stated that if

87 there was an subgenre they could sell no matter what it would be those two. Agnew’s books are alphabetical, because she thinks they are hard to categorize. She agreed with the other bookstore owners that it was absolutely necessary to do hand selling.

Understanding that readers love to begin with the beginning of a series, she has a table of firsts in a series, and she also has reference books like Detecting Women (soon to be in

its fourth edition) and Detecting Men (soon to have its second edition) and the Internet to

help customers who might need to locate a title or author.

Categories are problematic for authors as well. Periodically, the discussion will

occur on mystery listservs about whether or not gay authors who write mysteries should

have their books shelved in the mystery section of big box stores, or should their books

be placed with other gay authors? One argument suggests that if the books were placed in

the gay and lesbian section, those customers who wanted gay and lesbian books were

more likely to find them. A contrary argument says that placing them in the mystery

section made it more likely that a wider audience would buy the books. Harig used to

believe in disparate sections. At one time she had a whole section for Sisters in Crime

(SinC) authors since “it was such a big thing initially to have female authors”; now with

the popularity of female mystery writers and female protagonists, there is no reason to

separate these out. All books are in her store are integrated. People can find them by

browsing, and she suggests that it is counterproductive to have particular books separated

out.

Taylor has a different take on this issue, in large part because her store houses

four genres: fantasy, science fiction, horror and mystery. She notes that there is “lots of

genre blending—mystery and fantasy especially. They appeal to certain people. Some

88 only read these and others won’t.” She says that there is a lot of crossover (serious genre blending) and they have difficulty knowing where to put it. Charlaine Harris is just one of many authors who has a vampire mystery series. J. D. Robb writes a mystery series that takes place in the near future. Are Harris’ books fantasy/horror because they involve a vampire? Or are they mysteries since they involve solving crimes? Are Robb’s books science fiction since they depict one possible future? Or, since the protagonist is a female homicide cop, are these a weird kind of police procedural? Taylor likes blending. “It is introducing readers to what they wouldn’t have read before,” she says. “In the past, mystery readers wouldn’t have read vampire books.” Taylor wants there to be a clear definition between the different categories.

Mystery Bookstores and the Problems with Major Publishers

Because of the relatively recent emphasis on the single-minded pursuit of bestsellers by major publishers, Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Wal-Mart have a symbiotic business relationship with publishers. Publishers appear to have the power to determine what gets published, and then the major stores that control 70% of the market decide what will be in the stores. But research reveals something a bit different. The big box stores that sell the books actually have a great deal more power, and now are in the business of influencing what the publishers print. The problem for the avid mystery reader is that neither the publishers nor the big box stores are working in their interests.

Instead, the market is the casual mystery reader who only occasionally picks up a mystery, and then, nearly always a bestseller.

The pursuit of best sellers creates a vicious circle. Editors now run manuscripts, covers, and titles past book buyers for the chain stores and will make changes that they suggest. If the chains don’t like something, it will be dropped. Many midlist writers have been discontinued because their sales were slow or sluggish. Some people blame the chain stores for the decline of the midlist writer (Schantz interview). “Buyers like

Barnes & Noble’s Sessalee Hensley and Borders’ Tom Dwyer wield outside influence on the nation’s literary consciousness, and publishers court them aggressively, giving them wide latitude in shaping the content and the marketing of books…. never have so few people decided the reading choices of so many,” says Learmoth. Only by visiting a mystery bookstore or ordering directly from the publisher will the serious mystery reader be able to find niche books by midlist authors.

For reasons again not understood by the bookstore owners, major publishers often release a hardcover when a writer produces the second or third book. This is bad enough as most of these writers are not established yet; worse though, are the publishers

(frequently small publishers) who will publish a brand new writer with her first book in hardcover.11 Only the rare reader will take a chance and spending over $20 on a book by an unknown when he can grab a mass paperback by a favorite author for $6. The result is that more and more hardcover books are being returned to publishers. These returns are

necessary on the part of the bookstores because it is the only way in which they receive

any money back. But when books are returned, authors do not receive any royalties.

The significant number of returned books has caused the price of hardcovers to rise.

According to The Wall Street Journal, “Between 1985 and 2003, hardcover book prices

rose 118% far outpacing the 71% gain in the Consumer Price Index[…]” (Trachtenberg

“Shelf”). In order to pursue the bestseller, publishers are publishing more and more hardcovers simply to find another DaVinci Code . The problem with this method is that

it leads to a shorter shelf life for books. According to Trachtenberg, bookstores “sell a

few hundred titles in massive numbers and constantly replace slow selling books with newer titles” (“Shelf”). Taylor has a work around for this system: she sharply limits how many hardcovers she sells in the store. “About three years ago we informed our customers that we would no longer sell hardcover books, and we provided our customers with a list of hardcover titles for customers to check off if they wanted us to order them.

It has helped us not to carry so many.” The motivation for this system? Creatures and

Crooks Bookshoppe had previously given away $12,000 in unreturnable hardcovers in order to get some sort of a return, in the form of a write-off, on their initial investment.

Independents in general, Taylor says, get a different kind of customer than publishers seem to be publishing for. Mystery bookstores serve a different audience, and because of this different audience, the booksellers frequently question the rules set down by the publishing industry. Taylor says that publishers don’t know their market, and definitely don’t know their customers. Evanovich began her career as an unsuccessful romance writer. When her novels starring bounty hunter Stephanie Plum became best sellers, publishers ran to reprint her early romance novels. These have not been a success. Harig argues, “Mystery readers don’t buy P.D. James and Walter Mosley’s science fiction either.”

Mystery bookstore owners lament the loss of so many good midlist writers—the vast majority, who, while they produce a profit every year with steadily increasing sales, do not create the same stir and overwhelming sums of money as the bestselling writers.

Mystery bookstores do sell bestsellers, but their bread and butter are the series written by midlist writers. There is an ever-growing market of readers hungry for new books, and new books in a series. The issue is what gets reprinted. No bookseller could explain to me how publishers decided what books to reprint. All said that the major draw to their stores was their sizeable backlists, and each said repeatedly that there were many books that they could handsell if only they had the product. Mary Alice and Richard Gorman are frustrated by the “cluelessness” of publishers and reprinting. The only hint they had is that if someone is a huge success the publisher thinks to reprint, and they said The

DaVinci Code is a good example of this. Cross says it appears that what gets reprinted

resembles what is selling now. In other words, “if private eyes are hot they’ll go back ten years and reprint something.” He explained that when Sharon Scoppetone’s series took off publishers decided to reprint the earlier series. It would make a certain business sense for publishers to reprint present successes to find a new audience for the works. Yet,

Harig points out that “Gail Bowen’s [an award winning Canadian writer whose books have been turned into a mystery series on Public Television] first is out of print, and

Maureen Jennings [is out of print as well].” It is counterproductive, she argues.

“Publishers don’t know the background, don’t know the genre, don’t know authors, don’t know what good is, and don’t read.” She has sat with representatives from St. Martin’s

Press (a major publisher of mysteries) and Random House to share with them from the mystery bookseller perspective. She states that they don’t care.

Libraries

There was a time, Ann Badger said in an interview, when it was believed that librarians were the guardians of all that was good and sacred in literature. While she was in library school, someone in Baltimore published what was then considered an outrageously, controversial article on the crazy idea that librarians should not be the sole determiners of what ended up on library shelves; rather, this article argued, “give ’em what they want!” In other words, the public should determine what got on shelves. Some librarians feared that this would lead to the library stocking music and movies and all sorts of other things patrons wanted…and it did! Instead of libraries closing though, they discovered that this drew even more people. The people in charge in the library world realized that letting the public have a say into what got into the library made a lot of sense. This is now policy.

These new policies have led to a space issue for most libraries. Meeting the desires of the public has led to the constant need for weeding the collections. Patrons want the bestsellers and other contemporary books. There is less and less interest in older books, but there is a constant need to make room for new books. By weeding out the old, and focusing on the new, libraries are slowly becoming in some ways like the big bookstores.

In addition to storing and promoting the culture’s literature, some librarians are trained to help the customer find books that appeal. Librarians conduct “reference interviews” or “reader advisory” interviews with their clients, trying to ascertain what they want. While Badger sees librarians as “guiders,” she says it is important for librarians to understand what the patrons are trying to say, and not to put ideas into their heads. Many customers arrive with a desire for a particular genre, but with little idea as

93 to what is available. Then the reference interview is most useful. When a patron asks for a mystery, for example, the librarian will ask a series of questions that might include:

“Can it have blood/gore? How much? Do you want a psychological mystery? Do you prefer particular locales? Would you like a woman protagonist?” And so on, until the librarian can identify several possible books. In order to do a good job, the librarian needs to know the genre, and to know what the library has. A good librarian will also suggest alternatives not explicitly mentioned by the patron.12 Badger stressed that

librarians prefer to be given information but will ask questions, especially leading ones, if

it is the only way to help the patron.

While reader advisory interviewing seems to be a simple process, Badger said that

a representative from Barnes & Noble appeared in her library asking for training for their

workers so that they could do a better job of helping the bookstores’ customers. Barnes

and Noble realizes that libraries are a significant part of the publishing industry’s

business.13

In Reading Matters, Catherine Sheldrick Ross argues for the importance of

pleasure reading and the value of the reader advisory function of librarians. It was

disconcerting to discover when I interviewed librarians that the position reader advisor is

not regarded with much respect. Cuyahoga County Public Librarians Pat Dempsey and

Cindy Orr explained that there is a pecking order in the library, and the most important

position is that of reference librarian. Reader advisory is looked down upon in many

libraries because it is a position that encourages pleasure reading. Books for research are good; books for fun are tolerated (Interview). This goes a way towards showing why it is

so easy for many libraries to weed out their genre collections. They may be beloved by

94 patrons, but they are the least important books (for many librarians and library administrators) in the library.

There are 117,590 public, academic, and educational libraries in the U.S., according the American Library Association, and of these 9,137 are public libraries. Of these, 17% had more than one branch. According to the Public Library in the United

States Fiscal Year 2002 report, public libraries circulated 1.9 billion public library materials, or 6.8 materials per capita. Visits to public libraries totaled 1.2 billion nationwide, and those libraries contained 785.1 million books. Public libraries spent 8 billion dollars in 2002, 65% of which went to pay staff, and 14% of which went to library collections—which adds up to $1.12 billion dollars that went to fattening up library collections in one year alone. Ross reports that “… the Book Industry Study Group’s study estimated that one-fifth of all books read come from the public library”(6).14

Libraries buy a lot of books, and a lot of audiotapes, and CDs, and DVDs.

Five Star is a new publisher that is publishing specifically for the library market, and though librarian Badger was unaware that there were publishers that published for libraries, she said it made sense because the library market is so lucrative. She knows that many publishers study what it is that libraries buy and try to publish what library buyers will want for their collections. Because of the large purchases, libraries can make a significant impact on an author’s career.

For centuries, libraries have been the repositories of the great works and the near great works, but that seems to be passing. Frequently the only place that the serious reader can find the mysteries she wants is the specialist mystery bookstore (preferably with a used book section), the Internet, or the library. Many libraries though, because of

95 space issues are weeding out what Badger called “the archival collection.” “There is a trend,” she said, “ to make libraries not as historic in nature.” She said the hardest part of her job when she worked at Worthington Library (in the Columbus, Ohio area) was to weed the mystery or fantasy sections. She knew that even if the first in the series was falling apart she couldn’t get rid of it, because it might be the only copy available. She said in order for fantasy and mystery to “work,” readers must have all of the series. She tried to deal with this problem by getting rid of duplicates, or newer books that weren’t as well written or as important to the genre. In her library, mystery is the only genre that is housed separately from other fiction. Mystery is the most popular genre, but unfortunately, because of the restrictions of space, and the ever increasing need to fulfill the public’s desire for up-to-the minute fiction, mystery lovers may lose one of the few places they can still go to find the missing gaps in their series, putting even more pressure on mystery bookstores.

In June 2005, a bookstore in Colorado Springs closed because of competition from Barnes and Noble, Borders, and Wal-Mart, all of which moved in within a year of each other. Owner Karen Bauder stated, “The book-buying public needs to know that when the independents go out of business, customers will be at the mercy of the chain stores. The chains will be the ones that dictate the kinds of books we’ll read” (Nawotka).

Mystery bookstores are frequently the last bastion for particular types of books. An editor at the publisher Hyperion stated, “As readers devote more of their time to a handful of titles, it’s likely that new writers will have a more difficult time getting noticed. Our focus is shrinking as a culture. Fewer books are breaking out” (Trachtenberg “To

Publishers” C3). This is unnecessary. When it comes to mystery readers, the more series and more books the better. Publishers lose when they drop midlist writers and when they perpetuate return policies that do not allow newer authors to catch on with the reading public.

Chapter Three

Passionate Readers and Redesigned Structures of Marketing

With the renewed popularity of women’s mysteries in the 1980s came an incredible opening of the mystery field for potential women authors. Nancy Pickard explains that most of these women grew up reading Nancy Drew[…]. As adults, these women wanted to find a heroine of mystery, adventure and romance, but nothing was available. It was difficult for these thirty to forty year old women to make the connection with ‘grandmotherly’ Jane Marple. Mystery author Marilyn Wallace adds that women[…] coming into the mystery field had lived through the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and the environmental movement. This was a time when people were taking on issues and making their voices count. The women were part of the new tradition that said, ‘I can have an impact on the world in which I live.’ (Dilley 126-127)

But I think the author we probably did help the most was Diane Mott Davidson, a local author of culinary mysteries, whose books eventually became bestsellers. We always kicked off her signing tour with a dinner to benefit the local safehouse (her detective is a formerly battered wife), for which we had to turn people away, followed by a talk at the store which always drew 125-150 people. Her publisher, Bantam, worked hard to support the signings, and I think the crowds she drew convinced both Bantam and Diane herself that she was a potential bestseller. As for John Dunning, we sold over 300 copies of his first Cliff Janeway mystery, Booked to Die, and 600 of his next book. And 600 of the first Aunt Dimity book by Nancy Atherton, which certainly made her publisher sit up and take notice, as it was a very small print run. We even provided them with an open letter to other mystery booksellers urging them to carry and promote the book. I don't think anybody sells those kinds of numbers any more, but it was possible then. —Enid Schantz, speaking about books written in the early 1990s by then novice writers (Interview)

In 1993, Nevada Barr premiered a new mystery called The Track of the Cat.

When Tom Schantz read it, he knew it would be a book that customers of his Rue

Morgue, the oldest continuously run mystery bookstore in the US, would love. He began to “hand sell” the book, and he couldn’t keep it in stock. Word of mouth spread, and he

98 knew he had a potential bestseller. But Schantz was surprised that he hadn’t heard anything about the book or the author. This wasn’t Barr’s first book, though it was the first in a series featuring Anna Pigeon, a National Park Ranger. The Track of the Cat had received minimal if any marketing help. Schantz called Putnam (the publisher) and suggested that they have Barr tour. Putnam was shocked with this request. Its response was, “Tour? Why?” Schantz told them how well Barr’s books were selling and suggested that he could sell even more of her books if she were in the store. Putnam was doubtful, but set up a two-city tour: Boulder, Colorado, and Minneapolis, Minnesota. During the visit from Barr, over seventy-five people came to the store, which was a large crowd for a novice mystery writer, and over one hundred and fifty books were sold (Enid Schantz

Interview). Putnam began to pay attention to Barr and sent her to some other stores.

The rest is history. In 1994, Barr won the Agatha award from the Malice

Domestic conference for best first novel of 1993, and in 1994, Barr received the Anthony award, also for best first novel. The awards meant more money and more sales. The little known author went to bestsellerdom.

What would have happened if this independent bookstore owner, who was and is

a huge fan of cozies, hadn’t read her novel and hadn’t taken an interest in her work?

More than likely, Barr’s novel would have been buried among the 1,000+ mysteries

published in 1993 and would have disappeared without a trace.1 But she was lucky. Enid

Schantz, co-owner of Rue Morgue Bookstore and Press, said

Very few first-time authors get significant marketing help from their

publishers, except for those that for some reason sign big contracts with

significant amounts of money involved, in which case the publisher is

either contractually obligated to promote the author or simply wants to

protect its investment. Contracts like this are rare and are usually

negotiated by high-powered agents with editors who have some reason to

believe there will be a payoff, most often when a movie deal has already

been negotiated.

Such deals are becoming rare. Elizabeth Foxwell, managing editor for CLUES: A Journal

of Detection, states that “At the beginning, authors could be nurtured; now [publishers] aren’t willing to do that. You have to have an immediate success…and sell at least

20,000 copies your first time out” (Interview). Bestsellerdom is the craze of the last

decade or so for publishers. But now new writers and midlist writers must do their own

marketing and publicity.2 Since most writers aren’t business majors or public relations

gurus, they need to make time to write and to publicize their work. Enid Schantz explains that

As a rule publishers elect to ‘grow’ their authors, although the amount of

time they allow for that to happen keeps shrinking. It used to be three

strikes and you're out; now it's more likely two - that is the number of

books you can publish before you're dropped if sales are poor. If that had

been the rule in the sixties, writers like Tony Hillerman and Dick Francis

would have been dropped early in their careers.

Had her sales not gone up, had she not toured to promote her book, and had she not received two fan awards, Barr would likely have been dropped by Putnam. The careers of many mystery writers have been preserved and promoted by fans of the genre. Driven by necessity and desire, cozy readers and writers modified the existing marketing structures

100 to offer encouragement, support, and marketing venues for their favorite authors. In addition to the patronage of independent mystery bookstore owners like the Schantz’, the cozy subgenre was rescued by a new professional organization for mystery writers, fan conferences and conventions dedicated to cozies and traditionals, a new award structure, and a strong Internet presence. All worked together to preserve the cozy from destruction, enhance the subgenre, and despite all obstacles and attacks, empower it to become the most successful mystery subgenre. These organizational structures were possible in large part because they occurred following the second wave of feminism, which taught many women that “self-development is a higher goal than self-sacrifice”

(Gilligan 129). Women learned that by building community and sharing common goals, they could create alternative ways of advancing not only acceptance of, but the actual success of their subgenre.

In the 1960s, the traditional mystery and the cozy were on their way out.

Publishers and critics had decided that what the culture wanted and should have were books written by men about male detectives and male concerns. The mystery genre was considered a male genre. Fewer mysteries by women were being published, and consequently, fewer women were purchasing mysteries. The decisions made by the publishers to slow down the publication of mysteries by women with the ultimate goal of eliminating traditionals and cozies seemed to be working. Carolyn Heilbrun, one of the few lucky women to have her traditional mystery novels published in the early 1960s, stated that she began writing mysteries because she had run out of the traditional English mysteries that she enjoyed. “The American mysteries were totally male, macho and brutal. I like intelligent people who have intelligent conversations. I wanted to be in the

101 presence of such characters” (qtd. in Dilley 97). In 1964, with the publication of her first book, Heilbrun was a virtual “traditional” mystery island surrounded by hardboiled mysteries. Without some kind of radical change either among the readers or the publishers, the traditional and cozy were doomed.

In 1970, Kate Millett published Sexual Politics, a work of literary and cultural

criticism. Its impact was immense in both the academy and in the bourgeoning women’s

movement. Millett argues that

Groups who rule by birthright are fast disappearing, yet there remains one

ancient and universal scheme for the domination of one birth group by

another—the scheme that prevails in the area of sex. However muted its

present appearance may be, sexual dominion obtains nevertheless as

perhaps the most pervasive ideology of our culture and provides its most

fundamental concept of power. (24)

Although Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique preceded Millett’s work by seven

years, Janet Todd argues that it was “reformist rather than revolutionary” (20). Todd does say that Friedan explained to women that they could do something about their position under patriarchy (20). Millett’s work though was a “great blockbuster” (Todd 21). Todd says that “Millett made a frontal attack on the overt misogyny of much privileged literature, [and] its use of power and domination in its description of sexual activity”

(Todd 21). More importantly though, Todd argues that Millett saw the privileged male writing “directly as source of the physical and psychological oppression of women”

(Todd 21). Friedan encouraged women to change the way they reacted to patriarchal

102 structures, and Millett’s work influenced female scholars to do their own examination of

American literature, and to reread it and critique it with female eyes.

In 1978, Judith Fetterley published The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach

to American Fiction. Fetterley’s premise is that, “American literature is male. To read

the canon of what is currently considered classic American literature is perforce to

identify as male” (xii). While she suggests that there are exceptions—a Wharton novel or

a Dickinson poem might be taught for example—they are rare. She further states that

“Given the pervasive male bias of this literature, it is not surprising that in it the

experience of being American is equated with the experience of being male” (xii).

Fetterley’s premise was amply illustrated by how the publishers dealt with the mystery

genre. Male writers were preferred; female mystery writers were to be tolerated at best

and discouraged or not published at worst. Women’s mysteries weren’t regarded as

relevant as ones written by men. Fetterley argues that her book “is a self-defense manual

for the woman reader lost in the masculine wilderness of the American novel” (viii).

First, women had to realize that privileged literature taught in the academy was ideological, and that women could and should read against it. “At its best,” Fetterley argued, “feminist criticism is a political act whose aim is not simply to interpret the world but to change it by changing the consciousness of those who read and their relation to what they read” (viii). In her own way, Fetterley was urging Friedan’s project. Women needed to recognize that patriarchy was enforced through many vehicles, including literature. Recognizing this is the first step to changing the situation. Fetterley argues that

103

The major works of American fiction constitute a series of designs on the

female reader all the more potent in their effect because they are

impalpable. [What] keeps the design of our literature unavailable to the

consciousness of the woman reader, and hence impalpable, is the very

posture of the apolitical, the pretense that literature speaks universal truths

through forms from which all the merely personal, the purely subjective,

has been burned away or at least transformed through the medium of art

into the representative. When only one reality is encouraged, legitimized,

and transmitted, and when that limited vision endlessly insists on its

comprehensiveness, then we have the conditions necessary for that

confusion of consciousness in which impalpability flourishes. (xi)

Fetterley wrote her work in 1978. In 2007, bestselling writer Laura Lippman believes this state of affairs continues. She states, “I have a fervent belief that what men like and are sentimental about is elevated in profundity, and what women like is deprecated…[and] cozies are books by and about women” (Interview). Lippman is incensed that male experience is privileged over female experience, and that male behavior is somehow normative. She states, “The general perception is that dark is more serious and ‘universal’—when someone writes a dark and broody novel about a male private investigator that somehow represents everyman/everyone”(Interview). She points out that her own private detective, Tess Monaghan, while popular among both male and female readers and critics, still is considered to represent only one woman’s unique experience. “The male private investigator is the universal story of man defining himself in society…the culture doesn’t have a stake in women’s self-definition. It doesn’t matter

104 how [women characters] resolve their relationships” (Interview). Lippman may be right in her analysis of the current situation, but the deprecation of women’s literature was worse in the 1970s and 1980s.

Friedan, Millett, and Fetterley made an impact leading in part to the “proliferation of Women Studies in the 1970s” (Belenky 5). Social scientists like Carol Gilligan and

Jean Miller questioned psychological and social science studies that were based solely upon experiments conducted on men, with the belief that men’s behavior was normative3

(Belenky 7; Gilligan 2-6). Gilligan and Miller and others suggested that psychological studies were needed to study women’s development, and that new norms needed to be adopted. Through the work of these scholars, feminism created change not only in the academy but also in the general culture. Academic feminists urged women to alter how they read and what they read, and exhorted women to take control of their lives and fight for their choices. Feminist change came later to the female mystery writing community.

It wasn’t until 1986 that women began to organize to promote and save their favorite genre.

A Gender-Imbalanced Review and Award Structure

More cozies were published in the 1980s than in the 1970s, but they were ignored as fast they were written. Even though women were writing close to a third of all mysteries, they received only 10% of the reviews in major newspapers (Huang, “Mystery

2003”; Francis 6). Lack of reviews lowered sales, and low sales fulfilled the prophecy that readers were just not interested in cozy mysteries, or books written by women, which amounted to the same thing.

105

Reviews were not the only way to sell books though. Books that won awards, especially the prestigious Edgar award given by the premier professional organization,

Mystery Writers of America (MWA), or those novels that won the Shamus Award bestowed by The Private Eye Writers of America (PWA), were more likely to be purchased by libraries and fans. Unfortunately for women writers, both the MWA and

PWA gave the majority of their awards to male writers. The rationale for denying women mystery writers reviews and awards was that cozy and traditional mysteries were unworthy. Otto Penzler, outspoken editor of Mysterious Press and an MWA member, argued that “The women who write [cozies] stop the action to go shopping, create a recipe or take care of cats. Cozies are not serious literature. They don’t deserve to win.

Men take [writing] more seriously as art. Men labor over a book to make it literature.

There are wonderful exceptions of course—P.D. James, Ruth Rendell” (Bartell).

Penzler’s views are not unusual, even in 2005 when he was quoted.

Sexism is the not the only claim leveled against the MWA and the Edgar award.

Many people, both in favor of cozies and opposed to them, say that cozies are fluffy and light. Humorous writing tends not to win awards or be considered of much importance.

Cozies are light, domestic fare, and hardboileds are the true literary work. Heidi Roosa, winner of the 2004 Malice Domestic Grant given to cozy and traditional writers who show promise, stated

Yes, I believe as a society we do rate tragedy higher than comedy. Maybe

because we assume it is more difficult to write a book that explores the

dark side, makes us confront our demons (although the demons in some of

these hardboiled and noir books are no more real than Aunt Dimity) than

106

to keep them safely chained. I write both humorous mysteries and darker

psychological ‘thriller’-type pieces. I gotta tell ya - I do more nitty-gritty

work to make the light, humorous ones funny than I do to make the dark

ones dark.

David Skibbins, a cozy writer, points out that

Traditional mysteries, that have a more positive outlook on life, outsell

noir. Try an experiment. Pick a dark book by a mid-list author, and a lighter

tale from another mid-list author. Write down their ISBN’s and call Ingram

to check the distribution figures. Track them for three months. You are

going to find which is more popular, at least with the booksellers. But if

you check out which books get reviewed, noir wins two to one over

traditional mystery. Noir seems more "literary" and traditional is, to quote

Otto the Great [Penzler], ‘fiction so lightweight that an anvil on top of it is

the only way to prevent it from floating off to the great library in the sky.’

What kind of world are we co-creating in which serial killers, addictions

and gore are respected, and good people doing their best to make the world

a better place are ignored?

The debate over which subgenre is more literary is thirty years old and seems no closer to

being resolved. Tension within the mystery community about subgenres is not new, and

it could be argued that it was inculcated with the founding of Mystery Writers of America

(MWA).

The MWA was modeled on The London Detection Club founded in 1928.

(MWA). The Club was by invitation only and is probably most famous for its oath in

107 which members must swear “that their detectives will well and truly detect the crimes presented to them without reliance on divine revelation, feminine intuition, mumbo- jumbo, jiggery-pokery, coincidence, or act of God” (Stine). In 1945, the Mystery Writers of America was incorporated. MWA, unlike The Detection Club, opened its doors to any mystery writer “of good repute” in any medium (MWA). MWA was founded “for the purpose of promoting and protecting the interests and welfare of mystery writers and to increase the esteem and literary recognition give to the genre.” The motto of MWA is

“Crime doesn’t pay—Enough!” and this motto, though somewhat tongue-in-cheek, became a governing force as MWA spent much time and resources in training its writers in the ways of publishing, attaining agents, selecting art for book jackets, etc.

MWA, while an important professional and networking organization, is probably better known for the awards it gives to mystery novels. Initially, there was a struggle over whether to offer any kind of award, for the mystery writers who had created the organization were afraid of hurt feelings. In 1946, MWA awarded what became known as the Edgar award—named in honor of Edgar Allan Poe—to the best first mystery novel.4

Winning an Edgar award became a coup for any mystery writer. According to independent mystery bookstore owners, there are two mystery awards that customers pay attention to, and one of these is the Edgar. (The other important award is the Agatha awarded by the Malice Domestic Conference.) While few readers pay attention to the

Anthony (awarded by the Bouchercon mystery convention and named for famed mystery critic and writer Anthony Boucher) or to the Shamus (awarded by the Private Eye Writers of America) many customers will buy any novel given an Edgar. An Edgar award is almost a guarantee of increased sales and increased print runs.

108

For decades, MWA was the professional organization that mattered in the mystery field. It delivered on its mission of promoting the mystery genre; for many in the organization though, it appeared that only certain subgenres were worthy of literary acclaim. As a professional organization, some women argued, the MWA should represent all of its writers without concern for class, race, gender or subgenre; some of its members complained that the MWA was uninterested in promoting the subgenres practiced most by their women members, namely, cozies, traditionals, and romantic suspense.5

Robin Agnew, owner of Aunt Agatha’s Bookstore in Ann Arbor, argues that “[the]

Edgars are misogynist. They don’t nominate women unless they are British or contain

Private Investigators. MWA has a completely wrong list each year” (Interview). Penzler

is unhappy with the premise that the Edgars don’t recognize women writers or cozies.

“It’s true that women lately have greater representation on the nominating committees for

the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Awards,” he says. “But even with lesser

representation the cozies have always had plenty of attention and plenty of Edgar Awards

over the years. Cozy authors like Agatha Christie and Margery Allingham and Ngaio

Marsh and Daphne du Maurier never had any trouble winning recognition from us”

(Stasio). Interestingly enough, all four of those authors mentioned by Penzler are British

and Golden Age and dead.

Are the Edgars sexist? MWA has been giving out awards since 1945. Of the forty

Grand Masters, an award that MWA gives to honor lifetime achievement, fourteen

recipients were women. Of those fourteen, five could be arguably called cozy writers.

Of the forty-one Best Novel prizes awarded, thirteen were given to women. Of those,

four could be considered cozy. Of the forty-five Best First Novel prizes awarded, ten

109 were awarded to women. Of these, two could be considered cozy. These figures represent awards given between 1945 and 2007. If nothing else, the figures certainly appear to be skewed (MWA “Awards”).

While “winning the Edgar means greater sales and recognition for the book and its author,” some writers have complained about how small the voting pool is (Bartlet).

Judy Clemens, an Agatha-nominated author, finds the process strange.

It's great to be nominated for an Edgar. It's kind of bizarre [though] that

this seems to be the most coveted mystery award. The way they are

picked is by committee. Five or so peers (published mystery authors and

members of Mystery Writers of America) read all the books in one

category (Best Novel, Best First, Best True Crime, etc.), then pick the five

top, and the winner. No wider membership votes. So it all comes down to

the opinions of several people, instead of several hundred people, like at

Malice, or over a thousand people, like at Bouchercon. Kind of strange

that in a lot of circles it is considered more valuable. (Interview)

On the other hand, the Edgar awards are considered by some to be the most valid awards

because they are peer awards. Only published mystery writers judge the books.

The Shamus awards bestowed by the Private Eye Writers of America (PWA) are

also peer reviewed by a small committee. Feminists have a difficult time with the

Shamus awards and many regard them as sexist as well. PWA is a newer organization

than MWA, having gotten its start in 1982. Women have won two of twenty-three

awards for Lifetime Achievement. For Best P.I. Hardcover, out of twenty-three awarded,

six have been given to women. Of those six, three were written by Sue Grafton. Four

110 out of twenty-three awards for best P.I. Original Paperback went to women—two of those were awarded to Laura Lippman (“Private Eye”).

These numbers seem especially strange when many people in the mystery industry considered the late 1980s and the 1990s to be the era of the female private investigator, a trend that has not grown cold. Dilley argues that “American women were at the forefront of the private investigation novel’s renewed vitality” (18). Yet very few women P.I. writers were acknowledged. One possible explanation for this is that these are peer rewards. If the bulk of the committees are made up of male authors then that might explain the prevalence of male authors winning awards at a time of great increase of women writing P.I. fiction that is literate and highly marketable.

Why so much rancor for popular literature that is supposedly written primarily for entertainment? The stakes are high. According to the booksellers that I interviewed, most awards are wonderful for the esteem and recognition of the writer, but they hardly lead fans to buy books. In the case of the Anthony and Shamus awards, for example, the author’s name recognition improves, though not necessarily the author’s bank balance.

On the other hand, novels that have either Edgar- or Agatha nominations or awards noted on the cover will increase in sales and professional recognition. Terrence Faherty stated

that “receiving an Edgar nomination helped Deadstick—it went into second printings”

(Interview). He said though that his two Shamus awards did not help him in terms of

sales or recognition the way that winning the Edgar did.

Sisters in Crime (SinC)

111

The MWA structures of awards and honors effectively promoted mostly male writers, writing mostly hardboiled fiction. It appeared that this would continue for the long term since it had been going strong without interruption since 1945. But in the

1980s, popular female mystery writers began to chafe at the system in place. In 1986,

Hunter College held the first ever Women in Mystery conference. Feminist mystery novelist Sara Paretsky gave a speech about the increasing use of “graphic sadism” against female characters (Roberts). “Remarks I made at the conference,” said Paretsky, “set off a firestorm around the mystery world. Women began calling me from all over the country with their personal histories of treatment/mistreatment” (Roberts). For the first time, women mystery writers began to share their stories about the inequities that they were experiencing.

Phyllis Whitney inflamed the desire for change. Whitney, who received MWA’s

Grand Master award, was so angered that her books were being defined as “women’s books” and designated as less significant and out of the “mainstream” that she wrote a blistering, open letter to the MWA (SinC 1988). Whitney wrote that “MWA has always welcomed women writers in its membership, made us presidents, given us special awards—but it has never recognized our existence as writers of mystery novels when it comes to the Edgars—not unless we write like men.” Whitney revealed what many female mystery writers had known for a long time: women mystery writers would only be able to compete with male mystery writers in terms of reviews and awards (and sales) if they had some kind of infrastructure to promote their work. She argued,

MWA and the mystery field has been dominated by men writers from the

beginning of the organization. Some of these are still caught up in a

112

denigrating attitude toward women’s books. Come on!—You don’t have to

like our books—we don’t like some of yours. But you do need to

recognize that we exist, that we have millions of readers and sell as well if

not more copies than many men writers do. Part of our trouble lies in being

given putdown labels like ‘gothic,’ and ‘romantic suspense.’ How about

just looking at our books as mysteries as you do your own.

As long as women mystery writers remained a subset of MWA and PWA, Whitney said, they would get secondary treatment. To move forward professionally, and into the consciousness of readers, organizational structures were needed that allowed a “safe” place for the exploration of all types of mysteries written by women, including the cozy.

Whitney argued at the end of her open letter to MWA that “It’s time for the muttering to stop and a serious rebellion to start” (“Third Degree”). To this end, several advocacy groups were formed—namely Sisters in Crime (SinC), Malice Domestic with its Agatha awards, and the DorothyL listserv—that resulted not only in stiff competition for their male colleagues, but in less than twenty years, the preeminence of cozy as a superior money-making subgenre.

Whitney’s letter galvanized Paretsky to contact other female mystery writers to discover if they would be interested in banding together. In October 1986, Paretsky called a meeting of any interested women at the Baltimore Bouchercon. It was there that she and the other female mystery writers noted that while they were writing well over 30% of the mystery novels published, they were receiving less than 10% of the reviews

(Roberts).

113

In 1987, during the annual Edgars week, interested women went to mystery writer

Sandra Scoppettone’s apartment for a breakfast meeting. “Sisters in Crime” was created at that meeting to offer networking, advice, and support to mystery authors. SinC’s mission is “to combat discrimination against women in the mystery field, educate publishers and educate the general public as to the inequities in the treatment of female authors, raise the level of awareness of their contributions to the field, and promote the professional advancement of women who write mysteries” (SinC “Welcome”).

Libby Fleischer Hellman, president of SinC in 2005-2006, said, “It is hard to imagine there being no Sisters in Crime. The 70s and 80s were a time when there were so many women’s groups and caucuses—I have to believe that there would have been a support group for [female mystery writers]. I think [SinC] was one way to unify the mystery community, and to raise consciousness …” (Interview). Bestselling writer

Marcia Muller concurs and says that “women writers of the 1930s to 1960s were most often confined by the industry to writing about two basic types of female characters: genteel old ladies who solved crimes between cups of tea and sultry dames who happened to be victims, girlfriends, murderers, or all three” (qtd. in Dilley 18). Muller had been part of the women’s movement and was active in consciousness-raising. She “credits the expanding opportunities for women that came in the wake of the women’s movement

[…] more women became police officers, private detectives, attornies [sic], business executives, and technical workers” (qtd. in Dilley 18). A change in the social structure allowed for and encouraged a change in the professions of female characters in mystery novels, which thus encouraged and provided support for women in the real world to expand into previous male dominated professions.

114

The first two years of its existence, SinC was under attack, primarily by the mystery press and by mystery fan ‘zines (Roberts). Both the mystery press and the publishers of mystery fan magazines believed that the women of SinC were wrong to call attention to “possible” discrimination in the mystery genre. The belief seemed to be that this directed a harsh light on the genre they loved, and the women writers were whiners or worse (Roberts). “I remember being scared at the start,” said the second president of

SinC, Nancy Pickard. “Our very first organizing meeting, I remember Sara at the front of the room, how brave she was, and how smart. It was exciting, fun, a little frightening. I remember thinking, ‘In our funny little world of mystery writers, we have come late to the women’s movement, but here we are, at last’” (Roberts).

After Whitney’s revolutionary letter received what most of the women felt was a dismissive response from the MWA, Paretsky contacted every female mystery writer she knew to form a networking group (Roberts). In addition to networking among writers,

SinC also extended itself to networking with anyone involved with distributing books.

When Carolyn Hart was president, she undertook the creation of a mailing list of nearly all the libraries and bookstores in America. This became the database for SinC’s annual

Books in Print featuring SinC authors (Roberts).

SinC wrote to major publications and pointed out the gender biases in regard to

who got reviewed. During its 15th anniversary, SinC took a closer look at the review process. Since 2001, “the review project is getting four quarters of data for nearly 35 different publications” (Roberts). In 2006, the reviews of mysteries written by women continue to increase. Hellman states that now 70 publications are being monitored, and

though reviews for mysteries by women are increasing, men’s books still garner more

115 reviews. “We are [now] 55-45 or 60-40. It is better than it has ever been before; we have to keep fighting. We can’t take it for granted” (Interview).

In 2000, SinC tackled another controversial issue. The president, Barbara Burnett

Smith, authorized a survey to the members who were published writers, asking direct questions about income generated from sales, how marketing was handled by publishers, etc. (Roberts). Smith stated, “I believed then and still do that we need information in order to improve our lot as writers. We have to know what authors are being paid, what publishers are providing in the way of support, etc. At the time, no one except agents and publishers knew what a ‘typical’ mystery might bring in advance money” (Roberts). She said that she received quite a bit of criticism for asking for the information but states that at least “ we know the odds for making a good living with our writing” (Roberts).

Hellman says that this information is invaluable. Figures, unfortunately, are unavailable as it is considered private information meant only for the published authors in SinC, but

Hellman argues that aside from some very prominent bestselling women writers, men get more money then women mystery writers do, and, generally speaking, it is harder for a new female author to get her books accepted by a publisher than it is for a male author

(Interview).

SinC celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2006-2007. More important than all the

opportunities for improving the mystery writer’s craft by providing tools and resources,

Hellman says that “without SinC women would have been slower to understand the

realities of the marketplace and slower to know how publishing works. And slower to

know what issues writers do and don’t have control over” (Interview). She believes that

116 without Sisters in Crime, female mystery writers would have eventually acquired this knowledge and empowerment, but SinC “accelerated the pace” (Interview).

According to Frances DellaCava and Madeline Engel,

Recognition for female authors has not come easily. Rather it has been

nurtured and, at times, fought for. […]It is rare for individuals acting alone

to succeed in bringing about social change. It is unlikely that women

writers could have achieved their recent successes without organizing.

Sisters in Crime helped do for female authors what the American Medical

Association[…] and other occupational groups do for their constituents.

(xii-xiii)

Hellman says that the battle isn’t over yet, and SinC is as necessary now as it was when it was initiated in 1986.6 “We have to keep rolling the boulder up the hill. We have to

keep yelling and screaming…. Publishers go into fits of trends and fads—they throw

money at writers who are clones of those writers who made millions of dollars in a

desperate hope that they’ll make millions. This is not a long term approach” (Interview).

Hellman argues that it is women, and especially those women writing cozy and

traditional novels who are creating the foundational mysteries that readers want to buy.

“We are out there producing and selling the bread and butter of mysteries. 80% of the

readers are women, and they want these kinds of mysteries. We [at SinC] have to keep

making this known to librarians and publishers and editors and bookstore owners and agents that these are the books that women really want” (Hellman interview).

SinC opened the door for women mystery writers, many of whom were traditional

and cozy writers, but something needed to be done to change the view that cozies

117 themselves were an insignificant subgenre, and unlikely to make money. Enter Malice

Domestic in 1988.

The Malice Domestic Conference

While SinC provided both a haven and rallying place for the issues of the female and/or cozy/traditional mystery writer, the Malice Domestic Conference created an aura of marketing respectability. It developed a conference structure that it has continued to follow for twenty years. Malice tried to establish historical connections to Golden Age mysteries, and to remind people of the fine writers involved in cozy and traditional mystery writing craft. Malice wished to provide information and support for future mystery writers, and it wanted to establish a forum for the education of its many different types of readers. Finally, realizing that mainstream mystery writers’ organizations were unlikely to recognize its work, and since SinC refused to offer awards, Malice offered various awards, creating its own system for acknowledging what it considered to be the masters in its field.

Malice did more though then simply produce a “cozycon” (Peters ix). Peters explains that

When people ask, “What kind of mystery is a Malice Domestic mystery?”

[I reply that] ‘Malice’ is a self-explanatory, I trust. If ‘domestic’ confuses

some readers and critics, they aren’t familiar with the primary meaning of

the word. It distinguishes the personal and private aspects of crime from

the public and impersonal. Our murderers don’t kill for the fun of it (serial

killers) or for a misguided idea (assassins and terrorists) or for pay (hired

118

hit men). They only do in people they know and love (or hate). (Peters x-

xi)

Influenced by the women’s movement, the organizers decided that at the same time that their conference paralleled the premier MWA conference with its panels and awards and such, Malice conveners decided to emphasize their femininity. If aspersions were going to be cast on traditionals and cozies, their fans would bring these issues into the open and expose the criticism, thereby ridiculing it. Tania Modeleski suggests that

To play with mimesis is thus, for a woman, to try to recover the place of

exploitation by discourse, without allowing herself to be simply reduced to

it. It means to resubmit herself…to ideas about herself…that are

elaborated in/by a masculine logic, but so as to make ‘visible,’ by an effect

of playful repetition, what was supposed to remain invisible: the cover-up

of a possible operation of the feminine in language. It also means ‘to

unveil’ the fact that if women are such good mimics, it is because they are

not simply absorbed in this function. They also remain elsewhere. (qtd. in

Cranny-Francis 19)

The conference organizers played with the image and reputation of doyennes of traditionals and cozies. Malice offers its award winners teapots. Malice invites “ghosts” to attend, in honor of romantic suspense, gothic, and paranormal works. MWA has an invitation-only black tie dinner, but Malice ends its conference with an afternoon tea and hat contest. MWA supposedly represents the whole continuum of the mystery experience, from the most cozy to the most noir, but Malice limits its awards to authors who have written cozies and traditionals. Even Malice’s symbol is significant: a cup of

119 steaming tea with a skull and crossbones emerging from the cup. Malice revels in its

“traditional” traits; domestic novels that are usually considered too “feminine” or frivolous are hyped and exaggerated.

At a time when cozies were so disparaged they were nearly dead, the founders of

Malice created a conference that involved saluting the cozy’s rainmakers. Peters notes that “my primary responsibility was to persuade, bully and intimidate fellow writers to attend. I knew all we had to was get people like Robert Barnard and Sarah Caudwell,

Sharyn McCrumb, and Aaron Elkins…in the same room and let them talk. Readers would flock to hear and see them; publishers would take notice” (x). Guest of Honor in

1988 was also a founding mother of Malice, mystery writer Barbara Mertz (who writes under the pseudonyms Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels). Not only is Mertz a best selling writer (and an Edgar Grand Master), but her protagonists are outspoken feminists.

The Domestic Malice Conference follows a few weeks after MWA, and a few months before Bouchercon, literally placing itself right in the middle of the most important mystery conferences. Malice established a different game in town.

Toastmaster that year was Robert Barnard, a British mystery writer known for his social commentary and comedies of manners. His selection suggested that cozies and traditionals could convey politically significant messages. Equally important, Barnard was male with male protagonists/sleuths. While those outside Malice consider cozies to be a female subgenre, Malice defines them differently. Though most of the honorific positions have been granted to women, many men—including Aaron Elkins, Peter

Lovesey, and Simon Brett—have been honored over the years.

120

Malice began the practice of honoring a “ghost,” initially that of Agatha Christie.

Most ghosts are celebrated members of the Golden Age, though Shakespeare and Poe have also been honored. By honoring ghosts, Malice draws attention to the history of the cozy and the traditional novel. Malice also created a position for a fan to be guest of honor. Fan guests are honored for their contributions to the mystery genre. In the past, volunteers at Malice conferences have won, as have bookstore owners, critics who write positively about the genre, and others who devote their time to spreading the word about cozies. With these awards, Malice illustrated to the public that it too had knowledgeable critics and dedicated fans.

The Malice board felt that these awards were not enough. Mimicking both

Bouchercon and academic conferences, Malice had panel discussions led by experts. In

2005, for example, four hours were set aside for panel discussions on Saturday, and another three hours on Sunday. Usually four panels occur at once and last fifty minutes.

Panel discussions included the following topics: “Silent Killers: Mold, Allergies and

Death,” which explored environmental causes of murder; “High Heels And Sex

Appeal”—the new “chick-lit” mysteries; “Mysteries/History the 40’s”—historicals set in the 1940s; and “Murder @Work: 9-5 and Trying to Stay Alive.” The panelists were all successful writers.

At the same time as the panel discussions, there were events known as “Author

Alleys” where published authors have small rooms to themselves. Some of them had topics such as “Pretty Deadly: Poisonous Plants in Your Home and Yard,” and “Tips from a Feng Shui Consulting Detective,” and “The FBI in Peace and Lore” by an actual

FBI agent. Panels allowed writers to share their expertise and to establish themselves as

121 knowledgeable. Panels also introduced writers to fans who might not meet them otherwise. And that was important.

Fans at the Malice conference were not simply fans but also librarians, teachers, and reviewers. These are people who choose what books to offer to the reading public and who often have institutional money to spend.

Malice has been innovative at this type of marketing. Arriving at the conference, participants received a cloth bag filled with ten or more hard and soft cover books. If the participant would prefer other choices, she (most of the 700 or so participants are female) can go to the hospitality room and trade books at the book swap table. The hospitality suite had tables brimming with author publicity material, including computer disks with first chapters of novels, advertisements for writing workshops and speaking engagement dates, notices about book signings, and other tie-ins. The hospitality room and panels introduce readers to new works. Then there are book signings, and book rooms with four to eight dealers, which are always busy.

New to Malice in 2005 was another marketing device: the “Malice-Go-Round.”

Conference attendees sat at twenty circular tables. Thirty-eight new authors lined up at the door. Two authors went to each table and had two minutes to “sell” attendees on their books. They did a quick summary, compared their books with other cozy and traditional writers, and sometimes gave background information. They also passed out promotional material: magnets, bookmarks, chocolate, etc., all featuring copies of the covers of their books. It was speed dating for books, and resulted in Malice participants learning the names of new authors and books quickly, with time to purchase the books

122 they had just learned about. Most of the books were available in the book rooms, and following the Go Round, most participants made a beeline for the sales.

Many of the people who go to Malice are drawn by their favorite authors; famous mystery writers at the 2005 Malice included Joan Hess, Dorothy Cannell, Parnell Hall, and Carolyn Hart. The Malice Go Round is a clever way for readers to meet new writers, and more importantly, to “buy” new writers. According to Judy Clemens, a 2005

Agatha-nominated mystery writer, attending conferences is important.

I have chosen to spend my marketing money going to conferences because

I am a huge believer in face-to-face encounters. Mystery readers like to

meet and get to know their favorite authors. I want to meet them and

encourage them to read my books!...Anyway, it's nice to talk with other

people who don't have to hear an explanation as to why I think something

would make a great story, or why I need to know how to kill someone

with poisoned milk.…Malice Domestic –[is] a big conference, with rabid

fans and a lot of ways to get your name in front of them (Interview).

Malice conferences have shown that marketing counts, especially in a time of limited publicity for midlist and newly published authors.

Though Malice Domestic is now a successful conference, it had an uphill battle.

Mary Morman, one of Malice’s founders, says that “Malice was intended for women who wrote milder, more personal mysteries” (Cardone). These “milder” mysteries bear the onus, according to some critics, of being filled with fluff. In a 2005 New York Sun article

Penzler revealed some significant prejudices shared by many of his colleagues.

123

I admit that if I were on the Best Novel committee [of the MWA Edgars’

committee] books with cutesy pun titles would be eliminated before I read

the first page. They may be fun, they may have their charm, but they are

not serious literature and don’t deserve an Edgar. Which is why someone

had the bright idea to create Malice Domestic, a conference devoted to

fiction so lightweight that an anvil on top of it is the only way to prevent it

from floating off to the great library in the sky.

In the same article he later refers to cozies as “literarily negligible works honored at

Malice Domestic.” Peters explains that Malice

… was an idea whose time had come.[…] I was strongly in favor of a

convention honoring the traditional mystery, for it seemed to me that this

part of the genre had nor received the respect it deserved. Readers had

always been loyal and enthusiastic, but critics tended to dismiss such

books as ‘froth,’ awards committees considered them frivolous and

unrealistic, and publishers weren’t publishing them in sufficient numbers

or giving them sufficient promotion. (xi)

For some of these reasons, Judy Clemens felt a little uncomfortable having her book labeled as a cozy by Malice Domestic. “…I don't mind, but Stella [her protagonist] just isn't a cozy person, and I think the book goes out of the realm of ‘cozy’ a bit. It's not formulaic for one thing -- there's no dead body to start the book, and there's a lot more than just figuring out whodunnit. Also, there is the profanity” (Interview).

David Skibbins, the first man to win Malice Domestic’s First Traditional Mystery contest takes a broader view:

124

Novels are stories authors tell about the world. Perhaps, when those stories

end in despair, emptiness, hopelessness, or bitterness, that negative energy

becomes a part of the larger story of the community and the culture.

Conversely, stories of hope, redemption, courage and brilliance also

impact our shared milieu.

It's not that writers reflect reality. Over 85% of police officers never fire

their gun, except on the range. Yet the portrayal of cops (or PI's) knocking

off suspects every few chapters is not uncommon. Those noir books are

completely unrealistic dark fantasies, not gritty reality. We create reality

through storytelling. The ripples of the story spread far beyond the pages

of the book. What kind of reality do you want to create?

Tom O’Day, 2005 chair of Malice Domestic, explains that “Malice celebrates the traditional mystery typified by the works of Agatha Christie. Traditional includes mysteries which contain no excessive gore, gratuitous violence, or explicit sex, and which usually feature an amateur detective, a confined setting and characters who know one another” (“Usual” 1). As Peters points out, domestic mysteries shouldn’t be considered soft and pleasant. After all, as the term implies, murderers in traditional novels are usually the family and “friends” of the protagonist (xi). Lippman, a writer of softboiled private eye novels, finds traditional mysteries and cozies more disturbing psychologically and emotionally than books from the harder edged of the continuum for the very reason Peters elaborates. “When I’m in bed with a Thomas Harris book,”

Lippman explains, “I feel cozy and safe—he’s not in my neighborhood. But when we read books about people like ourselves [we recognize ourselves in the protagonist]”

125

(Lecture). In other words, Harris’ text is obvious (albeit frightening) fantasy while a cozy novel has the ring of possibility. Lippman says that protagonists in cozies are ordinary people like us. It is harder to separate from the book. The more likely chance that such domestic situations could occur creates the horror and tension for the reader.

Dilley argues it is this sense of the real that gives novels with female amateur sleuths their feminist power. Cozy and traditional novels address issues of concern for ordinary women. How should family life be organized? How does one combine career and the raising of a family? (103) According to Judi Roller in The Politics of the

Feminist Novel, “Marriage and sexuality are central facets of all feminist novels” (qtd. in

Dilley 103). The cozy subgenre draws attention to the different roles that women play, and to the possibilities for expanding outside the conventional boundaries.

For the women amateur sleuths, there has to be another solution besides

calling for the end of the family. While it may not be necessary to

sacrifice the interest of some family members, they do find it a struggle to

reconcile their own images of marriage as confining and limiting. These

women understand that marriage can mean a loss in identity for the wife

(Dilley 103).

Female protagonists in cozy and traditional novels “redefine” the role of wife and mother

and thus “woman” and show there are other ways of living in these roles. “In the mysteries of women, the women who have been the objects that were circulated now become subjects. They are able to use circulation, rather than be circulated” (Dilley 111).

SinC is very clearly a feminist organization, created in large part out of the women’s movement. Yet the Malice Domestic Conference was as much a product of the second

126 wave of feminism in its way as SinC was. According to Jean McMillen, a Maryland bookseller who was on the board of the first Malice Domestic, “there was a sense of militancy in the way that authors and fans of the traditional mystery began to demand respect and attention. There was a feeling that guys who got the awards—which translate to money and sales and success were all the tough guys, members of the old boy network of hardboiled detective authors” (qtd. in Stasio). The women of Malice organized to save their genre, and it is in the creation of awards for cozies and traditional mysteries that fulfills Malice’s greatest purpose of establishing credibility and support for cozies.

Malice’s award system was initially modeled on the systems designed earlier by

MWA and PWA. In 1988, it awarded Best Novel, Best First Novel, and Best Short

Story; in 1993, Malice added a Best Nonfiction category. In 2001, it added a Best

Children/Young Adult category. Clemens explains how the books are selected:

Whoever is registered to attend Malice by December 31 is sent a

nomination form in January. You can nominate up to five people in each

of the categories. They keep track of who sends in nominations so you

can't nominate more than once, and no one NOT registered can nominate.

If you are a regular Malice attendee, you are encouraged (with a special

Agatha Awards Nomination Tracker brochure) to keep track of things you

read throughout the year. (Interview)

During the Malice conference itself, Malice provides the conference participants with a list of all five nominees in each of the five categories. Conference goers put a check next to what they consider the best book and hand these in by 1:00 p.m. on Saturday. That evening, at a black tie banquet, the Agathas are announced. The winners receive a teapot

127 and the promise of increased sales and recognition.

In 1993, Malice put into place two other projects that would guarantee the growth of its subgenre and cement the existing structure. It began to offer grants to promising writers with interesting manuscripts; and it teamed up with St. Martin’s Press, a leading publisher of mysteries, to create the Malice Domestic Award for Best New Traditional

Mystery. The St. Martin’s award is manna for new writers: the writer receives publication and plenty of PR.

Just as the Edgar helped Faherty’s career, Clemens is thrilled with her Agatha nomination and states, “I can always say I am an Agatha-nominated author. My book and name went out on lots of lists and will continue to be there for years to come.

Hopefully it will make Malice people remember me this year and they will read my new book” (Interview). She also explained that she would prefer to win the Anthony, an award given by Bouchercon.

[The Anthony is] actually ‘better’ in a lot of ways than the Agatha. The

Agatha puts me with other authors who are considered ‘cozy.’ The

Anthony puts me with authors who write across the entire genre of crime

fiction. So that means there were a lot more books to be considered, and

mine came up one of the top five. Feels very good. The Anthonys are

nominated in the same fashion as the Agathas -- for Bouchercon. This

means there are a lot more people nominating, and a lot more of them are

men. When you consider four out of the five Best First are women, that's

an interesting tidbit. (Email interview)

128

The Anthony is an award that is given by fans. Books are nominated by fans, and then voted on by fans. Unlike the MWA’s and the PWA’s systems of peer review, thousands of people vote on this award. Like the PWA Shamus award, this award is relatively new.

The Anthony began to be awarded in 1986 by the Bouchercon World Mystery

Convention. The first two awards in 1986, and 1987, went to Sue Grafton. Since that time, out of nineteen awards, eleven have been awarded to women. Of those eleven, three went to cozies (“Anthony”). Clemens’ remark about the number of people nominating, and the fact that men are pretty evenly represented, resonates more strongly when we realize that over half the awards were given to women.

The Macavity Awards, another significant award given by Mystery Readers

International, began in 1987. These awards too are fan-based, fan-nominated, and fan- voted-on. The award winners in all categories were more than half women (“Macavity

Awards”). The Agatha awards, begun in 1988, are also fan based. When the Agatha awards began, there was no venue for the acknowledgement of cozy fiction.

Occasionally, MWA or Shamus would take pity, but it was a rarity for cozies to be selected. In very short order, Malice turned this around. In fact, Malice was so successful that it had an almost immediate impact on sales and author recognition. John Cross, owner of the mystery bookstore Foul Play in Columbus, says, “Awards do help sell books—definitely at conferences, [yet] not so much here. Agatha is the best for selling books. With the Edgar award, it is difficult for the reader to know what kind of book [it is]. With the Agatha, you know what you are getting” (Interview).

DorothyL

129

In 1991, a group of women librarians attending the Association of Research

Libraries meeting in Washington, D.C., decided to create a forum for an exchange of ideas about mysteries. The Internet was just starting to be used in public institutions, so it was the idea of the participants to put the new organization on a listserv. At the time, listservs were new. A listserv is “An electronic mailing list typically used by a broad range of discussion groups. When [people] subscribe to a listserv, [they] will receive periodic email messages about the topic [they] have requested (“Listserv”). When a new user joins DorothyL, she can opt to receive each message individually or in digest form.

I receive DorothyL as a digest at least twice a day, and each digest usually contains 20-30 individual messages. Preceding the messages in the digest is an index, or Table of

Contents, so that I can know what topics are discussed, and who sent the messages.

Initially, there was some debate as to what to name the list; “Agatha Christie” and

“Josephine Tey” were in the lead, but Dorothy L. Sayers “had a LISTSERV-blessed middle initial” and DOROTHYL was born (Mission). This listserv comes with co- owners who pride themselves on involvement, part of the reason, many participants would argue, for the long running success of the endeavor. DorothyL is the longest running mystery listserv on the Internet. In 2005, Diane Kovacs and Kara Robinson, founders of the DorothyL listserv, were awarded the Raven from MWA. The Raven is given to deserving individuals or institutions for “outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside of the realm of creative writing” (MWA Awards).

Elizabeth Long, in her sociological study of Book Clubs in America, remarks

“adult reading studies show that social isolation depresses readership where social involvement encourages it” (10). Over 3,000 members receive the DorothyL digest every

130 day. Most, of course, do not actively participate by posting, but there is a reason why so many people continue to receive this digest. Reading DorothyL becomes an addiction, and readers talk about needing their “fix.” Long suggests that “Most readers need the support of talk with other readers, the participation in a social milieu in which books are

‘in the air’” (10). “DLers”, as they call themselves, frequently thank the moderators and other members of DorothyL for recommendations, and most talk of reading tens or even hundreds of books a year, inspired by the reviews of other participants, and eager to participate in the conversation.7

Since DorothyL is made up fans, DorothyL members include not only those who

read and buy mysteries for themselves, but also librarians who purchase books for their

libraries. The membership also includes published and unpublished mystery novelists,

mystery stage and screen play writers, and television writers. (For example, Lee

Goldberg, most famous perhaps for his work on Diagnosis Murder, Monk, and Lifetime’s

Missing, sometimes uses the DorothyL listserv to get information.) Small and large press

publishers read and contribute to the list, as do police officers, forensic scientists, arson

investigators, criminal psychologists, and experts in poisons. These listserv participants

are not only passionate, but also knowledgeable, and eager to learn more and share what

information they possess.

The readers on DorothyL though are not isolated readers who make little impact.

In his work The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell discusses what he terms “Connectors.”

Connectors are “people with a special gift for bringing the world together” (38). The librarians who created DorothyL and those who continue to maintain it are Connectors in the best sense. Gladwell points out that frequently Connectors are people who develop

131 what sociologists define as “weak ties.” Instead of creating social circles that are dominated by close friends and family with acquaintances kept at an emotional distance,

Connectors manage to befriend hundreds if not thousands of people (46).

Gladwell argues though that Connectors aren’t significant simply for how many people they know. “Their importance is also a function of the kinds of people they know[…]. Connectors manage to occupy many different worlds and subcultures and niches. [In part because of that] the closer an idea or a product comes to a Connector, the more power and opportunity it has as well” (46-55). DorothyL is the paradigm of an online Connectors’ Café, where those concerned about mysteries could band together.

What began as a relatively small group of people has made a huge impact on the mystery genre. These DorothyL readers are cultural arbiters and tastemakers. As Long states,

…Reading is socially framed…groups of people (literary critics,

publishers, or English professors, for example) and institutional

processes… shape reading practices by authoritatively defining what is

worth reading and how to read it. This authoritative framing affects what

kinds of books are published, reviewed, kept in circulation in libraries,

classrooms and the marketplace, while legitimating only certain kinds of

literary values and certain modes of reading. (11)

The participants in DorothyL are librarians and critics; they review books; are mystery editors; and have websites devoted to historicals, or blogs that they keep about their own mystery reading. They publish books, including mysteries, and they teach. At a time when reading mysteries is considered middlebrow, DorothyL lends the genre credibility.

DorothyL is an educational site in many ways. Before the Internet and sites like

132

DorothyL, reader fans had limited knowledge and even less power in terms of what was published. Fans were limited to writing letters of appreciation to a favorite writer or publisher, and attending the occasional book signing, if they even lived in an area where such events occurred and could find out about such events in enough time to plan to attend. If a beloved writer stopped writing mysteries, for whatever reason, the bereft reader might never know what happened. Certainly it wouldn’t have occurred to the fan that she could make a difference in the author’s publishing future beyond buying or not buying the next novel.

Two of the things that DorothyL participants have learned are the troubles of the midlist writer and the difficulties of the “newbie” writer, including a lack of a marketing budget and reviews. DLers are proud of the fact that they will order the books of little known writers they have “met” online, and readers talk of going to local bookstores and libraries deliberately to request DorothyL writers. DLers have also learned that very few writers receive large advances and that most have second careers to sustain their writing habits. And members have discovered the disparity in attention given to particular subgenres. This has encouraged friendly (and occasionally unfriendly) debate on

DorothyL, but has also led to members determined to attend conferences and to buy books in support of subgenres they love. Dilley argues that

Regardless of the type of mysteries written by women or the types of

women writing them, patterns have emerged that speak to the

commonalities of women’s experiences[…]. I would suggest that one of

the most important consequences of Second Golden Age mystery fiction

has been the development of community among women, which is

133

inclusive of both writers and readers. (136)

Because the conversation on DorothyL is continuous, even more often than daily, it has provided a sense of power to its participants that was not possible before the Internet.

This power is the power of shared information, which leads to demystification.

DorothyL also has its controversial threads, which force commentators to think. Even lurkers (people who regularly read but rarely comment) will speak out. In one famous argument that lasted for weeks, Tony Fenelly, a mystery writer and member of the 2005

Edgar committee for Best Paperback Original, expressed her anger at the committee’s selection of Domenic Stansberry’s Confession, a novel with a serial killer protagonist.

She said the novel lacked basic mystery components, and too much of the story depended

upon the torture of women for no reason but titillation. Her revelation of how an Edgar committee works was fascinating, especially for those on the list. Other writers who had served on Edgar committees were appalled that she had revealed committee discussions, something they felt to be disloyal, or they approved of her outspoken condemnation of the process and argued that new criteria should be set for Edgar committee selection and voting. Less practically, but as relevant, this thread led to a discussion about values, and what the role of mystery fiction should be. In either case, there was a sense of “looking behind the curtain” at a previously private, almost sacred event, the choosing of the

Edgar, only to discover it isn’t such a mysterious event after all, and in fact, may be challenged.

DorothyL also provides the online equivalent of handholding and direction for its membership. Just as mystery bookstore owners provide personal service to ensure that their customers will be completely satisfied with their purchases, DorothyL participants

134 serve their community. In a bookstore, a customer might ask for writers who write like

Laura Lippman. The same thing happens on DorothyL. At least weekly, a participant will ask, “I like Rick Riordan (for instance), so who else would I like?” Or, “I order books for my library and need books about disabilities,” or “I’m a children’s librarian.

Can anybody point me towards books for teens and younger that are cozies?”

Despite the fact that mystery readers have such strong opinions about which mysteries to read, nobody has come up with a rating system in the way that Harlequin has. Harlequin has created a rating system, of 1-13, to prevent readers from buying books that might offend them. These books are rated primarily on how much or how little sex there is. Harlequin can do this because the Romance Writers of America keeps statistics on its readers. Other than the bookstore owner, who might carefully handsell a book to a known customer, no organization has attempted a “knowledge base” on mystery readers, or who reads what and why. There are more variables in mystery novels than in romance novels. Del Tinsley, a frequent contributor to DorothyL, suggested tongue in cheek that “Maybe we should start some sort of a book content detective service. Send us your no-no list along with your wanta know about book list and for a small consideration we’ll have one of our qualified professional staff send you that book’s profile.”

The same information that helps a reader to select a book is, in these times of poor monetary advances and limited promotional help, invaluable for the writers of these texts.

Nobody has surveyed mystery readers on a large scale to find out what they like and dislike. This makes the job of mystery writer more difficult. Mystery readers can be quite persnickety as to what should be allowed in texts. Such information could help a

135 mystery writer to either avoid committing such faux pas, which might lead to loss of readership. Harlequin is well known for creating numerous rules for its writers to follow.

Many mystery writers though would be appalled at the idea of writing to formula. They would want to avoid such strictures.

DorothyL has become a writing community of its own, and has had the power to shape not only what many writers are writing, but also what the market is buying. The mystery genre lacks something that the romance genre has, and that is detailed knowledge about its readership. Mystery writers, before the Internet and DorothyL, were somewhat in the dark about what readers wanted. Only by looking at what sold could the mystery writer even come close to figuring out what to write. DorothyL has become a community in which the writers can also find out what works and doesn’t work in mysteries. Robin Burcell, a successful, Edgar nominated police procedural writer, says she has learned a lot from DorothyL. One valuable lesson is that increasing the body count in a book doesn’t increase its literary or suspense value. Without the feedback from the list, she doesn’t think she would have gotten that message. The lessons learned by DL writers are significant, for many of the writers on the listserv state that they

changed what they wrote and how they wrote because of the influence of DorothyL.

DorothyL is shaping not only what consumers do, but what producers do.

Another way that DLers make an impact on what gets written is through their own

vetting of Advance Review Copies (ARCs). Readers of DorothyL will be asked

frequently to read ARCs of texts before they are published. The only responsibility on

the part of the reader is that she or he write a brief review. These are not always

flattering, so the author does take a risk. Most of the time, the reader feels privileged to

136 be part of the process of producing a mystery novel. Natalie Collins, a successful mystery writer but newbie cozy writer, asks

Do I think we, as writers, need to listen to readers? Yes, I do. I'll give an

example. My book, Tutu Deadly, a cozy mystery series, is coming out in

less than a week, and [some] advance reviews have come in. One of these

reviews was very good, well-written, and thoughtful, but there was one

part (a small scene) of the book that this reviewer really did not appreciate,

and she was honest about it. I wrote her to thank her for the review, and

also thanked her for saying what she did, because it never occurred to me

that someone might be offended by what I had written. The truth is, I'm

just getting to know the ‘cozy’ rules, and every time I think I have it

nailed, someone changes them! I also told my editor about it, and she said,

‘I'll watch for it next time, too.’ I honestly don't see this as an issue at all,

but I’d rather have someone helping me to better understand who my

readers are, and what they are looking for. [The underlines in this quote

are Collins’.]

In addition to helping writers know what readers want or don’t want in their

mysteries, DorothyL has also become a popular marketing tool because most mystery writers are given no PR budgets. Sharon Wildwind, a cozy writer in Canada, states that

“As a fledgling author, posting on DOROTHYL gets my name out there to over 2,000 mystery readers. On an individual basis, I have a whole collection of names in my address book whom I've exchanged e-mail with because of postings. They're part of my core contact group” (Interview). Hellman explains that one of the key difficulties for

137 writers is low advances. A few writers get advances of $50,000 or more, but most writers receive only advances of $5,000-$7,000. Publishers who pay advances of $50,000 see the need to invest money in marketing campaigns so that they can earn that money back.

Writers who receive $5,000 or less are expected to do the publicity virtually on their own

(Interview). DorothyL provides a free place for authors to market their work.

Whether the writers are members or not, participants of DorothyL will bluntly say they liked or disliked a novel, a trend, or an idea. Long suggests that “…online groups may amplify the feelings of safety in distance…” (211). Members of online communities often feel freer to express themselves on the Internet then they would face to face in a group. This may allow for a great deal more honesty in what gets said about the works under discussion. DLers know they can count on their comrades to critique their books, to buy their books, and to attend their book signings. This has a larger significance.

Because members of DorothyL trust the participants to tell the truth, books that are loved by individuals and that are praised are then discovered by the masses on the list. This is yet another way that DorothyL is an invaluable marketing tool for authors. In her interview with The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel mystery columnist Oline Cogdill, mystery writer Wendy Howell Mills stated that Cogdill spoke to her about the recent

“trend” in newspapers and magazines of either cutting down on or eliminating book review sections. Mills reports that

All of us booklovers are affected by this trend. With less space and with

pressure from above, reviewers end up having to focus on the ‘big’ books,

as if those authors needed any more help, and the less well-known authors

are left unreviewed. Readers are presented with a smaller slice of the book

138

pie, and they may miss out on a great book because it just wouldn't fit into

the anorexic column.

Lippman says that she came to DorothyL excited because “here were 3000 people who loved mysteries” (Interview). She remains in large part because “DL buzzes books that don’t get buzzed—Louise Penny‘s book [Penny is Canadian] wouldn’t have gotten press

[in the U.S.]. Craig Johnson, while not typical of DL writers, was lauded by them. The

List is unpredictable” (Interview). She went on to say that because of the list, she read

Penny and Johnson and loved their books. With more than 3,000 members, DorothyL has a built-in knack for ferreting out texts ignored in the larger world. This becomes all the more important with the decrease in book review space in major media.

Blatent Self- Promotion, or affectionately known as BSP, is practiced regularly by

DL participants. DLers know that once their books are talked about on the site, they will be shared in other public realms. Madelyn Alt’s book The Trouble With Magic, was

released in 2006. She excitedly told a DorothyL audience that someone on a new and

used book website had reviewed her book. The next day, she discovered that a reviewer

for Barnes and Noble read that review and wrote his own positive review. Her sales

soared, and she found herself on the home page of Barnes and Noble as being an author of a notable book. DLers were thrilled for her success. As Enid Schantz points out, mystery writers have to be successful quickly or their contracts can be dropped

(Interview).

But more importantly in some ways, DorothyL is a community. DLers will talk of reading books by one of their own. They are proponents of the writers on DorothyL and do what they can to promote the careers of the authors they consider friends.

139

One DLer has gone a step further. Signing herself “Kaye from Boone,” Kaye

Barley has established, with the help of the membership, a list of all the members of

DorothyL who are published writers with a list of their works. She hasn’t stopped there though. Kaye says, “Of the 227 DorothyL authors on my list[ …], the Watauga County

Library carries books by 117 of you[. …] My goal is to read at least one book by each of you. Obviously, I can't buy all your books - I am a working girl you know!, but I'm intending to at least read them.” Kaye is not the only one to do this. Other DLers talk of ordering books through libraries and bookstores so that DorothyL names are known.

But this sense of community goes beyond simply asking for books by friendly authors. DorothyL recently proved that its members would go outside the box and create even newer marketing rules if they were needed. In April, Elaine Viets, a regular

DorothyL commentator and a successful Chicklit and cozy mystery writer, suffered a severe stroke. It was feared that she wouldn’t recover. Among her key stressors was that she had recently published a book and had been preparing to tour to promote it. Unable to do so since she was confined to her hospital bed, there was a great possibility that the book would, despite her name recognition, be a flop. Members of the DorothyL community refused to let this happen. In late April, Edgar Award winning mystery writer

Jan Burke posted to DorothyL asking members of the listserv to do four things: Buy a copy of Elaine’s recently published book; visit a publicist’s website to find out about other events in the “Tour by Proxy”; post events on blogs; and volunteer to help out by having a party for Elaine’s book at local bookstores. Burke ended by saying “Many thanks to those who've stepped forward as friends or as kind strangers -- we've had a wonderful response, and we know it is helping to cheer Elaine up as she deals with all the

140 frustrations and challenges of stroke recovery. Once again, the mystery community has shown itself to be a generous one!!”

The “Tour by Proxy” was a huge success. On May 15, Viets posted the following:

About a month ago, it was announced on DorothyL that I had a stroke.

Barbara Parker, Jan Burke, Kris Montee, Patti Nunn, Laura Lippman,

Chris Kling and others started the virtual tour for my new book, Murder

with Reservations. You can see the results below -- the book was #10 on

the IMBA [Independent Mystery Bookstore Association] list while I was

still in a coma….

This most recent “marketing” venture by DorothyL on behalf of Elaine Viets

serves to support Gilligan’s thesis about women and the ways in which they most

successfully achieve their psychological and emotional needs. She argues that

“sensitivity to the needs of others and the assumption of responsibility for taking care

lead women to attend to voices other than their own and to include in their judgment

other points of view” (16). She further states that “the truths of relationships however,

return in the rediscovery of connection, in the realization that self and other are

interdependent and that life, however valuable in itself, can only be sustained by care in

relationships” (127). DorothyL was fashioned by women who were influenced by the

second wave of feminism. DorothyL is a community and practices marketing in the best

and most collegial sense of the word.

Success Breeds Imitation

This new form of marketing has proven so effective that other organizations have

copied it. Cluelass, Stop You’re Killing Me, Mystery Most Cozy and 4MA are several

141 such examples. Founded in 1995, Cluelass has “Deadline News,” which gives the latest

about mystery authors and events; the “Bloodstained Bookshelf,” which reports on new

mystery and thriller releases; and the “Deadly Directory Online,” which is a list of

bookstores, groups, events, publications and more. DorothyL members regularly send

people to Cluelass for further information when it comes to gathering information on

conferences, awards, etc. It is the premier site for mystery information and for links to

the over 2000 other mystery sites on the Web.

Stop, You’re Killing Me (SYKM) is the database to go for serious mystery readers.

If the reader wants everything the author has written in the order the series was written,

SYKM has the dates. If the reader can only remember the name of the character, the

novel can be found that way. Also, readers can look for mysteries based on different

themes: books with architects, or lawyers, or actors. If the reader types in an author’s

name, the site will report on other authors the reader might want. The site also reports on

recently released titles, and the reader can purchase the books from the site. SYKM is

used not only by mystery readers, but also by librarians and bookstore owners attempting

to help patrons. In 2006 when the site’s founder was forced to retire due to illness, a

consortium of people took over the website with minimal downtime.

Mystery Most Cozy (MMC), with over 250 members, is a listserv for people who

love cozies. As on DorothyL, the members exchange information about books they love.

They talk about where they get their books, suggesting places in the public realm and

online where cheap books can be found. On MMC, pictures of grandchildren are

exchanged; a grandchild’s first words are shared; a woman whose husband and son were

just laid off from their factory jobs asks for prayers and advice and gets both. It is easy to

142 read a digest and get confused and wonder if this really is a mystery site since so much of the talk is personal sharing. But this site has done clever things. The most innovative is that they regularly send around book boxes. Many people on the site are elderly, and many don’t seem to have the money to buy many books. A book box starts with one person who puts in ten to twenty mysteries she no longer wants. This box goes to a second person who takes out what she wants, and puts in mysteries she doesn’t want, and so on. Each person is only responsible for postage, and for making a public list of what went in and what came out. Anybody on the list can sign up to participate, and the boxes circulate all year.

MMC also reads the whole of a series over the course of a year, with one book read each month, and invites the author to participate in an online question and answer session. In 2005, all the books in Carolyn Hart’s two series were read and commented on by the list. Another nice feature of MMC is its interest in introducing new authors. Jenny

Hanahan, the group’s moderator, has long made it a policy to have alternate group reads that feature new authors with first books. (Maureen Robb proudly displays as part of her tagline when she writes on DorothyL or anywhere else, that her book Patterns in Silicon was a Mystery Most Cozy selection.) Like authors Clea Simon and Taffy Cannon, Robb regularly participates in BSP and answers questions. But these writers often go one step farther, as they consider suggestions by the readers as to what could or should be changed in later novels. Robb takes ideas from readers about altering characters, and she is considering the possibility of publishing recipes on her website, since she is writing culinary mysteries for “foodies.”

For Mystery Addicts, or 4MA was created in 1999 now has 999 members and has

143 become a rival to DorothyL. 4MA participants refer to DorothyL as “the other list.”

4MA has created its own set of conventions, including T/N/N—then/now/next—to list what was just read, what is being read now, and what will be read next. At least once a month, members are asked to type the complete first paragraph from page 35 of whatever book they are reading. At other times, a message is received that asks for the opening line of whatever novel is being read. Members also participate in mass readings of books that have been previously voted on by the membership. At least two books are read a month with members taking turns asking questions. This is only a small number of activities engaged in by the group, which is growing rapidly.

Mystery listservs have proven so useful to readers and writers that SinC created their own listserv using DorothyL as a model (Hellman interview). Long argues that

“…the Internet also encourages affiliation, association, and personal validation and is thus a profoundly social technology” (215). DorothyL, Cluelass, SYKM, MMC, and

4MA are such places.

Cozies success seems assured now, at least in terms of sales and recognition by fans, but this would have not happened without the combined efforts of Sisters in Crime,

Malice Domestic, or DorothyL. These advocacy groups understood the necessity of working together in community, and the need to use marketing tools that could be created on a shoestring budget.

In the 1970s, it was unclear whether or not the market for cozies would survive.

According to the Drood Review of Books, by 1996, cozies and traditional mysteries were

already outperforming all other categories but suspense. (Jim Huang, editor of Drood

Review of Books and owner of Mysterious Books, states that Suspense is a catchall

144 category and many of the books are placed there because they didn’t quite fit into any other category.) 441 cozies and traditional mysteries were published in 1996 as opposed to 164 hardboileds and 88 police procedurals. By 2003, 502 cozies were published, as opposed to 99 hardboileds and 84 Police Procedurals (Drood 2004). These figures reflect what bookstore owners have told me as well. They could sell cozies “no matter what.”

Cozies are “hot” and hardboileds are on the way out (Gorman interview). The cozy marketing techniques have worked.

Not only do sales reflect the acceptance of cozies, but the subgenre is garnering more favorable press opinion as well. Stasio, despite her complaints about the laziness of some of the subgenre’s newer writers, states that

…acknowledgment must be made of the many inventive style

modifications that authors have worked on traditional narrative forms…in

order to fashion this new hybrid. The modern mystery is all the livelier for

Martha Grimes’ skillful integration of story and setting, Robert Barnard’s

satirical studies of bourgeois manners, Joan Hess’s affectionate folk

humor…. The genre is all the smarter, too, for the fascinating lore passed

on by such learned sleuths as Brother Cadfael…and Gideon Oliver, the

‘skeleton’ detective in Aaron Elkins’s series of anthropological

mysteries….[A]uthors such as Nancy Pickard and Gillian Roberts deserve

credit for opening up the domestic mystery to major social issues like

child abuse, rape and mental illness” (“Murder”)

In the 1970s, it was all too apparent that the cozy was probably doomed. In 2008, the cozy is stronger than ever, and bookstore owners predict it can only get stronger. It

145 appears as though, for the time being, that because of brilliant and committed organizing through what Stasio calls “advocacy groups”—SinC, Malice Domestic, and DorothyL— that the cozy subgenre has built a solid structure. Cozies are entrenched despite the best efforts of Penzler and Symons among others to move them out. In other words, cozies appear to have “won.”

146

Chapter Four

“Avid Readers”: A Snapshot of the Mystery Reader

For the first time in modern history, less than half of the adult population now reads literature, and these trends reflect a larger decline in other sorts of reading. Anyone who loves literature or values the cultural, intellectual, and political importance of active and enabled literacy in American society will respond to this report with grave concern. (NEA vii) —Dana Gioia, Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts

Janice Radway was the first academic to interview the romance reader. She undertook this study with a small sample of American women in order to discover from the women themselves why romances were so important to them. Though more academics have written on mysteries than any other genre, until my study nobody had surveyed who the actual mystery reader is. Although there has been a great deal of speculation about who mystery readers are and why they are attracted to this genre, my dissertation is the first attempt to allow mystery readers to speak for themselves.

By going to the readers who love mysteries, I have found much information that contradicts current thinking by academics about the mystery audience. First, it is generally accepted that mystery novels are inherently ideologically conservative, and that mystery readers too must be ideologically conservative. Actually, according to my survey results, mystery readers tend to be politically liberal to leftist. Second, mystery reading is considered by many to be middlebrow, an activity less worthy than reading classic literature. Reading cozies and other subgenres of the mystery is considered by many to be a prosaic activity. I discovered that mysteries are the pleasure reading of sophisticated, well-educated people. Mysteries are used by these educated readers I found out in

147 answers to my surveys, to open doors to other points of view, allowing an easy way to understand and accept a variety of different perspectives.

My study helps to answer the question of what a cozy is to its readers. I have been unable to find another study that examines the cozy and its relationship to the mystery genre. In studying the comments of those who both love and hate the cozy subgenre, I have found interesting fodder for issues of genre theory. When is a novel one thing more than another? How do readers perceive the differences between subgenres?

Do publishers and writers view genre the same way that readers do? I have found that determining genre can be difficult while appearing very simple to the person making the distinction. Subgenres stretch to meet the needs of the person making the distinction.

Part One: The Surveys

The National Endowment for the Arts’ (NEA) study Reading at Risk: A Survey of

Literary Reading in America (2002) covers most demographic groups in the United

States, and spans over twenty years of polling.1 In conjunction with the U.S. Census

Bureau, the NEA wished to discover the reading habits of Americans. Unfortunately,

what the study has revealed is that “literary reading in America is not only declining

rapidly among all groups, but the rate of decline has accelerated, especially among the

young[…]. Our society [has made a] massive shift toward electronic media for

entertainment and information” (vii). In addition, the NEA report finds that

• “The rate of decline in literary reading is accelerating.2 The ten year rate of

decline has accelerated from -5 percent to -14 percent since 1992” (x).

148

• “The higher the education level, the higher the reading rate, but reading among

every group has declined over the past 20 years”(xi).

• “In 1990, book buying constituted 5.7 percent of total recreation spending, while

spending on audio, video, computers, and software was 6 percent. By 2002,

electronic spending had soared to 24 percent, while spending on books declined

slightly to 5.6 percent” (xii).

But there was one segment of the population that did not reflect these trends. Among one group that cuts across gender, age, ethnicity, and religious practice, reading is not only strong but avid. From July 2005 through March 2006, I received over 730 responses to fifty-four survey questions that asked mystery readers about their reading habits, and in the course of my investigation, I came to discover that mystery readers who responded to the survey go against the trend. Mystery readers visit libraries in such great numbers that many libraries have sections dedicated to the genre (and that often is the only popular genre solely represented)3. Unlike other Americans, mystery readers purchase large

numbers of books. Mystery readers read not only mystery novels but all genres. And,

unlike other groups, mystery readers tend to begin reading as children, or young adults,

and never stop. What is there about the mystery genre, and mystery fans that would lead

them to defy the status quo?

According to the NEA study, the median number of books read per year by

Americans over the age of eighteen is six. The report explains that “this is the point where half of all readers read more books and half read less. The mean (commonly called “average” number of books read) was 18.5. The mean is much higher than the median because of the impact of those readers who indicated they read a very large

149 number of books” (4). Mystery readers read many more books than the NEA’s median.

The following table represents the median number of books read for the 730 responses to the mystery survey for both month and year.

Table 2 Mysteries Read Per Month and Year By My Survey Takers Mysteries read per month Mysteries read per year

Median 4 50

Mean 6.32 77

While the average number of literary works read by Americans was eighteen, for mystery readers the average number per year was seventy-seven, more than four times as many.

Many of the mystery readers stated that even while they read many mysteries, it was not the main genre that they read. 72.8% of survey respondents declared that mysteries were the main genre that they read. 24.6% said that it was a favorite, but not the main genre.

The majority of the survey takers stated that they read a variety of genres in addition to mysteries, including science fiction, psychology and self-help books, history, biography, and contemporary fiction. The figures in Table 2 include only the number of mysteries

read per year, not all the books read in all genres in a year.

The NEA noted that whatever the genre, reading itself created a positive impact in

the community, whether that be greater museum going, increased voting, or a tendency

towards volunteerism and philanthropy (5).4 The NEA also revealed that “57% of respondents read at least one book (this does not include books read for work or school).

150

This means that 43% did not read a book in 2002. [Only] 47% of adults were literary

readers—96 million people” (3-4).

It is important to note that the NEA’s and my survey are very different. The NEA

surveyed not only readers but non-readers. The NEA has created a continuum which allows a snapshot of American literacy. How much or how little are Americans actually

reading? The responders to my survey were, first of all, fans of the mystery genre. And

while there were a respectable number of them who read “only” twelve books a year,

most of the people who responded to the survey were self-selected and participated in my

project because they were ardent readers. My survey did not reach the mystery readers

who read only book a year, nor did it have a control group of either average readers who

might not like mysteries, or non-readers in general. On the other hand, the mystery reader survey reveals some interesting facts. For example, according to the NEA study,

“about 9% of the respondents used the Internet to discuss, learn about, explore literature”

(4). Nearly all the participants in my Mystery Readers Habit survey came from Internet websites, mostly from mystery discussion sites. These self-selected participants in my survey were all comfortable using websites, and they spent a great deal of time writing about literature on the Internet, which is yet another area where my survey participants differ from the NEA’s.

Do mystery readers have particular habits that separate them from readers of other genres, as well as from non-readers? According to the NEA study, readers of literary works can be divided into four categories: 1) light readers who read one to five books, both literary and non-literary, during the year; 2) moderate readers, who read six to

eleven books per year; 3) frequent readers, who read at least one book a month, i.e.,

151 twelve to forty-nine books per year; 4) and avid readers, who read about one book every week, i.e., fifty or more books per year. The NEA found that light readers are 21% of the population; moderate readers are 9% of the population; frequent readers are 12% of the population, and avid readers are 4% of the population. In other words, one in five of them reads one to five books; one in eleven reads six to eleven books; one in eight reads twelve to forty-nine books; and one in twenty-five reads fifty books or more (8). But as reported in Table 2, mystery readers on average read 50 books a year. As can be seen in

Figure 6, my mystery readers read considerably more than readers in the NEA survey.

Americans read more genre (also known as category) fiction than any other type of novel; this is reason enough to study genre readers. The NEA study reports that “In

2000, the book industry published 122,000 new titles and sold a total of 2.5 billion books, a number that has tripled over the past 25 years” (1). Mystery is the fourth best selling genre after inspirational, romance, and science fiction. Romance “generated $1.63 billion in sales in 2002” (RWA). The 2006 figures reveal that “U.S. book sales (net revenue from retail sources) [were] $6.31 billion for 2006, which is a slight decline over

2005.” 5 Romance fiction comprises 53.3% of all popular paperback fiction sold in North

America whereas Mystery/Detective/Suspense is 23.1% of popular fiction sales (RWA).

2,169 romance titles were released in 2002 (RWA), while 1,738 mysteries were released

in the same year (Drood 2).

With so many people reading and buying so many books, it is important to know

who these readers are. Mysteries are popular, and have been so for over fifty years with no indication of a decline in sales or interest. In a time of declining readership, mystery readers read, visit the library on a weekly basis, and buy books (Surveys). What can we

152 learn from mystery readers in the area of literacy? Anthropologist Elizabeth Carpenter-

Song suggests that one way of looking at the vast mystery readership is as a possible social movement (Interview). What is it about the mystery genre that creates such a loyal and passionate readership? Part of the answer to this question, my surveys indicate, is that mystery readers are drawn to exploring character development, experiencing multicultural perspectives, and unraveling intellectual and philosophical puzzles.

Methodology

In order to learn who mystery readers are, I began by interviewing mystery bookstore owners, and I asked them (among many other questions) what I thought was a naïve question: Is there a type of person who buys mysteries? I interviewed bookstore owners in seven states.6 All agreed that there is a type of person who reads mysteries:

female, over the age of 30, usually professional, usually politically liberal, and usually

someone who enjoys reading anything. I set out to find if this information was true and to

create a snapshot of the American mystery reader. To do that, I sent out a link to all

friends and acquaintances who had ever expressed interest in mysteries; in addition, I sent

the link to prominent mystery listservs, and circulated the information to mystery

bookstores so they could pass it on to their customers.7 As of February 15, 2006, I had received over 730 survey responses, with an astonishing 93.9% willing to respond to a second survey.8 In the Appendix is a copy of the survey.

This is not a scientifically designed survey. In this chapter I discuss 730

quantifiable responses. I randomly selected 300 of these surveys to analyze qualitatively.

I have no way of knowing the total number of surveys that were circulated since those

153 who participated in my project were self-selected. For this same reason, I cannot cite a return rate for my surveys.

Mystery readers tend to be educated and articulate: responses on qualitative questions ranged from a one-sentence response to several paragraphs.9 By allowing the survey taker to write his or her thoughts, I have created a much thicker description of the mystery reader, and made the correlation with the quantitative data all the more interesting as I note areas of resonance and contradictions. In addition to the surveys and the interviews, in April 2006, I began a series of focus groups in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and at the Malice Domestic Conference in Crystal City, Virginia. I conducted a total of seven focus groups, with an average number of five participants in each group.

Information from these focus groups is also included in this and other chapters of the dissertation.

Who are the mystery readers?

The average age of the survey takers was 51. More will be said about this later in the chapter. 86% percent of the respondents were female. According to the NEA study,

”Women have a much higher literary reading rate than men in all ethnic and racial groups” (11). While it appears from my interviews with bookstore owners that more women than men purchase and read mysteries, the gap between the sexes is nowhere near as large as my surveys would suggest. Many more women than men took this survey; my hypothesis is that it is because the survey is entitled “What is a Cozy?” The market for cozies is tilted toward women, with more women writing them, starring in them as protagonists, and reading and discussing them. It is unusual for men to write and read

154 them, but their numbers are increasing.10 I hope in a future project to have more men

take the survey, though I am uncertain in what ways the data would change, since,

according to my preliminary findings, men and women read cozies for the same reasons.

In her groundbreaking work Reading the Romance, Janice Radway asked her

participants what their marital status and family situation was; she asked how many

children each survey taker had, what ages they were, etc. I didn’t believe these questions

to be pertinent. I did ask my survey takers about their sexual orientation, something that

neither Bourdieu nor Radway appeared to find relevant. In my survey, 5.5% percent of the respondents are gay, lesbian, or bi-sexual. The majority of the survey takers stated that as long as the story was interesting, they didn’t care about the sexual orientation, or other identifying feature of the author or protagonist. While one survey taker said that he liked to read books with protagonists who were just like him, most said that they “didn’t want to read the same book over and over” (Survey 992).11 Reading about protagonists

who were different from them was a way to “enter a world I’m unfamiliar with” (Survey

100). As one of my survey takers stated, “First off, there are very few Latina protagonists

in any fiction. So the ethnic minorities learn very quickly how to read texts by others!”

(Survey 54)

Of the 300 surveys closely analyzed, only one stated that she would not read a book

with a lesbian or gay protagonist since she “didn’t agree with the lifestyle” (Survey 994).

Two survey takers did say that they didn’t want to read an “agenda” put forth by a gay

character, and wanted to avoid being preached to, but both also said that gay characters in

a book in which homosexuality is relevant to the plot were fine (Surveys 994;136).

Robin Agnew of Aunt Agatha’s, a mystery book store, stated that her male customers

155 seemed to have difficulty reading books with gay characters, though they would read books with lesbian characters. My survey so far does not bear this out. Men were as likely as women to say that lesbian or gay characters wouldn’t influence whether they picked up a book or not. As one survey taker argued, “If it’s good, it’s good and I don’t care if it’s a male homosexual High Priest of Broccoli that is the writer or protagonist!”

(Survey 120)

“Reading anything” also implies the willingness to read books by people of other races, ethnicities, religions, nationalities, and political viewpoints, and the mystery readers surveyed expressed an interest in doing just this. Figure 2, found in Appendix C, shows data generated from two questions: “Do you ever read mysteries by an author of a different gender, race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, class, political stance, other?” This was followed by a question that asked: “Do you ever read mysteries with a protagonist of a different gender, race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, class, political stance, other?” Note that the question does not ask if they would be opposed to reading such classifications, just whether or not they have tried a book in one of the areas.

The most interesting finding from Figure 2 (besides the fact that at least these 720 mystery readers appear to be quite open to different points of view) is the column labeled

“Political Stance.” In the surveys that I have analyzed, several survey takers stated that they would not read novels with protagonists or authors who professed a right wing ideology. No one surveyed has stated that he or she would be unwilling to read someone with either a leftist or extreme leftist viewpoint.

Mystery readers enjoy books that represent a variety of cultural perspectives. In fact, they appear to be intrigued by them. As survey taker after survey taker stated, as

156 long as the story was good and the plot compelling, they would read the book. “I learn something by being plunged into different protagonists’ viewpoints and environments.

The best mysteries give me different world views,” said one survey taker who represented the views of many (Survey 87).12

Multiculturalism, while disdained by some, is embraced by mystery readers and

mystery writers. Valerie Wilson Wesley, a bestselling African American mystery writer,

suggests that mysteries are common ground and a place for people of different races to

exchange cultures.

It also crosses over, because many white women enjoy my books too and

some white men...White readers read black mysteries, black mystery

readers read white writers. So it’s not the same kind of barriers that I think

often separate us when we choose our literature...So it’s not the same kind

of lines, of fence that we build. And I think that’s a good thing. To be able

to cross into other peoples’ worlds and walk in their shoes for a while. (qtd.

in Walton 268)

Walton suggests that, “mainstream women’s crime writing opens feminist and multicultural concerns to a broad spectrum of readers. As John Cawelti argues, formula fiction in general embodies a ‘controlled space’ that allows for the exploration of alliterative perceptions and constructions and through which social concerns and cultural fears can be probed by and through a wider readership” (269). Mystery readers would appear from my surveys to be open to a variety of viewpoints, even to the extent of placing themselves in the position of different ethnicities, races, and classes.

157

Class

One way to measure class is by income. Income levels vary dramatically among mystery readers. The largest number of people who returned my survey made $25,000 or less in the past year. Many of these survey takers are disabled, retired, or in occupations where they make little money. Interestingly, many of those who reported making under $25,000 a year are “successful” mystery writers with mystery series. The

NEA Study reports that “Employed people are more likely to have read literature in 2002

[than unemployed people]…Of those people who are not in the labor force (including retired and disabled Americans as well as those not looking for a job), some 43 percent read literary works in the survey year” (13). My survey suggests something quite different. It may be that retirement and disability lead to greater reading and literary participation. Unlike the average American who chooses either not to read at all, or not to read very much, for mystery fans, more time on their hands translates into more time to read books. Mystery readers are readers.

Another area where mystery readers defy the norms is in terms of income level and reading rates. According to the NEA, “The statistical model shows that having a low family income (or not reporting a family income level) is associated with low literary reading rates“ (12). In the figure on page 158, note that the majority of my survey respondents reported incomes of less than $65,000 a year. The NEA study points out that

“Higher income people are overrepresented among those who buy books. 23% of people have household incomes of 75 thousand or more, [and] 33 percent of books are bought by those with household incomes in this range” (13). Once again, mystery readers prove themselves to be different from the rest of the population. In my survey, those making

158 under $65,000 were as likely to read in great amounts as those making over $65,000.

Income of mystery readers may influence how many books they are able to buy (though mystery readers buy more books than the average American no matter what the class), but it does not make an impact on how many books they read.

Figure 3 Income of Mystery Readers

Income of mystery readers

140

120 116

100 85 78 80 77 69 Count

Count 59 60 49 46 41 40

24 23 23 20 15 12

0 $35,000 $45,000 $55,000 $65,000 $75,000 $85,000 $25,000- $35,000- $45,000- $55,000- $65,000- $75,000- $85,000- $100,000 $110,000 $125,000 $150,000 $175,000 $200,000 $100,000- $110,000- $125,000- $150,000- $175,000- no answer a year Under $25,000 0 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 Income My survey takers who had lower incomes were more likely to visit the library than to purchase their books. Many of those who were retired, for example, said that when working they preferred to purchase books; now they rely on swaps and the library.

On the other hand, even those with low income said that it was important to support their favorite mystery writers. Thus it was common for the typical respondent to purchase the occasional book.

Radway didn’t mention class in her analysis of romance readers, though she did mention income levels for her Shipton readers. Class is a significant issue, since many

159 critics have suggested that the mystery genre is a middle class phenomenon, written by those in the middle class for middle class readers. Cawelti argues, for example, that working class people, and middle class people who emerged from the working class, would be unable to appreciate and sympathize with situations in detective fiction (105).

This is an odd contention, in part because the majority of Americans are working class, if class is determined by factors such as income, education level, and profession.13

Class in America is very difficult to define. Is class determined by one’s income?

It is also odd when one considers the fact that so many authors and protagonists are

themselves working class. What is to be done with the hardboiled fiction of Dashiell

Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Linda Barnes and Karen Kijewski, all of whom write

working class detectives?14 Whether mystery readers are working class, middle class, or

upper class, mystery fans are interested that all classes be represented. They are curious about different professions, income levels, and social milieu. Over one third of the readers in my surveys stated that they didn’t want to read about people who shared their exact circumstances. This is important because mysteries teach Americans about parts of their own society that they’d be unlikely to learn about via other means, literary or otherwise.

For some, class is determined by education level. In Figure 4, found in Appendix

C, note the education levels of the mystery readers. According to the 2000 U. S. Census,

24% of Americans received bachelor’s degrees, yet according to my surveys, 29 % of mystery readers received one. More interesting are the figures for advanced degrees.

Slightly less than 8% of Americans receive master’s or professional degrees (5.9% receive master’s degrees, and 2 % receive professional degrees), yet 39% of the mystery

160 readers surveyed received these degrees! Fewer than 1% of Americans receive Ph.D’s, yet an astonishing 8% of mystery readers participating in this survey hold Ph.Ds. Mystery readers tend to be better educated than the average American. Is it an interest in reading mysteries that has led to their pursuit in higher education, or are their qualities in mystery readers that draw them to mysteries as well as to further education?

Political Beliefs

The following table indicates the political beliefs of the 734 survey takers.

Question 14 of the survey asks the following: “How would you describe your political affiliation?” Survey takers could respond with one or more of the following responses: apolitical, don’t vote, but am politically active, Democrat, Republican, Liberal,

Progressive, Conservative, Moderate and Other. This was a question where the survey taker could check all answers that applied. The most interesting response was “Other” because a large percentage of survey takers indicated that they consider themselves socialists, Greens, Social Democrats, etc.

Table 3 Political Beliefs of Mystery Survey Participants

Affiliation Respondents

Apolitical 2.5% Politically active but don’t vote 0.6% Democrat 40.1% Republican 13.1% Liberal 30.1% Progressive 10.4% Conservative 4.9% Moderate 16.2%

161

Mystery readers tend, as the mystery bookstore owners suggested, to be liberal, and those answering my surveys seem to be more to the left than “liberal” would suggest.

Many critics consider the mystery genre to be inherently conservative. In the sense that in many mysteries, order is frequently restored, and something like the status quo is reinstated, perhaps it can be argued that the genre is conservative. On the other hand, mysteries, including cozies, more often than not promote liberal values; frequently, mysteries promote leftist values. This raises several issues. Since my survey indicates that most mystery readers consider themselves liberal to leftist, do they, the readers and purchasers of mysteries, influence the genre? Or are they attracted to the mystery genre because it reflects mystery readers’ political stances? These questions are important, for it is quite possible that much of the criticism attacking the mystery genre for being too conservative and too supportive of the ideological state apparatus has been erroneous. 15

Maybe the genre is doing the opposite and pushing readers toward more progressive views; or, perhaps readers are already progressive so they see mysteries as supportive of their views.

Religion

Mystery readers are as varied in their religions (or lack thereof) as they are in their political beliefs. Radway found that for the romance reading women that she studied, attendance at religious services was high; 76% indicated that they went regularly to church. All of her respondents were Christian (58). What is interesting about mystery readers is the large number of non-Christians. According to the American Religious

162

Identification Survey performed by Cornell University in 2001, 81% of the American adult population identified with a religious group, 77% as Christian. Most of my survey responders are (or were) Christian, about 70%, but many consider themselves to be atheists; the largest number of respondents stated that they had no religion at all. This answer was more prevalent than declaring oneself a Christian. Also interesting is to see how there are so many alternative religious practices. For more detail see Figure 5 in

Appendix C.

I would assert that such a diverse body of religious practices is a possible indication that mystery readers are open to alternative religious views in the mysteries that they read. Many popular mysteries are published today with protagonists of different religions. Rochelle Krich’s series involve Orthodox Jews; Dana Stabenow’s soft-boiled mysteries take place in Alaska and have an Aleut detective who “practices” a pantheistic faith; Margaret Coel’s protagonists are a Catholic priest and an Arapaho lawyer; Tony

Hillerman’s novels involve a spiritual Navajo police officer partnered with a Westernized

Navajo; Judy Clemens in Southern Ohio frequently tackles Mennonite themes. Terrence

Faherty’s series features a “failed” priest who uses mysteries as an excuse to try to find clues to the existence of God; and John Burdett’s Bangkok 8 stars Songchai Kitpleecheep

as a Buddhist policeman.

In all these series, religion is not an add-in, but influences the plot and the

perspectives of the characters. Whether it be Buddhism, paganism, or Orthodox Judaism,

religion in these novels is a way for the reader to travel in a foreign culture. It seems that

readers with alternative religious viewpoints may seek out such mysteries. The survey

takers stated that they looked for different ways of thinking about religious experience.

163

This continues the trend I noticed: mystery readers seem to be genuinely interested in reading about people with different life experiences.

Also, it is common in mysteries to have protagonists who either state there is no

God or who never mention God. Most detectives are uninterested in religion.16 In most

mysteries, even perhaps most cozies, the implication seems to be that religion is

irrelevant. For most authors and readers religion isn’t important.

Noteworthy were some of the religious comments made by survey takers. One

woman stated that she was initially repelled by right-wing fundamentalist Christianity to

the point of avoiding reading books written with that type of protagonist, yet recently she

read some and was pleasantly surprised. She explained that it is important to be open-

minded, and that she enjoyed the texts (Survey 43). Only one person stated that he would

not read a book by a person who was a fundamentalist Christian (Survey 161). Nobody

else in the 300 surveys analyzed has stated that religion, or any particular religion, is a

problem. There were, some positive comments on religion. A few survey takers said that

they liked the “Jewish elements” in Faye Kellerman and Rochelle Krich’s novels.17 Also interesting were the people who specifically commented about how their reading tied into their religion. One woman stated, “I find mysteries to be a helpful reminder of the inevitability of suffering and death. (I’m Buddhist.)” (Survey 75). Another survey taker, a Mormon, challenged my own views about women’s place in Mormonism. She said, “I read mysteries because they further the illusion that there are answers that can be found”

(Survey 34). She later said in answer to another question that she loved Golden Age mysteries because of the strong women characters (Survey 34).

One of the most common responses in the survey was that “I like to read about

164 different lives/lifestyles,” and “I don’t want to restrict viewpoints to my own as it would be boring to do so.” Also significant were the number of people who said that “I like to get insight into others, different cultures and different peoples.” My preliminary findings reveal that mysteries are used not only for entertainment, but as a way to travel with other perspectives. As one survey taker said, “We become comfortable with difference when first encountered in a fictional context” (Survey 72).

Reading Histories of Mystery Readers

Most of the survey takers began reading mysteries at age nine or ten. When I asked how long they had been reading mysteries, my largest cluster appeared in the 46-50 years designation. There are many things to note here. First, the survey takers, except for a very few, have read mysteries continuously since they started reading. A few told me that they stopped reading while teenagers and picked the habit up again in their 20s and never stopped. Of the 300 survey takers analyzed, 297 have never stopped reading mysteries.

Mystery readers are ardent readers and read a variety of genres, though most state that mysteries are the favorite genre. A few mystery readers began their reading careers in other genres and discovered mysteries later in life. For those readers, romance and science fiction were the two most popular genres. Most of those who read romances did so in their teens and early 20s, but as one survey taker stated: “romances are foolish, so I stopped them in favor of mysteries.” A few of the readers reported that they still like a

“touch of romance” and read romantic suspense, though again, most of the survey takers derided romantic suspense, one going so far as to say “romantic suspense is neither

165 romantic nor suspenseful” (Survey 20). In other words, mysteries are preferable to other genres. While the majority of mystery readers who responded to my survey said that they would “refuse to think that one genre is superior to another,” forty-one respondents said mysteries were superior to any genre, and another fifty-two said that mysteries were equal to literary classics. Without being asked, thirty-six respondents stated the romance was vastly inferior to mystery. According to the Romance Writers of America (RWA) audience study, readership of romance tapers off after age 44; the highest percentage of romance readers are age 39. Mystery, on the other hand, takes hold of its audience at a young age, and never lets go.

These demographics contrast with those of science fiction. Lelia Taylor, owner of

Creatures ‘n Crooks Bookshoppe, a combination science fiction, fantasy, horror and mystery bookstore in Richmond, Virginia and Suzanne DeGaetano, owner of Mac’s

Backs, a new and used bookstore in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, famous for its science fiction and fantasy section, agree that science fiction is a usually male, young genre.

They observed that readers begin in their teens and early twenties, and usually by their forties they’ve lost interest in it. Mysteries don’t to lose their audience in the same way.

The question becomes, how do mysteries maintain their appeal? One answer comes from the surveys: it is that the mystery can be an array of subgenres. It can encompass romance, science fiction, and paranormal. “A mystery can be anything” (Surveys).

Interest in mysteries seems to begin for most people with childhood. The majority of my responders have been reading mysteries for over 50 years. The average age for beginning to read mysteries was age nine or ten, though a significant number of responders began at age seven or earlier (Surveys). Only 17 of the 300 survey takers

166 examined began in their 30s or later. This raises a concern. Mary Alice Gorman of

Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Pennsylvania pointed out that the average age of her shoppers was thirty or older. She doesn’t sell many books to children, or to parents for their children. How can the mystery reading habit be inculcated? Her store participates in workshops and conferences in local schools to get students interested in reading, particularly mysteries. Several bookstore owners suggested that, other than the Harry

Potter phenomenon, children just aren’t reading as much as they once did.

It was not too surprising to see which books that mystery readers began with as children. While there were a few people who declared, “I hated Nancy Drew; she was too girly” (Surveys 11, 4, 86), most people happily declared her a favorite. One respondent commented, “I had ALL the Nancy Drew books” (Survey 150). Men as well as women read Nancy Drew, and women as well as men read the Hardy Boys and the other books on the following table: “Which Mystery Series or author(s) did you start with?”. Note how many of the survey takers in the 300 surveys analyzed read Nancy

Drew.18 I have listed the ten most popular series or authors mentioned.

Table 4 Responses to Survey Question, “What mysteries did you start with?”

Author or Series Count Nancy Drew 155 Hardy Boys 62 Agatha Christie 56 Trixie Belden 31 Sherlock Holmes 21 Bobbsey Twins 20 Cherry Ames 14 Dorothy L. Sayers 13 Nero Wolfe 11 Perry Mason 10 Encyclopedia Brown 10

167

The table presents a few authors—Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Nero Wolfe— mixed in with series’ protagonists—Nancy Drew, The Bobbsey Twins, etc. Mystery readers do this frequently, using authors and characters almost interchangeably. Also interesting to note, is that mystery readers, even as children, read mystery books written for adults, as well as those written for children. Adulthood does not appear to have dulled their interest in classic children’s mysteries. Elizabeth Foxwell stated that during the first Malice Domestic Conference, the most popular speaker was Julie Tatham who writes the Cherry Ames series (Interview). Later, Tatham created the Trixie Beldon series, books that many adult mystery readers admitted they reread on occasion (“Cherry

Ames”). The mystery genre, if it gets a foothold in youth, holds on forever.

Most mystery readers are avid; some call their reading habit an addiction. All the bookstore owners I interviewed stated that their customers would read and buy anything.

The most popular other genres appear to be history, biography, travel literature, and mainstream literature. This is borne out by my surveys. Even those mystery readers who read between 100 and 200 mystery novels a year stated that they read other books as well.

The NEA reports that there has been an overall decline in book buying in America

(xii). Mystery readers haven’t gotten the message: they regularly buy the books that they love. According to my surveys, mystery readers are not only avid readers of mysteries,

but frequent buyers of mysteries as well.

Table 5 Responses to Survey Question, “How often do you purchase mysteries?”

Frequency of purchase Percent of readers

168

Daily 0.7% Weekly 13.4% Every other week 14.4% Monthly 26.4% Every other month 10.6% A few times a year 26.6% Yearly or less often 5.0%

As stated earlier, not all mystery readers can purchase all the books that they love, so they rely on libraries and book swaps. Out of the 300 surveys that I analyzed, only twenty-six survey respondents said they never go to the library. Of those who use the library, eighty-eight go at least once a week or more frequently. In addition, twenty-four of the survey takers work or volunteer in a library on a daily or nearly daily basis. Fifty- seven of the survey takers check out two-five books at a time. One hundred and one of the respondents will buy a mystery that they have already read from the library. Most though stated that what usually happens is that they discover a new author at the library, and then they then go to a bookstore and purchase all the books in the series.

Frequent visits to libraries are significant, as I explained in Chapter Two, because libraries purchase more books from publishers than all the bookstores put together. Checking out books from the libraries increases the possibility of “word of mouth” for writers, which has been determined to be the primary means of positive advertising for authors. In relation to this chapter though, library visitation indicates once again that mystery readers are dedicated readers who both buy books and get them from the library in great numbers.

Numerous survey respondents also stated that when they picked up books from the library, mystery books made up one half to one third of the books that they checked out, showing that mystery readers have broad interests.

169

Why Mysteries?

Within the mystery genre are many subgenres. The clearest categories are: cozies, hardboiled, romantic suspense, historicals, thrillers, crime novels, humorous, psychological suspense, legal thrillers, Golden Age, juvenile, and police procedurals.

Mystery readers crave variety and will read nearly every subgenre. The survey results indicate that mystery readers will read many different subgenres.

Table 6 Responses to Survey Question, “What types of mysteries do you enjoy reading?”

Types of mysteries read Count Percent Cozies 655 89.2% Hardboiled 374 51.0% Historicals 314 42.8% Thrillers 442 60.2% Crime novels 347 47.3% Humorous 449 61.2% Psychological suspense 395 53.8% Legal thrillers 386 52.6% Golden Age 328 44.7% Juvenile 119 16.2% Police Procedurals 469 63.9%

Survey total 734

I also left a response for “Other,” and many of my respondents suggested that I needed a

space for paranormal mysteries. 5.5% percent wrote in this subgenre. Paranormals are a

combination of science fiction/fantasy and mystery, or they might contain magic or ESP

or paranormal traits. Such books are a growing subgenre. They are an example of “genre blending,” and I will argue later that part of the reason for the mystery genre’s continued success is its ability to keep creating new and interesting subgenres. Other survey respondents suggested that I needed a spot for amateur sleuth mysteries that weren’t

170 cozies (cozies feature amateur sleuths), but were rather softboiled or mediumboiled mysteries. According to the Mystery Most Cozy website, softboiled mysteries differ

from cozies in that:

This is a mystery with a bit of an edge. There may be some violence, a

hint of blood and a more sinister overtone, but there are often wonderfully

comic moments throughout, while medium boiled mysteries pack more of

a punch than a cozy, but not too tough and graphic in tone and description.

Hard-boiled mysteries [are] tougher and grittier… ones that often

incorporate violence and some no-holds-barred descriptions of crime

scenes.

The typical mystery reader, and this includes people who prefer cozies, reads widely and seems to be just as likely to read soft and medium and hardboiled as to read cozies.

Taylor stated that there are a small group of cozy readers who read only cozies, and an

equally small group of readers who only read hardboiled and nothing else, but she stated

emphatically that the vast majority of mystery readers would read anything. My survey

bears this anecdotal information to be correct. Further, even for the quite “conservative”

cozy reader, the ones who wanted “happy endings,” “easy, escapist reads,” and

“comforting” scenarios, a typical response from them was like this quote from a cozy

lover: “They are good palate cleaners after reading something darker, like sherbet or

sorbet” (Surveys; Survey 139). Cozies are often what readers read between hardboiled and highly suspenseful thrillers. They “restore equilibrium” or as one reader stated,

“allow one to go to bed without the lights on” (Survey 101). Another cozy reader said that she can safely read them “without nightmares” (Survey 135). The “Other” answer

171 encompassed over one hundred additional responses of categories I should have included in my question. Mystery readers seem to be quite good at making finely honed distinctions between different types of subgenres.

Favorite authors

Mystery readers read widely in the genre. The stereotype of the reader who reads only cozies or only hardboiled is false. I asked respondents to list their favorite authors.

Some wrote down one or two names while others wrote down twenty. One woman said that she had nine single spaced pages filled with authors that I was welcome to have! I know that if I were to ask this question again that I might very well get different answers.

This is something that can change almost daily or weekly. But what I saw was very interesting. First of all, there was very little overlap in the authors named. My presumption was that after I had analyzed a certain number of surveys, repetition of key authors would become the norm. In fact, while there was some repetition, it was more common for respondents to add names that did not appear on the list. Frequently one or more of the authors named would be someone that was already on my list, but more of the names suggested in the surveys would be new. Nearly every person who submitted multiple names added new names to my list. At this point, with 300 surveys examined, I have over 600 names of authors. With 300 surveys analyzed here is a table of the most popular authors.

Table 7 Reponses to Survey Question, “Who are your favorite authors?” Author Subgenres Count Tony Hillerman Police procedural/Navajo 40

172

Agatha Christie Golden Age/Traditional 35 Sue Grafton Private Eye/ Soft-Boiled 34 Dorothy L. Sayers Golden Age/Traditional 31 Nevada Barr Soft-Medium-Boiled 29 Janet Evanovich Humor/Adventure 32 Laurie King Historical/Sherlock Holmes 31 Elizabeth Peters Historical/Humor/Cozy 29 Michael Connelly Hardboiled/ Police Procedural 29 Sara Paretsky Private Eye/ Medium-Boiled 26

Though this survey was directly about cozy mysteries, note that only one cozy writer is

represented on this table. Again, this shows that cozy readers, and mystery readers in

general, will read anything and everything. According to the table, Tony Hillerman is the

most popular author. His series was as likely to be picked by those who love cozies as

those who enjoy hardboiled. Nevada Barr won the Agatha and the Anthony awards in

1994, yet her works are hotly debated. Most cozy lovers do not now consider her a cozy writer. Most see her as softboiled early in her career and is now at least a mediumboiled author. She has graphic violence in her books, and her outlook is getting darker as the series progresses. Yet, many cozy readers picked her as a favorite. Also surprising is how popular Janet Evanovitch is among cozy readers. She is a New York Times bestselling writer (as are Barr and Hillerman). Some mystery readers don’t consider her so much a mystery writer as an adventure writer. Most cozy readers stated that they liked her books because they were funny. But many readers deplore her books because the protagonist is sexually promiscuous, which is allegedly something that cozy readers are concerned about. Some people consider Evanovich’s books “soft-porn,” yet she made it on to the chart. The favorite author chart once again reveals that mystery readers read widely within the genre.

173

While mystery readers certainly enjoy and support best selling mystery writers, having a best seller was not an obvious criterion for selection as a favorite writer. In fact, it was interesting to note how frequently mystery readers would mention little known writers. John Grisham, who has had 12 bestsellers over the past ten years, and Dan

Brown, whose DaVinci Code has over 7.35 million copies in print aren’t here. Most

mystery readers who responded haven’t read Dan Brown. Of the 300 surveys analyzed,

John Grisham received six votes. Dan Brown received three. The favorite author list in

my survey represents what true mystery aficionados love, and it is interesting to see how

different it is from what a mainstream, reader would choose.

Many mystery readers read mysteries in order to be entertained and/or as a means

of escape. As one survey taker said, “Many mystery writers are literate, amusing, and

clever. Furthermore, I need neither analyze their books nor interest myself in their lives. I

also read mysteries to be able to say, ‘I love cozy mysteries,’ when asked by ‘serious’

readers, ‘What do you read?’” (Survey 990) Her response echoes the feelings of many

respondents who felt that reading mysteries for pleasure was enough. Survey takers were

asked if they had ever been embarrassed to read mysteries: Five percent said yes, and

93% said no. Many survey takers were surprised that I asked the question. They didn’t

feel the need to defend their choice or to argue for it as a highbrow activity (though 198

of the 300 surveys examined showed that mysteries as a genre are worthy of academic

study. This number increases when classics of mysteries are discussed.)

Part 2: What Mystery Readers Want in Mysteries

174

Mystery readers suggested a number of elements that they consider important in their mystery novels, and these broke down into: character, setting, plot, the ending, and tone. I saw several trends in these preliminary findings.

The protagonist is of particular importance to most. A frequent comment in both the focus groups and surveys is that fans read mysteries to keep up with the characters.

Readers want to engage emotionally with their favorite main and peripheral characters.

Only three readers said that they preferred a female protagonist, and two stated that the main character should have “spunk and determination” (Surveys 313,161,234; 94,314).

More important than the gender of the protagonist was that the main character be

“believable” (33) and “compelling” (43), and that “the protagonist is someone I care about” (40+) and “somebody that I enjoy spending time with” (15). In the parentheses in this section of the paper are the number of respondents who gave this particular answer.

Critics often claim that mysteries, especially Golden Age mysteries, are puzzles, with shallow, two-dimensional characters. Readers who enjoy puzzles are sometimes disparaged because of their preference for plot over character. While twenty-three percent of the mystery readers for the survey specified that puzzles were important, my survey shows that for contemporary mystery readers, characters were at least equally important.

Most respondents would not read contemporary mysteries that contained cardboard characters.

The interest in character would explain why so many survey takers stated that character growth and development drew them to mysteries (28). This would also explain why so many mystery readers stated that they “enjoy following characters through a series” (25). Mysteries can be divided into series and stand alones. Nearly all cozy

175 mysteries are series. In a series mystery, there is a first text that describes the protagonist/detective, the setting (small town in England, farm in Southern Ohio,

Appalachian mountain village) family members and friends, etc. In the hands of a good author, emotional and psychological changes occur to the character over the course of eight or twelve or twenty books, adding depth to the story as the reader learns more about the background and history of the characters.

One perceptive survey taker stated “I’m not sure there are serial novels for adults except for mysteries” (Survey 99). Her point is that current mainstream literature tends to be all about stand-alone stories. The reader buys a book, and when the story is done, there is no further development of the characters. Certainly among mystery readers, there is a craving for series books. A significant number of mystery readers responding to this survey stated that they would “check out” a new author from the library and would then buy all the rest of the books in the series. Are mystery readers drawn to cozy mysteries because of the series nature of the genre?

Stand-alones are “one-off” books that tell the story in one volume. It appears that most of my respondents prefer series books, but standalones are becoming more popular.

Edgar award winning author Harlen Coben got his start with series’ character sports agent, Myron Bolitar. He established his reputation with these witty, soft-boiled novels, but then launched into stand-alones. His stand-alones became bestsellers, and because of the success, his Myron Bolitar series went on a six-year hiatus. His is an unusual situation, and most publishers prefer series to stand-alones, and are unlikely to offer contracts for non-series novels to new authors.19 Based on what readers said in my

survey, the publishers are right.20

176

Setting is also important to the survey respondents (47). An “interesting location”

(23) and “a sense of time and place” (17) are especially important. The respondents like to have “glimpses into another world” (Surveys). Most interesting was how many respondents said that they found descriptions of different professions and professional settings fascinating. Cozy readers enjoy learning about how people spend time on their jobs, which may be a reason for the success of the new “niche” marketed mysteries.

These books feature a hook that usually corresponds to the protagonist’s unusual or interesting occupation or hobby. Many non-mystery readers have been drawn to mysteries because the plot centered in on knitting, embroidery or quilting, a trend that will be expanded upon in the conclusion.

Character-driven mysteries are very important, but survey takers also stressed the importance of the puzzle and the plot. There was a frequent complaint that mainstream or

“literary” fiction is not only angst-ridden, but doesn’t seem to go anywhere. One survey taker argued, “Some ‘regular’ fiction these days is such a mess--too much goofy behavior

(murder, in a mystery makes some sense, given the rules of the genre) and meaningless introspection” (Survey 138). Numerous people commented on the fact that mysteries have a beginning, middle and an end (14). Many liked the thrills, adventure, and suspense (40). The largest number, though, liked mysteries for the puzzle aspect, over one hundred respondents said that plot was important to the story, and fifty-eight said that they were drawn to the puzzle. Many mystery readers also enjoy crossword puzzles

(which would explain the success of Parnell Hall’s relatively recently conceived bestselling mysteries featuring the crossword puzzle lady). Many respondents told me that they are very analytical and enjoy figuring things out. Survey takers repeatedly

177 pointed out that mysteries were “intellectually challenging” (12+) and an “alternative to

Alzheimers [sic]” (Survey 20).21 Forty-two respondents claimed that mysteries are

superior to romances. They explained the reader is intellectually involved in the mystery plot. The reader plays a more active role in the text than other genres call for.

The subject of endings was interesting. Critics of the cozy accuse its readers of

being too conservative. They charge that what cozy readers want is order and a happy

ending. Respondents to my survey expect or hope for many things, including the final

safety of the protagonist (as well as lovers of protagonist, friends of protagonist, and even

pets).

There is the occasional reader who says on the listservs that she or he will no longer

read a series in which a favorite character gets killed, but most of my readers support the

authors’ right to do with characters what they will (Surveys). No respondents to my

survey stated that killing a favorite character, whether protagonist or peripheral, would

prevent them from returning to a series. In fact, nobody responding to the question about

what makes an ideal mystery stated that the protagonist must remain safe and alive at the

end. The most common desire on the part of mystery readers was that there by a

“satisfying” or “plausible” conclusion (31). Another twenty-one respondents wanted endings that were “consistent with plot” and were “logical.” As one reader wrote, “ I will settle for [an emotionally] difficult but good ending if the book has made me forget about eating and sleeping” (Survey 114).

Many readers also want the “bad guy” nabbed, and for the “good guys” to succeed

(20). One respondent stated that her ideal mystery would have the following:

Engaging characters that I can identify with on some level, even if they are

178

different from me in many ways; a victim whose death is a loss to the

world they inhabited; a setting that is different in time or place from mine;

an ending in which the villain is unmasked and punished for their crime,

even if only stripped of something desperately important to them (Survey

110).

Life is not always fair in these books, but the fight goes on. One survey respondent said that what she likes most about the mysteries that she reads is that “no matter how hurt the detective is, she or he rises up to fight again” (Survey 21).

Cozies seem to be the subgenre of choice when mystery readers need to “take a break,” They are different from romance readers who, as Radway reports, only read

books with happy endings. Mystery readers appear to want a variety of emotional

experiences and endings.

Seeing justice done in the ending was another favorite choice of the respondents

(34). As one survey taker commented,

Mysteries have everything. They can be about any subject, and I've visited

places all over the world within their pages. I've met people that I would

never have known about, learned all sorts of extraneous information about

things I don't need to know (!), have gone back in time and learned about

the world in different times. I have been frightened out of my wits,

laughed until I was sick, cried my eyes red, and have spent days haunted

by what happened within the pages of a mystery. But I think the real

reason that I prefer mysteries to other genres is simply because with every

new book I open there is another chance to ‘set things right.’ In the end,

179

there has to be justice. (Survey 122)

In a mystery, the hero is often “somebody ordinary like me” (Surveys). The protagonist is often placed in a seemingly impossible situation, and frequently faces negative situations that readers too observe or face. Yet in the end, this person often triumphs over adversity.

Part 3: What Mystery Readers Want: Focus Groups

In April and May 2006, I conducted seven focus groups on the question “What is a

Cozy, and why do you (or don’t you) read them?”22 Much of the information I received

from focus groups supported what I had learned from surveys. In fact, several focus

group members participated in the survey. More interesting were the areas in which

focus group members didn’t support the findings of the survey, or areas of disagreements.

Cozy and other mystery readers feel comfortable holding seemingly contradictory views.

As evidenced in Chapter Three, they have their own ideas about how things should be

and what they want. What I’m seeing in the surveys and focus groups is that the word

“cozy” is extremely versatile, and becomes whatever the mystery readers wish it to be.

In the following section of this chapter, most of my information comes from the focus

groups, but where relevant, I insert information from the surveys.

Most focus group members respect the cozy subgenre, whether they read them or

not. But they were well aware that many people in and out of the mystery community

hold cozies in low regard. “Evan Hunter [bestselling police procedural mystery writer]

said you call a cop and not the lady who runs the teashop when you discover a murder,”

said focus group member Wendy Bartlett, yet Bartlett, who professes to prefer

180 mediumboiled and softboiled mysteries, still loves her cozies. When asked if the term was derogatory, Bartlett, who does reader advisory at a public library, said, “Not to my customers, the reading public, it hasn’t become that.” Kate, who was part of the same focus group, stated that she too thought it wasn’t derogatory to refer to books as cozies.

“It pretty much describes them. You put on your slippers and afghan. Cozies are comforting.” Lee, a member of a focus group at Malice, seemed to disagree.

“Traditional might be [a] better [term] than cozy.” But she added, “ A lot of people don’t like the term cozy, but it will never be changed—it’s a brand name like Kleenex.”

Michael, a Saturday focus group member concurs and says, “All cozies are traditional, but traditionals aren’t all cozy.” Focus group member Mae suggests that only the Edgar people think the term “cozy” is pejorative, and Wendy concludes that caving into pressure against the use of term “is actually harmful for [Carolyn] Hart and [Rhys]

Bowen not to be called this.” For Ann, yet another focus group participant, “The world is

cozy, and murder is the eruption.”

Finding comfort is the key to reading cozies for most focus group members.

Susan, a woman in her mid-sixties, stated “A cozy is when you feel at one with the

protagonist and feel comfortable with the protagonist.” She also feels that cozies may be

“more comfortable reading for some people.”

Mystery reader and reviewer Shelley McKibbon states that

…someone commented that cozies are set in an imaginary nice world,

while noir features more realistic violence and mayhem… the world

inhabited by your average amateur sleuth is much more realistic to me

than the everyone-dies-with-a-bullet-in-his-head world of much noir. I

181

read noir when I'm interested in escapist fantasy that has absolutely

nothing to do with the world I actually live in. I read amateur sleuth novels

when I want to read about recognizable people, with what I perceive to be

real problems, dealing with an unusual situation and having realistic

reactions to violence in their communities.

McKibbon suggests a distinction here among works variously described as cozy.

Bartlett echoes her distinction. “Emotional depth doesn’t occur in a cozy.” For Bartlett,

Rhys Bowen’s Evan Evans series is not cozy. Kate says that she “likes to get

emotionally involved with characters, but if we feel sad and there is redemption, these

aren’t cozies.” Kate goes even farther and suggests that she won’t read cozies if they

have emotional depth. There were survey takers who shared these views, yet there were

others who argued that what they enjoyed about cozies was their emotional involvement

with the characters. Focus group member Luci said that she reads cozies because “it is a

visit with old friends[…]. I like to find out what is happening [in their lives].” For Kate

and Wendy, a significant aspect of their definition is that cozies must be “safe” from all

upset. Pat Wynn too says, “ I read a cozy to be safe” (“Cozy” Panel). Cozies are safe

from violent emotions and depictions. Twenty-six of the survey takers said that cozies

were “comforting,” “safe,” and even “nurturing” supporting Wendy and Kate’s views.

This definition does not mesh with all or even most cozy readers, but it is a common

enough desire.

I asked focus groups to list some cozy writers. They included: Margorie

Allingham, Carolyn Hart, Dorothy L. Sayers, Charlotte MacLeod, Laura Childs,

182

Elizabeth Peters, Toni Kelner, and Ellis Peters. This task produced a great deal of argument. Most mystery critics proclaim Margorie Allingham and Dorothy L. Sayers to be traditional writers rather than cozy writers ; in fact, for many mystery aficionados,

Dorothy L. Sayers, along with Agatha Christie, is a quintessential traditional mystery writer. Ellis Peters is a historical mystery writer. There are those on the survey and in focus groups who automatically eliminate historical mystery writers as cozy writers, arguing that cozies and historicals are two distinctly different subcategories. All of my focus group members stated that Carolyn Hart was one of the best examples of a cozy writer, yet she herself vociferously fights that label.

Sometimes cozy writers can be considered “too” cozy. Laura Childs, who has two series, one that takes place in a tea house, and a second series that has as a subtitle “A

Scrapbooking Mystery, Scrapbook tips included!” was denigrated by a few of the members. Sandra said that Childs was “too cozy for me.” When asked what she meant by that, she said that her books were “too light and lacking in character development.”

Even women who loved cozies had some kind of an outer limit that was strained too much. Wendy and Kate from the first focus group felt that “There is a difference between sappy [and sweet]. Sappy makes [us] gag.” Some cozy writers write “too” cozy, and some survey takers and focus group members have said that they can no longer read cozies and have moved to softboiled novels. There can be cozies that are too precious and sweet, or, as one survey taker stated, “I read cozies, but in small doses.

Sometimes they get a bit ‘twee’” (Survey 184). There are cozies though that tell a good story without the saccharine aftertaste. An exchange about this very issue happened in a focus group over the Cat Who… books by Lillian Jackson Braun. In these stories, the

183 male protagonist has two Siamese cats, and it is the cats, as much as their human, who solve the crimes. Braun has been ill for years and just recently published a book after a few year hiatus. The focus group members were talking about her latest book.

Ann: You can get diabetic on the Cat Who [books].

Pat: I felt like I was being played.

Bea: I was upset that the cat didn’t solve the mystery.

Interesting that each focus group member had a different criticism of the book. This was

a typical response to cozies in the focus sessions.

Wendy, who prefers mediumboiled mysteries, loves non-saccharine cozies. She

argues that “at the core at the lack of respect for the [subgenre] is that [the] cozy is less literary—it is not. Cozy writers write what they know.” Kate, who reads any and all mysteries, and has no problems with excessive violence or gratuitous detail, stated that

“there are times when this is what I want. It is a totally different life for me. It is a modern fairy tale.” Carol Noreen says, “I guess I view cozies more as filler between more intense reads. I need to read both types, but the cozies are more quickly consumed and I remembered them more for characters than plots.”

This debate over categorizing mystery authors played out in every focus group.

Someone would name an author or several authors, and then there would be a debate

about half of the names. Someone might make a strong statement about how a particular

author definitely exhibited all the characteristics of cozies, only to be shot down by the other six members who had all sorts of reasons for stating why someone wasn’t a cozy writer. Very few writers were accepted as being cozy. For example, Donna suggested that Selma Eichler wrote cozies, but Sandra insisted that she definitely was not producing

184 cozy books. Eichler’s detective is a private investigator—so perhaps this is why some would say it isn’t cozyish. Yet Eichler uses a lot of humor and family situations thus making her a cozy writer, at least for some of the focus group members.

After stating her opinion about Eichler, Sandra suggested, “Kinky Friedman should be considered a cozy writer.” Kinky Friedman’s mysteries star Private

Investigator Kinky Friedman, a retired country music singer. Author (as opposed to character) Kinky Friedman is a sometimes country music singer and writer, and sings lead for Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys. Kinky Friedman, the character, is promiscuous, uses foul language, drinks excessively, and refers constantly to taking hard drugs. He regularly expresses cynical viewpoints, ponders why he isn’t dead yet, and wonders if it would be preferable to his bleak existence.

Science fiction horror writer P. N. Elrod was considered to be a cozy writer by

Lee, despite the fact that these aren’t mysteries and are in a completely different genre.

Cozies have “less action—no car chases and shooting.” And Sandra suggests that they

“are character driven. [And cozies have to have] some characters that I can like and relate to on some level.” Susan says that cozies shouldn’t have nice people being murdered. Sandra says that she doesn’t like cozies about hobbies but “I love small town regional mysteries,” like those by Sharon Short. Short’s small town mysteries feature a protagonist who runs a Laundromat and uses her knowledge of cleaning clothing in solving the mysteries. Her books feature laundering hints. Her other “hook” is that the protagonist has an autistic relative, whom she loves, who is institutionalized nearby keeping her tethered to the town. The descriptions of the relationship with the relative are often poignant; are these still cozies then?

185

In her focus group meeting, M. J. suggested that J. A. Jance, who has two series, is ultimately a cozy writer. Immediately she was beset by criticism for this. She then modified her statement to say that it was Jance’s second series about Joanna Brady, a woman who reluctantly became a small town sheriff after the murder of her husband that was a cozy series. M. J. stated it was a cozy because it was “family-driven.” It was pointed out that there was foul language, and descriptions of oral sex. M. J. then smiled and said, “I am a librarian, and we are more tolerant.” Rules upon rules.

Everyone in this focus group agreed that Laura Lippman’s private investigator series featuring former reporter Tess Monaghan was too graphic to be a cozy, which then led Lee to claim that Patricia Cornwell’s series featuring county coroner Kay Scarpetta was a cozy. This was hooted down since Cornwell’s books are quite dark.23 If the reader

does not have an aversion to bad language, or graphic sexual details, or gritty descriptions

of violence, then the reader concludes that the book is a cozy if it has elements, like being

“family-driven,” and if she likes it. The novel becomes what she wants it to be.

Sandra suggested that Eleanor Taylor Bland’s mystery novels are cozies. The

problem with this is that Bland writes police procedurals. Her protagonist is an African-

American homicide detective. While she is married with children and has a dog (so there

is a family focus!) these gritty stories are anything but safe. In fact, in one novel, the

protagonist gets a second dog which is not a pet but rather a guard dog who lives outside,

because Bland’s character was so badly injured by a stalker.

Lee next suggested that Mary Higgins Clark was a cozy writer. Clark is probably

most famous for her “fem jep” and “child jep” books. Fem and child jep mean women

and children in jeopardy, and most responders to the survey stated that they did not want

186 to read any mysteries that put women and children in danger; in particular, readers of cozies are aghast at the possibility of children being harmed. Fifty-six survey takers stated that they read cozies because most of the violence was “off-screen,” and that there was limited violence and no gore described. Most cozy readers are adamant that there should be no harm to children in the novels, and this was borne out in the surveys and in the focus groups. Along these lines, Donna mentioned that she used to love the Owen

Parry novels that take place during the Civil War. She stated that the first three were cozies, but she stopped reading these books that she adored because a child died in the fourth book in the series. Lee quit with book four as well because, she said, “I can’t shake that scene. In cozies, children aren’t tortured. That is why we love cozies.” But

Mary responded that nothing happens to the children in that fourth book. Lee responded that “Kids can be in danger, and if not hurt, that is fine.” Donna reiterated that “I can’t handle children being hurt.” So another rule for some cozy readers is that children should not be harmed—but then, how can Mary Higgins Clark be a cozy writer? When I asked this question of a Sisters in Crime group in Southern Ohio, a few pointed out that Clark didn’t use profanity or have graphic sex. So for some readers bad language is more important than violence to children? Apparently.

“Pet jep” might be even more important than “fem jep” or “child jep.” Focus group member Mary stated that “you can murder a lot of people, but not animals.” This is one of the few almost universal rules of cozies. Animals are not to be harmed; and yet, a surprising number of very popular, well-selling cozy books have animals that are harmed.

This may be another one of those areas where people think they have rules that are rigid, but in the end are somewhat flexible. In an informal survey conducted on DorothyL,

187 cozy mystery writer Mindy Starns Clark asked how DorothyL participants felt about mysteries that had a pet killed in the midst of the story; what the reader would do if s/he knew that a pet would die in the course of a story; and finally, if the reader would ever buy a book by the same author again. She discovered that DorothyL participants were serious about their concerns for animals. Out of 100 responses, she found that 48 people despised the death of a pet and 33 aren’t happy about it. Only 20 said that they didn’t care. Thirty-three said that they wouldn’t read a book knowing the pet died, 31 said that they might read the book, and 37 said they didn’t care. Finally, 17 said that they would never read the author again, 44 might never read anything by that author, and 40 said, again, that they didn’t care. Clark’s findings mirror my own whether in the survey responses or in the focus groups. Cozy readers turn to cozies knowing that they will not find excessive violence or gore (the most popular reason for selecting a cozy), but there is no guarantee that all characters will be safe.

What makes a cozy ultimately satisfying? Cozies provide an emotional ambience, and feeling of security for many who read them. In addition, some readers feel that there is even a fantasy element to cozies. While survey respondents were clear that what was most important was a “satisfying ending,” a desire for happy endings cannot be discounted. During the focus groups, I asked if the participants could clarify what a satisfying ending is. Kate said that “cozies are fairy tales for adults.” While she claims to prefer mediumboiled and more cold-blooded fare, when she reads a cozy, she wants reassurance and comfort. The happy ending question is complicated since most cozy readers will frequently read darker mysteries with less heartening endings.

188

The premise of a cozy is that the protagonist is generally an ordinary person who gets caught up in extraordinary circumstances and survives and thrives. Mystery readers are empowered by reading mysteries, and this is in large part why 730 people responded to my survey, and why 93% said that they would be happy to respond to a second. My survey takers believe that entertainment is legitimate in itself. Mysteries provide hours of happiness to people who read them, and that should probably be enough of a reason to explain people’s reading habits. But the surveys suggest that the readers’ involvement in the story is richer than that. Since most readers select protagonists that they can either

“relate to or care about,” the reader begins to identify with said protagonist (Surveys). In a cozy, the detective protagonist is an amateur with no legal professional standing. The assumption in a cozy suggests that the state is unable to remedy whatever social problem has arisen and the citizen must take the law into (usually her) own hands. Richard

Alewyn suggests that

...[W]here the professionals make fools of themselves, the amateur shines.

If anything at all is supposed to be glorified here, then it is certainly not

the criminal, and not the state and police either, but instead the individual;

and if we are looking for a political and sociological position for the

detective or the detective novel, then it would make more sense to think of

the liberalistic spirit of self help which has been so impressively

developed in the Anglo-Saxon countries and which has often enough not

been especially pious towards the state. (67)

Some critics, such as Porter and Klein, suggest that mysteries will ideologically sway people toward a more conservative bent. Klein asserts, “Because detective fiction

189 follows rather than parallels social reality, the genre’s inherent conservatism upholds power and privilege in the name of law and justice as it validates a reader’s vision of a safe and ordered world” (1). She argues that because of these factors, detective fiction has produced plots that “denies these characters either as detectives or as women” (1). This contention is overthrown in the cozy formula. Despite various missteps, the amateur in a cozy usually succeeds in righting the wrongs and in finding “whodunit,” relying on wits and courage and often the support of members of his or her community. Often in cozies and detective fiction in general, reaching the solution is something of a team effort, even though the detective protagonist might be the one to shoulder through at the very end.

The NEA study argues, “Reading a book requires a degree of active attention and engagement. Indeed, reading itself is a progressive skill that depends on years of education and practice, by contrast, most electronic media such as television, recordings, and radio make fewer demands on their audiences, and indeed often require no more than passive participation” (vii). Mystery novels require active participation on the part of the reader, a participation that my survey takers claimed was an invaluable part of the process. Mysteries engage readers and never let them go.

190

Chapter Five

20th Century Business Practices Meet 21st Century Readers

There’s still demand for big cultural buckets, but they’re no longer the only market. The hits now compete with an infinite number of niche markets, of any size. And consumers are increasingly favoring the one with the most choice. The era of one-size-fits-all is ending, and in its place is something new, a market of multitudes[…]. To think that basically everything you put out there finds demand is just odd[…].When we think about traditional retail, we think about what’s going to sell a lot. You’re not much interested in the occasional sale….[With the creation of ‘free storage space’ because of the internet though] the onesies and twosies…sell in small numbers, but there were so, so many of them that in aggregate they added up to a big business[…].In statistics, curves like that are called ‘long- tailed distributions,’ because the tail of the curve is very long relative to the head. (5-10) -Chris Anderson, The Long Tail

The mystery genre may be in trouble. In 2004, over 5,000 mysteries were

published (Donahue). Yet, in 2006, the last year we have industry figures for, we find

that the genre slipped from second place in sales behind romance, to fourth place, with

inspirational, romance, and science fiction preceding it.1 Mystery writers want to write

and frequently, despite readers’ desire for their books, aren’t able to get published.

Bookstores want to sell mysteries. Independent mystery bookstores want more mysteries

to sell, especially the cozy and traditional subgenres. Mystery readers with their

voracious appetites aren’t the reason for the decline. Mystery readers buy the books

when they are produced, check them out of the library when they are available, and talk

about mysteries with their friends on the more than 2000 mystery sites on the Internet. If

anything, the mystery readers want more mysteries. Not having mysteries to read could

be considered a type of social problem. Reading for pleasure is good for a culture, and

Chapter Four shows us how mysteries in particular serve the cause of social cohesion.

191

The fault for the slip in genre ranking lies with major publishers (and the chain bookstores who push for bestsellers), because of their focus on bestsellerdom and outmoded publishing industry practices such as distribution, return policies, and the means of printing. Creative and original mystery novels do get published, but publishers prize bestseller formulas. Publishers are publishing for the casual mystery reader, not the avid one. Such business practices benefit them when they hit a Da Vinci Code, but

otherwise financially bleed them. As I’ve suggested throughout this dissertation, the publishing world has a built-in market of cozy readers who want more and more, and the major publishers keep taking away. To succeed, publishers must change their

expectations and their practices; equally important, publishers should realize that readers

will continue to read in their niches and to seek out books by the authors they want and in

the subgenres they desire, even if that means circumventing traditional publishing.

Only a small proportion of books published in the United States become

bestsellers, but that doesn’t stop publishers from overvaluing blockbusters. According to

Publisher’s Weekly, “[S]ome studies say 500 a year (when we publish close to

200,000)—ever break the 100,000-copy mark. Likewise, [major publishers] already

know that to earn back their first million, they have to sell at least that many copies[…]”

(Nelson).

Chris Anderson’s theory of the “long tail” is useful for showing how outmoded is

the idea of an industry based on “hits” or bestsellers. Anderson noted that all products have a market. Of the 1.2 million book titles that were sold in 2004, Nielsen’s BookScan observed that nine hundred and fifty thousand sold ninety-nine copies or fewer. Yet, despite these small sales, the aggregate of all these small purchases made up a large

192 market (75). “At Amazon.com, for example, about a quarter of all book sales come from outside the site’s top-one–hundred-thousand best-sellers,” writes John Cassidy. The nine hundred thousand or so books that are not included in Amazon’s bestseller list are known as the “long tail.” Anderson points out that the long tail occurs in music, in sales and rentals of films, and on eBay. The U.S. has been a hit-driven economy that worked up to a point. Now, though, industry must realize that consumers can no longer be pidgeonholed, and that they crave the not-so-popular, the non-bestsellers, along with the hits. Consumers are revealing that they are drawn to niches. Producers need to recognize the power of this draw and to provide opportunities for consumers to get their niche

“fix.” Not providing mystery readers with what they want will lead them (as it already has) to other sources. Anderson believes that readers (and other consumers) are entering a time of plenty and abundance.

To understand the changes in publishing, it is useful to see where publishing stood about 75 years ago when many of the publishing mores were established. Andre

Schiffrin, in his memoir The Business of Books, points out that in the U.S. in the 1930s cheap paperbacks became a popular part of the magazine distribution network, which

consisted of 4,000 bookstores and 70,000 drug stores (27). Readers could also get their

literary fix by belonging to a rental library. The cost of books was so prohibitive that the

rental library would take on this cost and the books would be shared for a small fee

among customers. According to Enid Schantz, between 1913 and 1953 in the U.S,, an

average mystery had a print run of 2,000-3,000 hardcover copies, but each book was read

75-100 times because most were sold to rental libraries. Few fiction books were sold to

the general populace until the 1930s because of cost. Further, as the books published

193 were in hard cover, they were not as convenient to carry. Thus, over half of the print runs went to rental libraries. By the 1950s, rental libraries in the US too began to disappear because of mass-market paperbacks and television.

Schiffrin observes that books continued to sell well till after World War II. Tom and Enid Schantz point out that in 1953, there was a decline in sales of books by women writers, especially with female protagonists. Action books, books written primarily for men, replaced them. Soldiers returning from World War II, the Schantz’ argue, wanted excitement and escape. Mickey Spillane is an example of this “new” breed of popular, action-packed and masculine mystery. Publishers catered to this larger audience. This was a time when, significantly, a book was considered terribly successful if it sold in the tens of thousands to a mass audience (Schiffrin 13).

Through the 1960s, Schiffrin states, most publishing companies, including

Pantheon and Penguin Press, allowed books to be published that didn’t necessarily promise a profit immediately or even in the distant future (40). But times were changing.

RCA bought Random House and the demand was that each book would make an immediate profit (74). A hit driven mindset entered publishing in the 1970s.

The bestseller paradigm or what Anderson would call a focus on the “short head” that publishing companies still follow began in the mid to late 1970s. The 1970s and

1980s, Schiffrin states, were the era of takeovers. In the 1980s, Rupert Murdock bought

Harper’s, and Simon and Schuster began producing record numbers of celebrity works.

(For example, Ronald Reagan was offered a five million dollar deal to write his memoirs after leaving the presidency, and his book sold fewer than 50,000 copies.) These were the ubiquitous Hollywood “as told to” books, and these foreshadowed contemporary

194 bestseller practices, including paying extremely large advances for books that often weren’t well written and didn’t sell well. In order to have money to pay huge advances, profitable parts of businesses were sold off in preference for possible bestsellers (78).

Publishing companies hoarded money in order to pay advances for celebrity books, which cost a lot to promote, but ended up with dismal sales.2 One result of such a focus

was the dropping of midlist writers, who each year had increased their sales and made

profits for their companies, but were unable to sell over 30,000 books.

According to Schiffrin, “Today, five major corporations control 80% of book

sales. In 1999, the top twenty publishers accounted for 93% of sales and the ten largest

had 75% of the revenues” (2-3). According to Michael Larsen-Elizabeth Pomada Literary

Agents, in 2005, “Less than 1% of publishers (7 companies) control more than half of all

North American trade publishing. The other 99% is made up of 300-400 medium-size

publishers, and 53,000 small presses and self-publishers.” In addition, “half of all North

American trade publishing is controlled by the six Sisters—Bertelsmann, von Holtzbrink,

HarperCollins, Penguin Group, Simon & Schuster, Time Warner, and Hyperion.” Over half of all mystery publishing is controlled by Berkeley Prime Crime, Avon Crime,

Hyperion, St. Martins/Minotaur, Penguin Pocket, and Warner (Larsen-Pomada).

This trend towards bestsellerdom is problematic for avid mystery readers. Even though the mystery genre is a bestselling genre, publishers are closing mystery lines.

Scribner’s has cut down to producing one mystery title a month. Putnam is concentrating only on bestsellers. Little Brown is concentrating on noir nearly exclusively (E.

Schantz). In addition, mystery authors are being held to increasingly higher standards in

terms of book sales. In the 1980s, a mystery writer was considered successful if she sold

195

3,500 copies in a year; in order to be viable, now a mystery writer must sell, by the third book in the series, 25,000 copies (Paretsky lecture). Selling in the 25,000-30,000 book range is not protection though. This puts the writer into midlist sales range, at a time when publishing companies are drastically downsizing midlist writers (E. Schantz).

Recently bestselling authors are typically required to create two or more series and produce at least two books a year.3 Because of these changes, many popular writers are

finding their books difficult to sell to a publisher, and others are losing their contracts.

Nobody seems to know why the publishing model for mysteries has changed, but

the experts identify the shift as occurring about 10-15 years ago. There was a time when

mystery authors were nurtured. Tony Hillerman, Dick Francis, and Robert B. Parker

were all slow starters, not achieving best selling novels until they had published several

“low” sellers. Hillerman, Francis, and Parker illustrate a point that some industry experts

observe: “There are two ways for a book to become a best seller. One is to make it on to

a best-seller list by selling many copies in a week. Other books sell steadily over months

and years, eventually outselling many official best sellers” (Boss). Now these authors are

among the bestsellers in the mystery world. Mystery writers today, however, are no

longer given the luxury of prolonged time to make sales.

There was a time too when publishers would support their midlist writers with

marketing and editing support. Now, organizations like Sisters in Crime operate in part

as an alternative place to exchange information on how to market and where to get good

editing help. Publishers rarely spend any money at all on their authors if they aren’t

bestsellers. A new profession has emerged, that of the freelance editor, since writers can’t

196 presume that even traditional publishers will edit their books. The cost for freelance marketing and editing usually comes from the authors’ pockets.4

Confusing to mystery bookstore owners and others who love mysteries is why

publishers are cutting back on mystery lines, and why they make being a successful

mystery writer more difficult. Publishers have in mystery readers an incredibly voracious

and loyal group of readers. Publishers could make much more money than they do now,

if only they were to change what they print, when they reprint, and how they market what

they do print. “…[P]ublishers, like movie studios, seem to be putting their financial

muscle behind a few books in hopes of landing a blockbuster rather than supporting

literature in general,” argues David Milofsky, writing for The Denver Post. “What’s

more, the system is disturbingly unreliable. Although most high-quality fiction has been

driven out of the market because it supposedly won’t sell, publishers are hardly infallible

in predicting best sellers” (F15).5 In pursuit of bestsellerdom, publishers have been

happy to let go of successful, popular, award winning writers. The list includes Terrence

Faherty, multi-Shamus and Edgar award winning author; Barbara Neely, winner of the

Edgar and Agatha awards; Jerome Doolittle; and Kathleen Norris Taylor.

Part of the problem is that “the bar is higher, driven by such books as Dan

Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, which has sold more than eight million copies in the U.S.

since it was published in March 2003…Five million has become the new one million”

(Trachtenberg “To Publishers” C3). Milofsky says, “…individual reading tastes are the

furthest thing from a publisher’s collective mind. Publishers understandably will do their best to sell you the book in which they’ve invested thousands of dollars” (F15).6

Meredith Phillips, of small publisher Perseverance Press, argues that bestsellerdom has

197 lead to “declining quality, rising exploitation of sex and violence, and fewer authors.”7

Another difficulty is knowing what exactly is a bestseller. Many people consider the New York Times to be the source for bestseller information, but the New York Times

bases its estimate on how many copies of a title have been ordered. Another way to

estimate is how many books have been actually shipped from the publisher. And a third

approach is what books have actually been sold in a store. Only the last is an accurate reflection of what books are the most popular with readers; thus, it is often difficult to

know what novels are actually bestsellers (E. Schantz). Publishers frequently make bad choices by backing books that they presume will be successes, hoping that marketing will sell a book that truly doesn’t deserve such hype. Unfortunately for the publishers, it may not be a book that anyone wants. In fact, according to the New York Times,

bestsellerdom isn’t even working financially for the major publishers. Shira Boss reports

that

[R]esults are not spectacular, for an industry that had $34.6 billion in net

revenue in 2005. Net profit margins hover in the mid-single digits for the

$14 billion trade segment, which covers adult, juvenile and mass market

titles, with an estimated 70 percent of titles in the red. Sales in the trade

segment (which includes both fiction and nonfiction) grew 5 percent in

2005 from the previous year, but year-over-year sales growth is expected

to decline to less than 2 percent by 2010, according to book industry trade

group data.

As so many mystery booksellers said, the publishers may be able to identify the desires of the casual reader (although the track record is poor), but they do not, and seem not to be

198 interested in understanding the desires of the serious mystery reader.8

Schiffrin, and other former publishers, are concerned that a limited number of

publishers will lead to fewer ideas, fewer controversial books, and fewer future classics.

With the continued reliance on the bestseller system, there is growing concern about the

fate of midlist writers, who are losing contracts in increasing numbers despite a

publishing success that at one time would have guaranteed them long careers. Fewer

midlist writers means fewer writers with new ideas getting published. Also, dedicated

readers are hurt because with large publishers’ reliance on bestsellers, it is difficult to

find the backlist of midlist authors. Out of print books are common, and mystery readers,

who love series, find it nearly impossible to find complete sets of books. In turn, not

being able to find books in a series, or knowing that a series came to an abrupt end, hurts

sales of that author (Surveys; Bookstore interviews).

The problems that mystery bookstores have with publishers, and the precarious

nature of the midlist writer’s career, are exemplified in the Worldwide publication

debacle. The Worldwide Mystery Line is a branch of Harlequin. Many mystery authors

are published by Worldwide, and until December 2004, Worldwide acted as any other

publisher. Worldwide increased the number of authors it published by buying the

contracts of midlist mystery writers who couldn’t get paperback contracts. In large part

because of the influence of the chains, and the pursuit of bestsellerdom, publishers would drop contracts of their writers and Worldwide would publish their works. Authors

received nominal advances, but their books would appear in bookstores. Because of the

problems with stores returning books, and the cost of reprint runs, nobody was making a

lot of money from paperback publishing. When five hundred copies were left,

199

Worldwide would consider the book out of print and would directly sell the books to their customers, using coupons that customers sent in requesting particular books. This system worked well for Worldwide since it gave them a market for their books and prevented the returns that had been so bedeviling them before (Schantz’ interview; Harig interview; Huang lecture).

In January 2005, Worldwide announced that they would only sell directly to readers. This benefits WorldWide in the short term as it would cut down on inventory, and thus allows it to have complete control over print runs. It is bad for authors, on the other hand, because their books will no longer be available in bookstores, or for conventions and conferences. Since Worldwide does little in the way of marketing their authors, it will be very difficult for Worldwide book club members to even know what books to order. Independent mystery bookstore owners complained about this to

Worldwide executives, pointing out the problems with this new system. Worldwide held firm. Bookstores will not be allowed access to their catalog and will not be able to order books for their stores. Backlists for Worldwide authors can only now be purchased by individuals and not by bookstores. (Schantz’ interview; Harig interview; Huang lecture).

Is the squeeze on midlist writers the fault of publishers, or is it caused by the chain and big box stores? If there is a problem in publishing today, who or what is to blame? In The Long Tail Anderson suggests that most everyone is hurt by what he calls this “hit-based” system:

After decades of executives refining their skill in creating, picking, and

promoting hits, those hits are suddenly not enough. The audience is

200

shifting to something else…we don’t have a good term for […] non-hits.

They’re certainly not “misses” because most weren’t aimed at world

domination in the first place. They’re everything else.

It’s odd that this should be an overlooked category. We are, after all,

talking about the vast majority of everything. Most movies aren’t hits,

most music recordings don’t make the top 100, most books aren’t best-

sellers, and most video programs don’t even get measured by Nielsen,

much less clean up in prime time. Many of them, nevertheless, record

audiences in the millions worldwide. They just don’t count as hits, and are

therefore not counted. (5)

The “non-hits,” the “everything else” that Anderson refers to, is what he argues already is the most quickly growing market. These are the works that are part of the

“long tail,” those works under the bestselling radar that do indeed sell, rather than the very “short head” that makes up the hits.

The short head are the small number of works that are produced in any genre that can be declared hits. One example of a corporation that promotes the hit structure is

Wal-Mart, the nation’s leading music retailer (Anderson 155). In a typical Wal-Mart, the music section comprises 4500 CD titles. This sounds like quite a large number; however,

Amazon has 800,000 CD titles (155). Wal-Mart isn’t concerned about this disparity; what it cares about is the steady stream of Americans who buy their music from its shelves. As long as consumers visit its stores and purchase hits, Wal-Mart will keep selling hits. And the bulk of music which doesn’t meet its “hit” criterion will not be displayed. The bestseller system, not surprisingly, only benefits the authors that

201 everyone already knows. Works that sell to a minority, even a sizable minority, enter the vicious cycle of not being promoted or sold in Wal-Marts, where the works will continue not to sell until they disappear.

The short head occurs in publishing as well. Some would argue the hit-based and hit-seeking system has perverted the publishing world: big stores selling the books sometimes have more power in the marketplace than the publishers do.

Distributors and Distribution

According to small press owner Tony Burton, the two largest distributors of books in North America are Ingram and Baker &Taylor. She states that “they are the primary wholesale source for booksellers in North America.” Because these are the largest distributor of wholesale books and dealing with more than one or two is expensive and time-consuming, many bookstores rely exclusively on these two. When a publisher contacts booksellers, booksellers immediately ask if the book can be obtained through

Ingram or Baker & Taylor. If it can’t be, it is likely the bookseller won’t purchase the book. Thus, the distributors have a great deal of power over small and large publishers and have demands that in many ways have set back the market. Burton explains that

If you want your book to be carried by these companies, your publisher

must have an agreement in place with them. For example, with Ingram this

means the publisher must agree to do the following: Pay a non-refundable

set-up fee for the privilege ($750). Give a minimum 55% discount off

retail. Pay the shipping charges to and from booksellers who order or

return. Pay a per-book fee to have each book considered for distribution by

202

the semiannual selection committee. Pay another fee for the “New Vendor

Title Visibility Program” (over $500). Accept all returns [for which the

publisher must pay freight costs]. Sell a minimum of $20,000 net after

returns over two years.9

Such costs are high for major publishers, and are often prohibitive for small publishers, which partly explains why small publishers can give so little money in advances for their writers. Mystery writer Kathryn Wall, who is now published by major publisher St. Martin’s Press, states that “I'd say the elephant in the room is distribution.

The big boys have it. The small presses have it to a certain extent, but generally without the sales staff of a NY house, or the connections to the Baker & Taylor buyer, the Costco buyer, and so on. A self-publisher can get placement on Amazon.com, perhaps a local independent bookstore or two, but anything farther afield than that is tough. By its nature, this limits the number of books you can hope to sell in attempting to recoup your investment” (“Kathryn”). Ingram and Taylor are concerned about money: are the publishers able to guarantee that a certain number of books get published and that a certain number get sold (thus the discount). Chain stores want to be able to sell the books that they purchase primarily from Ingram and Baker & Taylor. They too make publishers jump through hoops.

Enid Schantz goes farther and argues that it is the chains (Barnes & Noble,

Borders) that are dictating what should be published and how it should be published.

This is a new development. Editors at publishing companies run manuscripts by corporate buyers —the editors comment on titles and even cover art.10

203

The store buyers’ greater power doesn’t end with the shaping of the initial product either. The booksellers decide, of course, which books they will choose to have in their stores. Stores like Costco and Wal-Mart support the publishing industry’s bestseller bias.

Typically, a book won’t even enter their stores unless it is already a bestseller, meaning that it has already sold 60,000 copies (Trachtenberg “Shelf” A8; “To Publishers” C3).11

As discussed in Chapter 2, because of the changes in the recent inventory tracking system, most famously initiated by Wal-Mart, bookstores are now able to track the sales of individual authors. Authors whose sales are flat or dip are discontinued. The central computers for the stores put a halt on the books that are poor sellers. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, “Two decades ago, the book industry largely relied on guesswork as it decided what to publish and sell. Editors could keep promoting promising authors, even if sales were weak” (Trachtenberg “Name” A1). Richard Pine, a literary agent, explains that “You’re only as good as your last book’s sale to much of the retail market” (qtd. in Trachtenberg “Name” A8).12

Authors whose careers appear to be declining are encouraged by their agents and

publishers to change their names. The use of pseudonyms is not new. Female authors

Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte famously sold books under the names Currer, Ellis,

and Acton Bell. Mary Anne Evans wrote under the monicker George Eliot, and other famous female authors have hidden behind the use of initials, like J. K. Rowling, who was told by her publisher that she was more likely to sell if her gender was a secret. Boys

won’t buy books by female authors, Rowling was told by her new publisher (Fry). More

recently, male authors too have adopted pseudonyms, and for similar reasons! These

authors write on subjects that are considered “feminine;” frequently the advice given by

204 agents is to use a female name in order to sell their works to a particular segment of the reading public. Formerly successful midlist mystery writers like Dean James, with seven cozy mystery novels, has switched to a female pseudonym, and his new book featured a female protagonist (Trachtenberg “Name” A8). M. D. Lake, creator of the Peggy O’Neill mystery series (featuring a college police officer), is a male writer of a cozy series. Many focus group members were surprised to discover that these books had a male writer, and a few suggested they might not have so readily picked up the novels had they known.

Authors see it as part of the game of being gainfully published. If they don’t change their names, their books won’t be appear in stores.13 Of course, if they don’t change their

names, or if they do and the books don’t sell, the writers’ careers will be curtailed or end.

Just as with publishing, decisions as to where books are marketed rest with a very small number of decision makers. According to a Publishers Weekly article, 31% of all

romance sales occur at mass merchandise stores such as Target, Wal-Mart, and K-Mart,

up from 20% a mere four years ago. At K-Mart alone, book sales have increased 35% in

two years. (Kirch) The assumption among lovers of the mystery genre, since it trails so

closely to romance genre figures, is that the impact on the mystery genre is just as great.

According to Radine Trees Nehring, mystery writer and independent mystery bookstore owner, it is absolutely necessary to be cognizant of Wal-Mart and other superstores.

How does each one of us feel about a world where the style and quality of

merchandise available to all of us (including books) is dictated by Wal-

Mart? We might want to consider where this Wal-Mart merchandising—

and accompanying subtle mind-control--is taking us[…]. Think about all

the mystery novels they refuse to stock because ‘they’ don't consider them

205

‘appropriate.’… Unfortunately Jim's [Huang] comment, ‘I would hate to

see Wal-Mart decide the Edgar winners’ is far too close to possible for

consideration as a joke or even a witty remark.

Wal-Mart and the other superstores are so successful because of the volume of

books that they buy. The superstores can buy so many books because of what many

consider to be an outmoded system of returns.

Returns

For over seventy years, bookstores have been able to return books that don’t

sell (Schriffrin 27). This has a rationale. If stores know that they can return books that

don’t sell for a full price, then they are more likely to order books, more than they

might sell. They will take risks on books and authors that aren’t certain sellers.

Unfortunately, the return system has been badly abused, and the only people who

benefit are the superstores. According to Chris Roerdon of Market Savvy Editing,

“Many smaller publishers have been put out of business by initial success: they go into

debt to reprint large orders received that later sustain heavy returns, which cannot be

used to fill future orders because the books are slightly shopworn or damaged in

shipping by careless repacking.”14

Smaller, independent bookstores don’t benefit either. They take advantage

of the return system, but because they are unable to purchase in the volume of the

larger stores, they are shut out from achieving the same return policies. Some

publishers won’t deal with small stores, or will allow only so many returns. Schantz

states that the large chain stores are sending back more returns than ever. Large returns

206

make estimates of sales difficult. As mentioned earlier, The New York Times best

seller list is suspect. Enid Schantz explains that it is based on how many books were

shipped, not on how many books actually sold. Many of the books on the bestseller list

actually have huge returns.

The return system is difficult for small publishers as well. Poisoned Pen

Press, the most successful small, independent publisher of mysteries, had at one time an

agreement with Borders bookstores to have its novels sold in their stores. This should

have been win-win for both, since Poisoned Pen Press is publishing several rising stars

in the mystery world including Agatha, Anthony, and Edgar award nominees. Borders’

primary interest in having these books from Poisoned Pen was as “wallpaper” (E.

Schantz). Books were ordered and piled on top of bookcases so that there would be a lot

of books with pretty bindings (Trachtenberg “Shelf” A8). Unfortunately, Borders

placed large orders and then returned the books. Poisoned Pen could not resell these

books and lost money. Poisoned Pen now has a policy of not selling to Borders (E.

Schantz interview; Tribble interview). Rue Morgue Press and Felony and Mayhem, a

new press that reprints old mysteries, will not sell to chains because of the returns issue

(E. Schantz). One can not now find books by award winning authors Judy Clemens or

Beverle Graves Myers in Borders. Only by visiting a mystery bookstore or ordering

directly from the publisher will the serious mystery reader be able to find their books.

Of course, in order to know to order these books in the first place, the serious reader

would have to know that they existed.

Change Is Afoot

207

Return policies are responsible for much of the environmental and financial cost of books, but they may soon be a remnant of the past. According to Bookseller magazine, “A set of best practice guidelines for new title supply, ordering and returns is about to shake up the industry and help bring the book supply chain in the 21st century”

(Fraser). These guidelines were created by the Booksellers Association annual conference in Glasgow, Scotland. Waterstone’s product director and co-chair of the group, David Roche, states that “the most positive outcome should be initial print runs which accurately reflect the demand from book retailers. It will help avoid overproduction, and all the inefficiencies and negative environmental impact that go hand in hand with wastage” (Fraser). Many industry leaders are already voluntarily following the guidelines. Such guidelines could have enormous impact on the industry.

Imagine a system which prevents, or at least severely limits returns because books were published on demand.

Chris Anderson suggests that because of technological innovations, we are now entering “a long tail” phase. Consumers are now buying the music that isn’t hits, and reading the books that aren’t hits, and watching the movies that aren’t hits. And the producers and the sellers are making money. Anderson’s thesis could be summed up by the following: 1) the tail of available variety is far longer than we realize, 2) the tail is now within reach economically, 3) and “all those niches, when aggregated, can make up a significant market” (10). When Anderson talks of niches, he is talking about all those works that aren’t hits, the 95% of everything else.

Anderson believes further that 1) there are more niche goods than hits; 2) the cost of supplying those niches is now falling dramatically; 3) that stores need to do more than

208 offer variety; consumers must be given ways to find niches that suit their particular needs and interests; 4) more variety and more “filters,” to help consumers sort through the abundance, flattens the demand curve and leads to fewer hits and more popular niches; 5) niche products collectively can comprise a market rivaling the hits, and 6) “the natural shape of demand is revealed undistorted by distribution bottlenecks, scarcity of info and limited shelf space” when the long tail is observed (53). Anderson thinks the future is bright because of the Internet and the “unlimited” shelf space of cyberspace. Bits do not take up physical space and can be duplicated without cost; thus, sellers of music, and books, and movies need only provide a means of accessing the material. Huge storehouses with expensive shelf space are no longer necessary.

If Anderson is correct, the “Long Tail” could be transformative. All products, whether music, or books, or movies, have an audience, even if small. The “Long Tail” theory observes that since shelf space is no longer necessary, there is little or no cost to preserving these different products, and everything to gain by making the consumer happy to purchase or access the media that she wishes to have. The consumer gets the variety she craves, and the producer gets the sale.

Readers used to settle for what the local library and bookstore had. Now, the avid mystery reader can find almost anything she wants by visiting Amazon, independent mystery bookstores, and used bookstores on the web; she can find alternative delivery systems and receive her books online, through email, or she can print them out herself.

The mystery writer who has lost a contract or can’t get published can join one of the estimated 53,000 small presses or even self-publish. Instead of a limited series of choices from production to distribution, readers and writers have an apparent abundance. “If the

209 twentieth-century entertainment industry was about hits,” says Anderson, “the twenty- first will be equally about niches” (16). It could be a promising time for mystery readers and writers.

Technological Changes

It is likely that because of technological innovations, publishing in the early 21st century will create a wholly new system of producing and acquiring books. Jason

Epstein, former Doubleday editor, and cofounder of the New York Review of Books, believes that “today the book business stands at the edge of a vast transformation, one that promises much opportunity for innovation: much trial, much error, much improvement. Long before another half-century passes, the industry as I have known it for the past fifty years will have been altered almost beyond recognition” (2).

Publishers want writers who can sell over 60,000 books. Most writers can’t sell over 60,000 books, and book runs of over 60,000 often have many returns. This makes the whole process expensive and time consuming. An excuse for getting rid of midlist writers is that they don’t sell enough books. An excuse for not reprinting an author’s backlist is that it is too expensive. And what happens if the books don’t sell? These problems could be avoided if a new press were created that could cheaply print the books that were needed when they were wanted. Publishers would no longer have to guess.

Bookstores would no longer be stuck with surplus.

Print on demand is one of the technological innovations that could transform publishing. Amazon recently acquired BookSurge, an on-demand book printer, and

MobiPocket, an e-book company. Richard Curtis of Publisher’s Weekly suggests that

210 these acquisitions could signal a change for the publishing industry. Curtis concurs that the biggest publishing headache is returns, but Amazon may have made the need for returns disappear, if the acquired companies allow Amazon to create a “demand-and- supply” model (74). Curtis sees a time when Amazon could print books in its own facilities and he muses that this makes much more sense than publishers’ current practice of “printing a million copies and selling half of them” (74). With the new model,

Amazon can print half a million and sell all of them (74). Printing on demand would allow Amazon to eliminate physical inventory altogether, greatly reducing costs because the something that is never printed and never bought costs nothing (Anderson 94-96).

In 2006, Jason Epstein launched the Espresso Machine. This was a creation of his company On Demand Books. Epstein’s goal is to give people the ability to order books online that can print in any language. According to a Publisher’s Weekly article, the

machine “can print black-and-white text for a 300-page paperback with a four-color cover, and bind it together in three minutes” (Rosen). Epstein argues that "In theory, every book printed will be digitized, which means the market will be radically

decentralized” (Rosen). Judith Rosen says that the goal of the company is to be able to

print “slow-selling titles or books that have temporarily gone out of stock as well as rare

books.” Epstein’s book machines are now in Washington, D.C., New York City, and

Alexandria, Egypt. If the machine proves successful, publishing mores will change dramatically. Because returns will be eliminated, and because publishers will be able to do a better job of targeting sales, major publishers may consider changing their emphasis on bestsellers.

Amazon hasn’t yet rolled out its print on demand service for books on a large

211 scale, but they are leading the industry in other areas. One niche they are establishing is that of print on demand short stories. These short stories range across genres. According to Amazon’s own rules, most published writers can apply to be part of the program, called “Amazon Shorts.” Readers can download a short story from known authors for only 49 cents. Such mystery writers as James Lee Burke, Stuart Woods, Robin Cook, F.

Paul Wilson, Julie Hyzy, and Michael Black all have supplied stories. According to award winning mystery writer Joe Konrath, “FOUR PACK OF JACK is a collection of four short stories all related to my Lt. Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels series. If you've enjoyed

Whiskey Sour and Bloody Mary and can't wait until Rusty Nail comes out…, this should

tide you over until then. If you've never read me before, now you can give me a try for

pocket change.” Mystery writers speaking of Amazon Shorts on the SinC website

suggested that indeed this was the benefit to writers of such a program.

Forty-nine cents a story is certainly not going to garner anyone riches, but it might

be a way to introduce readers to a new author they wouldn’t want to read for $15. To

participate, the customer buys a story from Amazon the way she would purchase anything else. Next, Amazon sends to her email account a PDF copy to print; the customer can also read the story on the Amazon site, but the story belongs to the reader.

Amazon saves a copy, and the customer can download it unlimited times. At a time

when many authors and readers declare that there are limited venues for short stories, this

provides a sweeping one.

Used Books

Mystery readers love series, but many are unable to find complete series in libraries

212 or bookstores. One avenue to pursue is to seek the books in used bookstores, and the

Internet has allowed consumers greater power than ever in history to track the books they want to own and read. According to IPSOS Book Trends, “17% of all books bought in

2004 were used, worth 8% of the market by value” (“Used” 18). In fact, 13% of US households buy only used books. (“Used” 18). According to the Book Industry Study

Group, used book sales topped $2.2 billion in 2004, an 11% increase over 2003. Much of that growth can be credited to the Internet. While used sales at traditional stores rose a modest 4.6%, on-line used book sales jumped 33% to just over $600 million. Michael

Powell states, “What the Internet has done is to make the used market more visible. The largest retailer of used books in America is still Goodwill Industries. But the Internet has increased the velocity of sales, and the dollars involved. It has also decimated the ranks of used book stores” (qtd. in “Used” 18)

But in another way the Internet has helped used bookstores. Alibris set up a way to create inventory for used bookstores around the country. Anderson suggests that “the collective inventory of some 12,000 bookstores could rival the best library in the world.”

This database “effectively [made] out of print obsolete” (87). Millions of customers were consequently brought to the used bookstore market. “After years of stagnation, the 2.2 billion market is now growing at double digits” (Anderson 87-88).

For some used bookstores, having their stock online has been beneficial. Old stock that never sold now finds its way into the eager hands of distant readers. Michael

O’Brien of Six Steps Down bookstore in Cleveland nearly closed his doors in 2006 because the store was not drawing the customers it used to. Being able to advertise and sell his stock through Internet sites was one way his store was rescued.15

213

Used books are shared in other ways by readers. It is now commonplace for even libraries to lack some of the books in a particular series. Many readers have resorted to online resources. One of the most popular sites for finding books missing in series is

Paperbackswap.com, where readers can exchange unwanted books for credits that can be converted to other more desired books from the pool of over one million books. This is one answer to the reprint and backlist problem (PBS).

There is a downside to the great access to used books for authors. If readers can purchase used books at low prices, what would lead them to buy new books for which authors get paid and upon which their contracts depend? In surveys, focus groups, and on listservs, mystery readers state that while they will go to used bookstores and web sites to buy out of print books, or to try an author, they buy new books to support authors.

A typical reader reports in my survey that she will check out a book from a library, or buy a used copy to check out a new author, and then will buy, new, all the books in the author’s series. Some readers in the focus groups stated that they actually wrote down dates in personal calendars of release dates of a favorite author’s newest book. Wendy

Bartlett mentioned writing into her appointment diary “Molly Day,” indicating when the latest Rhys Bowen would be out in bookstores. Mystery readers state that part of their

“job” is to support the writers that they care about.

Small Presses

Many unpublished writers think that only major publishers should be approached with their manuscripts. Michael Coffey points out that, “One could argue that small press publishing has come full circle. Three decades ago, it was closer to a cottage industry

214 than a business. Today, it is where publishing enjoys its greatest growth.” In fact, small publishers (publishers who do small print runs and have smaller sales goals for their writers) are producing more mysteries than the major publishers, and are also more likely to take a chance on a new writer. Owners of small presses wear many hats: they in effect nurture new mystery writers; they reprint books, especially books from the initial Golden

Age of mystery that would be lost otherwise; and they provide a home for dropped midlist writers.

How many small publishers are there in the United States? In 2005, Publishers

Weekly said that more than 7000 publishers come into being every year. According to

the Small Press Center for Independent Publishing, “50,000 is a conservative estimate of

the small independent publishing houses across the country.”16 According to the Book

Industry Study Group report conducted in 2005,

There are well over 600,000 small presses. Our definition of a

small press is one with an annual revenue of less than $50 million. Of this

600,000+, 63,000 generate sales of $14.2 billion/year. 3,600 have an

annual revenue of $1 million to $49.9 million and generate sales of $11.5

billion/year. 594,000 small presses generate sales revenue of $2.7

billion/year, which averages out to about $5,000 per company per year.17

Sharon Wildwind, a Canadian mystery writer, argues about the last figure that “In

many cases this isn't enough income to keep the press in business. Or, these may be

presses that are being published for a personal reason and the owners will contribute as

much equity as they can afford to keep the press in business” (“Small”). The number of

small presses is difficult to know overall though the Mystery Writers of America

215

(MWA), but in 2007, MWA put the figure of mystery publishers at 179. In order to join the premier organization of mystery writing professionals, an applicant must fulfill several criteria, including having been published (the professional has to have received “a cumulative minimum of $100 for his or her work” and proof of payment is required), and the work must have been published by an approved publisher (“Join”). An approved publisher is one who has played fair with its writers.18 Losing the approval of MWA

could result in loss of prestige for the author, since the author is invited into the

organization on the strength of writing and professional sales. MWA has a list of 136

approved publishers, five of which are currently in hiatus. Twenty-eight publishers are

on the not approved list, including Iuniverse and xlibris (not the Random House imprint

of many years ago). Fifteen publishers are on a “case by case” basis. Such criteria are

significant because “only active members may vote, hold office and serve on Edgar

committees in MWA” (MWA). Who publishes the writers is of great significance

professionally, monetarily, and otherwise.19

Small presses are a necessary antidote to the bestsellers of the major publishers, and their frequent success is an example of the Long Tail and of mystery readers’ desire for a diet of reading that surpasses bestsellers. A Publishers Weekly article explains

“small presses pick up the slack” (Williams). Small presses, as always, have their

struggles, but some small publishers have established secure niches for themselves.

Perhaps the most successful is Poisoned Pen Press. Established in 1996 by ex-

librarian Barbara Peters, Poisoned Pen Press was created because Peters saw

“consolidations in the publishing industry as a terrible threat to cultural diversity and to

the survival of the independent bookstore - ultimately becoming a subtle form of

216 censorship” (Peters). Newly published writers Judy Clemens and Beverle Myers suggested in interviews that Poisoned Pen nurtures writers and prepares them to be professionals. At a time when even major publishing companies expect authors to hire their own editors and to do their own public relations, Poisoned Pen supports its writers with publicity and marketing. Unlike major publishers who value only their bestselling authors, Poisoned Pen Press takes special interest in all of its writers. It has been so successful, in fact, that even its protégés who have been nominated for awards (Judy

Clemens, the Agatha award) or whose manuscripts have been bought for movie rights

(Margaret Dumas’ Speak Now) have remained with the publisher. Further, though

Poisoned Pen was initially created to reprint backlist and new authors no one else would

take a chance on, its managing methods have been so popular that established mystery

writers have come to them. Robert Barnard, five times an Edgar nominee, moved to

Poisoned Pen to have some of his backlist reprinted. Joanne Dobson, called the successor to Carolyn Heilbrun, also found a new home at Poisoned Pen. In 2005, Peters said that

“$1 million in business a year is very, very, small by the traditional definition of a small

press. We publish forty books a year, and after costs, make $2 per copy sold. Typical for most small presses.” Poisoned Pen is now the second largest publisher of mysteries after

St. Martin’s (Williams, “Genre”).

Jim Huang’s success with his company, Crum Creek Publishing, comes from his knowledge of the avid mystery reader’s interests. He suggests that “there's a lot of fear in big publishing companies. But that's not the real problem. It's the lack of ability among publishers -- as institutions -- to talk to their customers (booksellers) about anything other than a bestseller or something with bestseller potential or something that ‘transcends the

217 genre’ (“Amazon”). The advantage that Huang has as a publisher is that he knows his customers/audiences very well, for he is a bookstore owner. In addition to owning two bookstores and editing the award winning The Drood Review of Books, Huang set up

Crum Creek Press in 1989, to provide what he saw as much needed reference books for mystery readers. Huang’s 100 Favorite Mystery Novels (2000) was selected by the

Independent Mystery Bookstore Association for an award, and They Died in Vain:

Overlooked, Unappreciated and Forgotten Mystery Novels (2002) received Anthony and

Agatha awards.

Though his press initially started out to print reference books, Huang’s mission soon shifted. In 2002, Huang published the “first in series because that is where readers want to start” (Herbert 23). He points out that readers are more likely to begin a series if it is complete, something that the major publishers aren’t concerned about. Mysteries are “about restoring order—that’s one of the classic bases for the appeal of the mystery story. Given that, is it surprising that fans of the genre want to put books in order?”

(Herbert 23). Mystery readers want to not only read mystery series, but to read them in

order.

In 2003, for example, Huang published Hardball by Barbara D’Amato. The book originally appeared in 1990 and was a first in a series, but out of print. Though it had been positively reviewed in Ellery Queen Magazine and Publisher’s Weekly, as well as

other magazines and journals, the publisher was uninterested in a reprint. In the same

year, Huang reprinted Chosen for Death by Kate Flora. Initially published in 1994,

Chosen for Death was given a glowing review by the Washington Post Book World and by Library Journal, yet it too was not reprinted.

218

Huang, concerned about the number of midlist writers who have lost their

contracts, provides a means to keep them writing and published. A favorite writer of

Huang’s is Shamus award winning writer Terrence Faherty. A few years ago, Faherty

lost his contract. His series featuring Scott Elliot, a 1940s Hollywood movie security

specialist, found a supporter in Huang, who agreed to publish two mysteries featuring

Elliot. Kill Me Again was reprinted in 2003. The second, In a Teapot, was published in

2005 and was Huang’s first foray into publishing an original work. Faherty’s In a Teapot went on to be nominated for a Shamus and was also reported to be in the top 10 bestselling books of 2005 for the Independent Mystery Bookstores Association (Huang

“Crum”).

Huang states that “A few years ago, a smart person at another small publishing company (not so small these days) said to me that it's impossible for a publishing company to be both bestseller oriented and midlist oriented at the same time. When I heard this, I thought he was wrong. Now, I'm not so sure” (Huang “Amazon”). Small publishers certainly want to have books that sell well, though having a bestseller can be problematic.20 Bestsellerdom, though, does not drive small publishers. Most small

publishers have a desire to present books that they themselves want to read.

The Rue Morgue Press has a mission: Tom Schantz and his wife Enid say that

they have a fondness for Golden Age and vintage books circa 1913-1953. They decided

to reprint books from this era because they found that many customers were interested in

older books, but these texts were scarce in the market. They also wanted to correct

misperceptions about female authors and protagonists of the 1930s and 1940s. The Rue

Morgue Press wants to print books that will sell 2,500-5,000 copies. They print first in

219 trade, then in hard cover reprint. This in itself is unusual now in publishing. Hard cover reprints disappeared, along with paperback printings. One of the advantages to small presses is that they can have small print runs. According to Enid Schantz, despite being a large publisher, St. Martin’s Press is the best example of small publication runs of 1,800 to 2,500 copies. This was ideal in the 1920s and 1930s too. They point out that

Doubleday Crime used to do four titles a month and had small print runs. But today, an author gets three books to sell 30-50,000 books to be considered successful and worth another contract.

It is a business, and small presses have some advantages that larger publishers don’t. “Books don’t cost very much,” says Enid Schantz, “and you can’t make very much money on them—because you can’t double the price. Books are an extremely cheap commodity.” Small presses, on the other hand, are one remedy to this problem.

Peters thinks that small presses have a positive role to play in satisfying the avid mystery reader. “With big overheads and advances to pay, it’s unrealistic to think a big publisher isn’t forced to play the market place and the media. That’s why I think the small press has such a bright future; they offer independent bookstores inventory perfect for the kind of reader who shops in one” (Herbert 24). The Schantzs’ provide books that their customers want. Enid Schantz believes that publishers think that what sells is Dennis

Lehane and George Pelecanos, or what she terms “slice and dice mysteries”; yet, she states “the bread and butter of bookstores are the cozies and traditionals. The cleverer mystery book stores sell cozies and traditionals and new authors and take chances.”

Taking chances is what smaller presses seem to be more willing to do than the larger publishers.

220

There is a downside to being a small publisher. Critical tastemakers, newspaper and magazine critics, still have some influence as to what gets into libraries and big box stores. These critics read books produced by the major publishers, and rarely, if ever, read books by small publishers and presses. Susan Branch, fiction buyer for a library in

Columbus, Ohio states, “Some libraries may require one, or even two, positive reviews before they purchase an item…. Some small publishers, like Rue Morgue and Poisoned

Pen, are well-defined enough as niche publishers that they do garner reviews. But in general the larger publishers are able to get things reviewed more frequently.” She hastens to say that she has the power to order books without a review, but for libraries, that is unusual.

Branch reports another problem though with current library book ordering.

Many libraries are using one or the other of what we call profiled ordering

plans. We use one for paperback fiction--we're automatically sent what

our jobber feels are the top 10 romance, top 5 mystery, top 5 fantasy (I

don't remember the exact mix--but we get a certain number of these a

month without us choosing which titles), Similarly, for each of our

libraries, we have an automatic plan that purchases x number of works by

authors we've selected--so we'll automatically get 20 new Janet Evanovich

titles. Some of these are ordered before the reviews come out. We also

have a plan that sends me reviews from specified journals; I order most of

the books from that. Which brings me back to the point about reviews

being crucial. The plans (except maybe the last one, which sends reviews)

tend to obviate against individual taste….

221

Branch reinforces the comments made by Ann Badger, another Ohio librarian

(Chapter 3.) Now that libraries are repositories for a wide variety of media, they no longer have the ability or desire to be repositories for all knowledge. In other words, libraries too, are gathering places for bestsellers.

Doris Ann Norris, Sister in Crime’s official Librarian, states that in the four libraries she works in, favorable reviews are necessary before they’ll purchase a small press book, but she adds, that “the best chance is favorable reviews and some patron requesting the books… patron requests are a big part of selection...although with interlibrary loan, one or two requests won't cut it unless the book is by a popular author or part of a popular series.” 21

Bookstores, like libraries, are concerned about the quality of some small press published books and worry about the feasibility of selling them. Gorman of Mystery

Lovers Bookstore states that “Small presses we read and decide...also it depends on

"terms"-return-ability, minimums, discounts, etc.” Some small presses have nearly been put out of business because of returns, as discussed. Mystery book store owners have to look outside of major publishers, and to find other sources for mysteries. Anderson states that

Our growing affluence has allowed us to shift from being bargain

shoppers buying branded (or even unbranded) commodities to becoming

mini-connoisseurs flexing our taste with a thousand little indulgences that

set us apart from others. We now engage in a host of new consumer

behaviors that are described with intentionally oxymoronic terms:

222

‘massclusivity,’ ‘slivercasting,’ ‘mass customization.’ They all point in the

same direction: more Long Tails. (11)

Robin Agnew at Aunt Agatha’s bookstore knows that mystery readers are all about specialties and niches. Agnew sees it as part of her role as an independent bookstore owner to purchase books by small publishers. She states,

Places like Crum Creek, Felony & Mayhem, & Rue Morgue republish old

titles that deserve to be kept in print - often the first in a popular (or well

regarded, award winning) series. The level of a press like Poisoned Pen is

also pretty high, and they publish new material that is often different than

mainstream stuff. A series like the one by Judy Clemens', where the main

character is a struggling female dairy farmer who has tattoos and rides a

Harley, is a good example. This is not mainstream but is well written and

deserving of a wider audience.

Agnew’s decisions as to which books to bring into her store and which to promote are examples of Anderson’s “Long Tail.” Small publishers and presses are already popular and have been for a while. Part of Long Tail success derives from connecting consumers with what they want among seemingly limitless choices. Small presses, which publish high quality work or works not represented by major publishers, provide for the niche needs of ever more picky and more adventurous readers.

Self-Publishing

The smallest presses are those run by the individuals who publish themselves. In an address to newbie writers, Penzler may have dashed some hopes.

223

Why are you trying to write? It makes sense only for people with a

creative urge not satisfied in other ways and who have other means of

support. If you need to earn a living from this, I’m suggesting that you

reconsider. Many of you—no matter how talented you are—are not going

to get published. If you do, you are not going to become a success. Even

if you are published and have success, you won’t make it multi-million

big. Very few people do. (“Economics”)

Unfortunately for those who wish to be published, Penzler is right. According to an Authors Guild Foundation study commissioned in 1981, the median annual income from books for an American writer is about $5,000. David Kirkpatrick, who authored the

Report to the Authors Guild Midlist Books Study Committee released in 2000, says that that figure has not substantially changed (3). According to Anderson,

Each year nearly 200,000 books are published in English. Fewer than

20,000 will make it into the average book superstore. Most won’t sell[…].

Only 25, 000 sold more than 5,000 copies. The average book in America

sells about 500 copies. In other words about 98 percent of books are

noncommercial, whether they were intended that way or not. (75-76)

Despite the fact that it is difficult to make a living writing books, people persist in

these dreams. A growing number of mystery writers find that the only way that they can

get their works into the hands of readers is to self-publish. Books that were self-

published at one time were easily distinguishable from professionally published works.

But computers with sophisticated graphics, and printers with specialized fonts, in the

224 grasp of the new writer have now made it difficult to distinguish between self-published and commercially published.

Taylor, one of the few mystery bookstore owners I met who is happily willing to sell self-published works, gave me a striking example. She showed me works by Mary

Welk, mystery writer and current officer of SinC. Her first three books were self- published; then her works were bought by a commercial publisher. I thought I could detect some differences; colors on the covers seemed to be brighter and more abstract on the self-published books, and the printing seemed somehow different, but I realized that I was grasping at straws. Taylor nodded in affirmation. This was her point. People that know how to operate graphics programs can create books that are indistinguishable from those of major publication houses. What does this mean for the mystery genre?

Some professional and popular writers attending the most recent Malice Domestic conferences were unhappy about the number of self-published writers in attendance. One writer stated that Malice Domestic was “a conference of self-published hacks.”22 She

was uncertain if it was worth her while to return. Some well-established mystery writers

were unhappy to be on panels with writers that they did not consider their peers. Is there

a rational reason for writers published by mainstream presses to be angry at this turn of

events?

Part of the concern of the mystery writers was the readers. Most readers don’t

distinguish between small and large publishers, nor do they think in terms of buying or

not buying “self-published” works. Since so many readers are drawn to books by their

covers (Surveys), and since it is now nearly impossible to tell one cover from another, it

225 is possible that readers will buy, without being aware of it, a self-published book. Why should this be a problem?

If a reader buys a self-published book and becomes disenchanted with it, it could have repercussions on future book buying. One of the triumphs of the Malice Domestic conference is its ability to spread the word about new authors, or reprints, or new books by established authors. With the decrease in publicity budgets, writers need conferences like Malice; they are vital to getting books to readers. With the Malice Go Round

(described in Chapter 3), readers meet new authors for two minutes and get a synopsis of each new book. Then, the 1,000 or so conference attendees visit the book dealers and buy the books they are interested in. The trouble with some self-published books is that they can be rife with errors—whether that be typos, pages printed out of order, or odd fonts. More disturbingly, self-published books often lack any kind of editorial review, so plots may be far too loosely (or illogically) tied up, and characters are often undeveloped.

Mystery readers will spend money, but may be discouraged as they read substandard books.

Of course, major and smaller publishing companies also publish poor books, but at least there are a series of checks. It is a problem for avid mystery readers to lose midlist writers of series that they love, but some writers simply deserve to either lose their contracts or never get them in the first place. Midlist writers have established themselves and have strong sales under their belts, whereas many self-published writers will never garner the sales to become even midlist writers.

According to a press release, the dream of not only publishing one’s own work but having it in bookstores (which is the goal of most authors) is within reach for a

226

“small” fee.

In the newest wrinkle in self-publishing, Joseph-Beth and Davis

Kidd Booksellers have joined forces with AuthorHouse on a publishing

program called "Fresh Voices in Print." For an $899 fee, AuthorHouse

will not only design, publish and distribute books, but will now offer

placement in Joseph-Beth and Davis Kidd bookstores and a book signing

at the location nearest the author. The "Fresh Voices" program guarantees

new authors that five copies of their new book will be stocked for a

minimum of eight weeks at the nearest Joseph-Beth/Davis Kidd

Bookseller.

Steve Kelner, past president of the Sisters in Crime Internet Chapter (SinC-IC),

found this reprehensible.

This makes me angry. It's not getting ‘published,’ it's getting printed AND

getting ripped off while doing it: You pay $899…These guys' total

commitment is five books, which they are stocking near the author, so

presumably friends & family will snap them up, and even then they are not

obligated to market, restock, or even keep the books beyond eight weeks.

(“FYI”).

One of the major difficulties authors (especially midlist authors) face is that

books are pulled so quickly from the shelves and returned. Bookstores often ship the

books back, within 60 days, as if the books will go stale if they stay on the shelf too

long (Taylor Interview).23 The result is that, even if the book becomes known through

marketing or word of mouth, if it isn’t on the shelf, no one can buy it. The Joseph-

227

Beth offer hasn’t solved this problem. Kelner suggests there is still another problem with the Joseph-Beth solution. “Given the cost of producing and shipping five books, I would guess that the profit margin is around 500% or better. Frankly, vanity presses are more honest, and you get what you pay for. This isn't distribution, and certainly isn't ‘promotion’” (“FYI”).

Some authors who start out self-published do end up being picked up by major presses. Most famous is perhaps Kathryn Wall. She began trying to get published after she turned fifty. Her book kept being rejected, so she opted to self-publish. This book was a success, and led to a contract with a small publisher, Coastal Villages Press. St.

Martin’s Press, a major mystery publisher, saw her second book, liked it, and offered her a contract to publish the rest of her series, which so far comprises four more books.

Wall’s books, which take place in North Carolina, are somewhat specialized in terms of setting and character. As Anderson suggests, there is an audience for niche books if only the audience can find them. Wall’s success is proof of his theory.24

Authors who self-publish run into other difficulties. Where will the books be placed? As mentioned in Chapter Two, the best market for mystery books is not direct to consumers through bookstores, but rather through libraries. Librarians responsible for purchasing books state that the policies for purchasing self-published books differ depending on the library. Branch muses,

So what would make me purchase a self-published mystery? I don't have

any reviews of it. I've only heard of it if someone brings it to my attention,

and most self-publishers don't have an ad budget. If I go out to mystery

writer conventions, maybe I'd meet some, but as it happens, that's not

228

usually possible. So I get a letter or an e-mail from an author (some

pretend or get someone else to pretend to be a library patron; that's easy

with e-mail and we will give more weight to a request from a library

patron, but we're fairly wise to that by now). Do we have anything else by

this person in our catalog (which we share with Columbus Metro, a really

big library)? If so, has it been checked out a fair amount? If I have time,

I'll check OCLC’s WorldCat and see what other libraries may own this or

other books by the author. But sometimes I'm able to go on gut feeling

alone. Just the fact that the person is a retired teacher who taught for 40

years is not going to make me buy the book! And I'm personally willing to

read a lot of not-too-good books, but that doesn't mean I'll spend library

money on them. If it's a local author, or a request by a legitimate local

patron, I'll probably purchase it. Outside Franklin County, they'll need a

really good hook to interest me. (Email Interview)

This is a lot of work and time. Note, too, that reviews soften everything. How does one get reviews for self-published books? And how does a self-published writer get past needing a local hook? At Norris’s libraries,

The only self-[published] fiction, including mysteries, we might buy are

ones produced by local authors. We just got one this spring called THE

WALLET OF DEATH. (The title says it all.) It was absolutely terrible.

Misspelled words, atrocities, [poor] grammar and syntax, plus...from what

I read, the plotting was no good either. It was iUniverse. Now if a self-

[published] book would perhaps get a good review in Booklist or LJ

229

[Library Journal], that would be different. Sandra Tooley (Lee Driver)

comes to mind…She publishes her own books.

Many books are published every year, and libraries are now buying other

materials as well: CDs, DVDs, computer games and programs, etc. They have to be careful about what they purchase. Many of the librarians suggested that the best way to

get a book noticed by an acquisition librarian (the one who buys the books) was to first

have Kirkus review it. But Kirkus is unlikely to review a self-published book. Other

journals subscribed to by librarians like Booklist, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly are also unlikely to review self-published works. If the self-published writer has this much trouble getting work accepted into a library where the books would be purchased with public funds, is it any easier to get the work accepted by bookstores? The short answer is, no.

Gorman says very succinctly, “We avoid self-pubs....quality is almost always poor...” (Email Interview). At Grave Matters, a closed bookstore in Ohio, the issue is commercial.25 “We don't buy new self-published books unless we can obtain them from

Ingram, returnable with a 40% discount” (Email Interview). Agnew states that, “We carry very few if any self published books - they have to be locally based for anyone to

be interested, because usually they are terrible” (Email Interview). Time and again the

answer is the same. Self-published books are, most librarians and bookstore owners

concluded, poor in quality, and there is a risk involved in carrying them. Huang initially

appears more positive about self-published books. “At The Mystery Company, the rule

on self-published books is that we look at them one at a time. We will stock intriguing,

well-produced and properly priced self-published books that are offered to us on

230 competitive terms.” But, he adds,

The sad fact is that setting criteria like this -- 1) well-produced, 2) properly

priced, 3) competitive terms -- virtually insures that self-published books

eliminate themselves from consideration, even before we get to the

question of ‘intriguing.’ Let's face it: most self-published books aren't

intended to be stocked in stores and we know this because most self-

publishers have made little or no effort to figure out what being stocked in

stores means. (Email Interview)

Anderson suggests this may not be an important issue. If the goal is to share one’s knowledge of a niche, then someone out there will want that knowledge. In a movement away from physical stores, if consumers can buy all books over the Internet, does it matter if the books are well formatted, or if the writer knows about marketing? Huang asks an even more intriguing question.

The real question is not whether stores will carry these books but whether

readers will buy them. Like any business, we are responsive to our

customers. Will our customers be interested in a self-published title? If

yes, then we have to be interested. If no, then we don't have to be

interested. Are readers interested in most self-published titles?

At the smallest, right hand end of the “Long Tail,” friends and relatives of the author will buy these books. Self-publishing in itself is not a bad thing. In fact, it is one of the ways, as Anderson puts it, to democratize the tools of production (54). He gives examples of self-published books that have sold between 5,000 and 50,000 copies.

Obviously, those writers were doing something right. On the other hand, Huang raises a

231 very important point. Skills are necessary. Writers need to be able to write well; they need to be able to produce aesthetically attractive texts without distracting errors. And they need to be able to market their work.

Audio Books

When you can dramatically lower the costs of connecting supply and

demand, it changes not just the numbers, but the entire nature of the

market…Bringing niches within reach reveals latent demand for non-

commercial content. Then, as demand shifts toward the niches, the

economics of providing them improve further, and so on, creating

positive feedback loop that will transform entire industries—and the

culture for decades to come. (Anderson 26)

According to James Shokoff writing in 1999, despite huge sales, audio books were

considered less literary and significant than printed texts. In an article for the Journal

of Popular Culture, Shokoff attempts to right this imbalance and argue for greater

appreciation of audio works. Whether an academic and critical shift in appreciation has

occurred since Shokoff wrote his article is uncertain, but there are signs that audio

books are now regarded with more respect as literature. There have been more

experiments with the audio form, there are more reviews, and the sales are high and

continue to increase. A major reason for the increase in sales is the improvement in

technology; a second reason is the number of niches available to the listener.

Publishers Weekly reports that in 2003 total sales of both retail and wholesale

of the audio market (including CD format and digital downloads) were $800 million.

232

Digital downloads increased 69% between 2002 and 2003 (Maughn, “APA”). Digital downloads were 6% of sales in 2004 or about $50 million, and are the fastest growing segment of not only the audio industry but the entire publishing industry (Maughn,

“Experts”). Book Industry Trends observed that while book sales were slightly better than flat in 2004, audio book sales increased to $900 million. (Business Wire). Ryan

Azevdeo reports that over twenty-four million Americans listen regularly to audio books and 22.5% of American households listen per year. (Business Wire) And

Library Journal reports that circulation for adult audio books has increased 13.5% in two years, and audio books represent 38% of library media budgets (Oder )

According to the Audio Publishers Association 2001 Consumer Survey, 28% of listeners ranked Mystery/Horror/Suspense as their favorite audio genre, by far the most preferred category. A Publishers Weekly article reports that “audio success follows the popularity of the print book[…]. Print books can really support the audio format because the mystery audience is so devoted” (Danford) Chris Lynch, publisher of

Simon and Schuster’s Audio, has noted the same thing.

While some bookstore owners might be concerned that downloadable audio books will affect sales of books, so far he hasn’t noticed this. Sales of either cassettes,

CDs, MP3s, or digital stories all seem to complement physical books (Maughn

“Downloads”). And Eileen Hutton of Brilliance Audio states that “Mystery fans are a clubby lot. When they pick up on the fact that there are audios available, that brings a lot of interest and support” (Danford). Audio Partners reports that their sales of their mysteries increased 19% in 2003 over 2002 (Danford).

According to librarians, everyone is using audio material—age is no longer a

233 factor, nor is profession.26 With Ipods and consumer comfort with downloading digital

files, audio is now mainstream. All industry predictions are that this market will continue

to explode. In conversations with mystery bookstore owners, though, it is interesting to

note that while they themselves enjoy listening to audio books, only Aunt Agatha’s in

Ann Arbor carries them—and then, only used ones. Currently, audio books are still too

expensive for most independent retailers to carry them. On the other hand, the industry is

still attempting to figure out how bookstore retailers will be involved in the digital

download revolution.

Alternative Methods of Delivery

In 2000, horror writer Stephen King became “the first bestselling author to

publish a work exclusively in electronic format. First-day sales of “Riding the Bullet”

surpassed first day sales of all King’s best-selling books on paper” (“E-Books”). While some in the publishing industry hailed epublishing as a harbinger of great things to come,

Richard Howorth, then president of the American Booksellers Association was more

sanguine. “I think Stephen King has a large audience of completely devoted fans, who if

he said he wrote a new book in pencil on toilet paper, they’d go find it. What if you’re a

writer, a so–called midlist writer who’s written two or three books…when you announce

that your new books is available on the Internet, who knows, who cares?” (“E-Books”).

King’s 66 page story, according to his website, “attracted over half a million online

readers and became the most famous short story of the decade” (“His Works”). King’s

success with “Riding the Bullet” led to an even more ambitious experiment when he

wrote The Plant, a horror satire of the publishing industry, also in ebook format.27

234

Unlike his novella, which was all of a piece that could be downloaded, The Plant was an ebook written in installments. King was asking for a dollar a segment, but readers were on the honor system and could download it for free. In June 2000, King stated that

“creative people should be paid for their work, just as plumbers and carpenters and accountants are paid for theirs” (Rose). King said on his website that he would keep publishing installments unless too many people “stole” the story. He thought it was unlikely that people would steal the story since the cost was so low (Rose). In December

2000, King officially put the story on hiatus after five installments. In a letter to the editor of Salon.Com, Paul DiResto expressed his disappointment at the demise of the story. He said “I’ll never pay installments for an online book again.” Other letters from readers of the story complained about the amount of time between segments and the cost. Initially

The Plant would have cost $9, but King raised the price to $13—thus making it more

expensive than a paperback would have been. (Salon Letter M. L. Simmons).

In an article for Salon.com, Miller points out that “Stephen King’s decision to

take a hiatus from writing installments of The Plant has been treated by the media as

nothing more than a dispatch on the viability of e-book self-publishing. ‘Publishers one,

authors nothing,” wrote David Kirkpatrick in The New York Times. (Miller) Yet King

himself does not see this as a failure. He claims that he had fun writing the ebooks and that in time he will do more on the Internet. He pointed out in a letter he wrote to his fans in 2000 that The Plant will end up grossing 600,000 dollars and may surpass one million

dollars. On his 2006 website he still claimed that he might one day finish The Plant. In

2007 (the last update to the site) he states “Time will tell” (FAQ).28

Nobody has yet topped King’s experiment, but others have tried alternative means

235 for telling stories. Blooks a self-published combination of books and blogs are still relatively new. Perhaps the most famous current mystery blook is at hackoff.com: An

Historic Murder Mystery Set in the Internet Bubble and Rubble by Tom Evslin. This

book can be listened to or read. However, the reader can also subscribe to text or

podcast, via email or using Really Simple Syndication (RSS). In the case of

Hackoff.com, “Tom is making the blog part of an overall reading experience, an essential

part of reading the book. […]Publishing a book of this genre in blook format is a great

idea because the links, comments and discussion will be an essential part of the reading

experience” (“Self-publish Blooks”). “Tom has numerous blogrolls for people who link

to the blook in their posts, maintaining a constant link via services like World of

Blog[…].” Blogrolls are links to other blogs. Evslin also sends out installments of his

murder mystery through email for those who want it that way.

Hackoff.com is not the only email delivered mystery. For $4.99, readers can

receive installments of The Daughters of Freya four to five a day, for three weeks. The

hook of the story is that it is told through emails that the reader receives in her personal

email account, so there is a sense of involvement and participation in the story. The

website gives this as a synopsis: “An email from a desperate friend sends journalist

Samantha Dempsey to Marin County north of San Francisco to investigate The Daughters

of Freya, a cult that believes sex is the solution to the world's problems. But she soon finds out there is more to the cult than meets the eye.” The mystery unfolds in “real time.” Experiments like King’s, Evelin’s and the creators of The Daughters of Freya may be a further wake up call to the publishing industry.

236

The Future?

Dave Eggers, author of the bestselling A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering

Genius, published his second novel himself, and he made it only available at independent

bookshops across the US (Donegan). This act cuts out the commercial middleman, just

as publishing ebooks does, giving the author much more control. Publisher Jason Epstein

believes that this is the future. “Epstein foresees the demise of the publishing industry in

its current form. Inflated advances for big name authors, ever decreasing profit margins

and the emergence of new technologies will mean an end to retail giants such as Borders

and the big publishing houses” (Donegan). There are more and more mystery ebooks all

the time. But it is unclear if Epstein’s predictions will come true. As more and more

mystery midlist writers lose their contracts, however, the Internet is making another

future possible.

In an article for The New Yorker, John Cassidy suggests blind spots in

Anderson’s The Long Tail. “A widening of choices doesn’t necessarily lead to cultural

fragmentation and a defection from mainstream fare; sometimes it has the opposite effect,

as befuddled consumers congregate around the same things.” Cassidy mentions a study

conducted by Columbia University studying the “network effect.” What the researchers

discovered is that when people were allowed to download music performed by unsigned

bands, their opinions were swayed when they found out what their peers thought of the

different bands, and “popular songs became more popular.” Cassidy says that this shows

that a “long tail world doesn’t threaten the whales or the minnows; it threatens those who

cater to the neglected middles, such as writers of ‘midlist’ fiction and producers of adult

dramas.” Anderson speaks so convincingly of the differences between the short head

237 and the long tail, suggesting that anything outside of the short head is long tail. It is easy

to believe that midlist mystery writers are part of that long tail. Cassidy, however, may

be right in this assessment, since midlist writers aren’t that far out of the mainstream.

They may be victims of not having a strong enough current to pull them into the short

head, and not being “nichey” enough to enter the true long tail.

Cassidy sees a less rosy future than does Anderson. Cassidy notes that Internet

businesses are “dominated by just a few businesses-mega-sites that can house those long

tails.” Cassidy points out that the successful aggregators are but a handful of companies.

He wonders, “ Has the economy really moved past the familiar ‘winner take all’

dynamic? That depends on whether you’re looking at the long tail—or at who’s wagging

it.” If production does pass into the hands of more and more producers, as Anderson

suggests, and these means of production actually do become more democratic, and if

readers begin to want more and more niche books, then the future is bright.

238

Conclusion

Stretching Comfort Zones

On the surface, categorization would seem to be a fairly straightforward, even objective, psychological process[…]. Generic categorization does make a significant difference to the way in which we read texts[…]. The key point here is that what might be seen as ‘a common cultural consensus’ about genre is in fact changing and contradictory. Genre is not objective, nor is it simply ‘given’ by the culture: rather, it is in a constant process of negotiation and change. (Buckingham 135-137)

…classification enables criticism to begin. (Rosmarin 22)

In the introduction to this dissertation, I asked a series of questions: What are cozies? How should they be classified, and why should they be so designated? Are cozies gendered, and if so, what significance does that have? Who benefits from these designations, and who ultimately gets to determine what cozies are and who should get to make these distinctions? As far as I’ve been able to discover, no scholar has attempted to place the cozy in a genre perspective. One way of understanding how the cozy is placed in relation to the mystery genre would be to see it in the form of a tree diagram. The trunk of the tree would be the mystery genre as a whole. Out of the trunk would come major branches, including traditional mysteries, hardboiled novels, and police procedurals. Many would presume that cozies are a smaller branch jutting out of the traditional branch.

But the tree diagram is not the most useful taxonomy. Cozies are different enough from traditional mysteries as to be recognized as a different category. Instead, let us see the categories of the mystery as a continuum, with cozies on one end, offering a sense of comfort and safety, and the roman noir on the far other end, offering a gritty,

239

“realistic” picture of the world. Readers’ tastes in the main are catholic and oriented along this axis. Readers want and desire the variety; eliminating categories, as many writers want to do, is a mistake. Not supporting the cozy, not preserving the jobs of midlist writers or offering them marketing support, is a mistake on the part of publishers and critics. Recognizing the prominent role that cozies play within the genre benefits the many participants in the publishing realm.

In order to answer my introduction’s questions, let me begin by summarizing the evidence that the cozy is a separate subgenre from the traditional mystery, since this is not an accepted view.

Characteristics of the Cozy

Jacque Derrida argues that a ”text cannot belong to no genre; it cannot be without or less a genre. Every text participates in one of several genres, yet such participation never amounts to belonging” (61). In contrast, Ortega y Gasset saw genre as a “closed, exhaustible system” (qtd. in Fishelov 54), and Morton Weitz argues that boundaries for genre keep shifting so that it isn’t possible to define a genre because it is too elusive.

Even a category like tragedy can’t really be nailed down because every time a new tragedy is written, the boundaries shift and change. Thus, how can the critic make the firm judgment of tragedy, when the boundaries have altered? (qtd. in Fishelov 57) These critics have presented wide-ranging difficulties for considering genre, but other critics believe that it is usually possible to determine a text’s genre; in fact it is a valuable exercise to do so.

240

Critic Robert Allen suggests that genre can be determined and is necessary for the writer and the reader. “…[E]very story is constructed around a set of assumptions the teller makes about his or her audience: what they know or don’t know; what their attitudes are toward certain groups of people; why they are willing to listen to the story to begin with; how it is likely to fit in with their other stories or jokes they might have heard; and so forth” (113). Obviously, part of what one must do when attempting to define a selection of texts as a genre is to find out what similarities they share and to determine if the similarities are great enough to place them into the same category.

Jane Feuer and other genre critics assert that genres are made up of “repetition and difference” and that genres are a set of expectations that readers have about what they are reading. In this sense, understanding a genre is a “type of cultural capital” (144).

Fowler asserts, “communication is impossible without genre” (qtd. D. Chandler). Not understanding what genre a text belongs to can lead to misreading of the text by the reader. Some readers read Austen as a romance writer, while most critics recognize her as an ironic comic genius casting aspersions on simple headed romance. Machiavelli’s

The Prince was read for centuries as a pragmatic political text meant to win favor with the ruling powers of Florence. Political scientists and historians have put the lie to that

suggesting that the text is meant to be read satirically and as a protest against dictatorial

rule. A reader who picks up a mystery and finds instead a romance novel will be

disappointed and possibly even angered/ Understanding the genre of the text aids the

reader’s interpretation and expectations of the text.

Wellek and Warren suggest that “the detective novel (the murder mystery)” is a

genre since its “close plot” is a characteristic structure that occurs in most mysteries

241

(233). “In a murder mystery, there is the gradual closing in or tightening of the plot—the gradual convergence (as in Oedipus) of the lines of evidence” (235). While there is “a family resemblance” between the cozy and the traditional novel, in studying the cozy and readers’ responses to it, I’ve noted that not only can it be established as a subgenre of the mystery novel, but that it differs significantly from the traditional mystery novel, so much so that it should can be placed in a separate category.1 Breaking the detective novel into

subgenres is absolutely necessary for a number of reasons I have alluded to, if only

because, as shown in Chapter Four, readers make distinctions and know both what they

want to read and what they don’t want to read. Creator of the library resource

Genreflecting, Betty Rosenberg argues for the need for classifications and sub

classifications. She believes that all books can be finely placed. She suggests that

librarians ask “To what genre or subgenre does the book belong? It is not adequate to say

‘thriller’ or ‘crime’ or ‘suspense’ or ‘adventure’ or ‘romance”’; to say ‘science fiction’ when it is really ‘fantasy’ is particularly misleading” (qtd. in Herald xx). She argues that

a librarian should not give a reader a science fiction novel when the reader requested

fantasy, since this would not fulfill the reader’s need. Rosenberg advocates going from

general to specific when questioning readers to find books for library customers. Any

other technique would lead to disappointment.

The traditional and the cozy share in the basic structure of a mystery novel, but

there are significant differences. A key area of difference is what is allowed in each and

what is considered verboten. Reader Advisor Diane Herald explains that “Genre fiction

is patterned fiction. Each genre follows rules governing plot and characters—and abides

by certain taboos—that are acknowledged by the authors and required by the

242 publishers[…” [italics mine] (xviii). They also have: 1) different tones, 2) different ways in which suspense is used or not used 3) a different composition of characters, 4) different thematic content, and most importantly, 5) different audiences. The readers themselves have different purposes when reading, and it is my contention that what most separates the two subgenres is the effect on the audience. It is this distinction that has the greatest impact on the readership and thus on the business of publishing.

The traditional mystery novel as practiced by Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, et al., has the following characteristics: it involves a small group of people, usually in a village or country home. These characters tend to be upper class, in the Golden Age traditionals, and interestingly enough, so is the amateur detective. Usually the detective is a wealthy and talented amateur, though occasionally in a traditional novel the detective is a paid “private enquiry agent”. Like cozies, traditional mysteries tend to limit their use of profanity, and violence and murders happen usually “off stage.”2 Traditional mysteries

are getting darker today, and more violence is showing up than in the past, but in Golden

Age mysteries the victim tended to be someone the reader disliked, so that there could be

little chance of an emotional connection. In contemporary traditional mysteries, the

victim may be someone the reader cares about, just as there may be topical issues.

Emphasis in the traditional mystery is on the intellectual puzzle, leading some critics of

the Golden Age novel to deride it for having cardboard characters and an over-reliance on

plot.3 Traditional mysteries also usually limit the role of romance (though it can be a

subplot.) Readers choose to read traditional novels primarily for the puzzle; they enjoy

challenging the detective, to discover the answer before she or he does (Surveys).

243

While a cozy shares many of these traits, there are interesting differences. In general, cozies depict the exploits of the middle class.4 Many readers explained to me

that characters in cozies were ordinary people like themselves (Surveys; Focus Groups).

While traditional novels might feature a dog or a cat as a beloved household pet, in a

cozy, these pets are often significant characters. Animals in cozies frequently can reason

and sometimes even talk.5 Detectives usually are amateurs, just as in traditional novels.

In cozies, there is supposed to be no profanity; though some readers say they allow a smidgen, most cozy fans oppose it, and the writers know it. Unlike traditionals, in cozies, violence is forbidden. While violence against a human being might be granted a brief show, there must not be violence against a child or an animal, on or off stage. Many cozy lovers are adamant: such acts mean not buying a book by that author again. In cozies, the emphasis is on the human relationships, with murder forming a sort of backdrop. While there is a mystery, nearly always a murder, the goal is not so much to beat the detective at his or her own game, but for the reader to re-acquaint herself with the characters who are her “friends” in the series (Surveys). Cozy readers sometimes complain of the mysteries in their subgenre as being “weak” (Surveys). But the mysteries are weak because the mystery isn’t important. In large part for this reason, cozies also allow and encourage time spent on characters’ romantic relationships. These are not a deterrent to the mystery. Romantic liaisons develop the character(s), so these subplots do not derail the main plot as they would in a traditional mystery. Most cozy lovers said that what they

most like in cozies is watching the protagonist change and grow. The relationship is

between the reader and the characters, with mystery almost secondary.

244

It is this relationship with the characters that leads to the most important difference between traditionals and cozies: what the reader’s expectations are of the text.

Most mystery readers, as I explained in Chapter Four, love to read anything that is labeled a mystery. The hardcore readers read only cozies, or read only hardboiled and noir (Surveys; Bookstore interviews). Most mystery readers read all over the continuum but come to cozies for a respite. Feuer offers a possible explanation for this. She suggests that one approach to understanding genre theory is to see it in terms of a ritual.

She states,

The ritual approach sees genre as an exchange between industry and

audience, an exchange through which a culture speaks to itself. Horace

Newcomb and Paul Hirsch refer to television as a ‘cultural forum’ that

involves the negotiation of shared beliefs and values and helps to maintain

and rejuvenate the social order as well as assisting it in adapting to change.

(145)

There is a ritual in how readers use cozies. A well-written hardboiled or noir work can deplete the reader. The suspense is high, and in a hardboiled or noir novel (and even often in a traditional mystery), all bets are off regarding the safety of the protagonist and the people the protagonist loves. In a cozy, the reader is assured that the protagonist and loved ones will remain safe. The reader and the writer have a sort of contract. David

Fishelov depicts “a genre as a kind of mediator between author and reader[…]. Whereas generic rules stand before the writer as an exemplum, challenge, or red flag, they appear to the reader as heuristic ‘reading directions,’ which may be obeyed or rejected” (14).

The wise writer of cozies knows to obey the “rules.” There might be suspense, for it

245 would be difficult to maintain interest without it, but it is like the difference between a

Walt Disney film and a Wes Craven film. The danger in a cozy is minimal, a frisson of tension; the reader knows everything will be fine.

Cozies provide a respite from both darker mysteries and from readers’ stressful lives. In Feuer’s terms, cozies are a needed reminder about the good surrounding us.

Unlike traditional mysteries, cozies are light emotionally and psychologically. While there are family conflicts and disputes between friends, these are never allowed to become heavy or painful and are always resolved. A cozy is a safe place to turn. Cozies are positive books with optimistic messages. The protagonist, usually a female, may feel in over her head, but she overcomes and triumphs, using her wits and her compassion.

The ambiance of a cozy is important; they are not poignant and never painful books, and they should never be overly thoughtful or disturbing. It is this ambiance that makes the cozy such a successful subgenre.

Despite their similarity and relationship to traditional mystery novels, cozies face a number of problems. As we saw in Chapter One, there was a time when cozies were on publishers’ and critics’ hit list. Fortunately, as explored in Chapter Three, a number of advocacy groups saved the cozy. But, as seen in Chapter Two, despite their best selling status, cozies still fight against a lack of recognition from critics, mainstream bookstores, and publishers who persist in awarding big contracts to traditional and hardboiled mysteries that don’t sell as well. All this seems quite strange, because as Chapter Four shows, mystery readers love cozies. Yet the cozy’s misfortunes do not come just from the misunderstanding of publishers, but from practitioners of the mystery genre itself.

I’ve shown the ridiculous lengths that male (and a few female) critics and other lovers of

246

“more serious” mystery will go to attack the cozy, but attacks against the cozy also are launched by those who should be the champions of it, namely those writing traditional mystery novels. Their complaint? They are greatly dismayed that their books are being tarred with the same brush as the cozy.

Perceived Problems of Categorization

Clearly generic forms must rank among the most important of the signal systems that communicate a literary work.-- Fowler (qtd. in Fishelov 26).

Traditional mystery writers wish for a separation between the subgenres because many of them also believe that the cozy is inferior. The debate over whether cozy or hardboiled is superior, more realistic, or more literary continues, and seems no closer to being resolved. Joanna Russ, in How to Suppress Women’s Writing, suggests that

“…female experience [is] often considered less broad, less representative, less important, than male experience,” (42) and cozies are seen by critics as a female subgenre, despite the fact that some men are writing them.

Attacks on cozies come not just from critics favorable to the hardboiled like

Penzler and Symons. Debate has been prevalent among traditional mystery writers about the word “cozy” itself. Many writers on the soft side of the continuum insist that cozy is a derogatory term. Barb D’Amato not only doesn’t like the word “cozy”; she doesn’t like cozies (“Would” panel). Multiple award-winning writer Carolyn Hart also dislikes the word “cozy.” She prefers the term “traditional mystery” and states that cozy “was at one time used by critics of the traditional mystery to indicate that those books were silly and unrealistic. It is true that the term is no longer pejorative but I still don't like it and prefer that these kinds of books be described as traditional mysteries” (Interview)

247

Rosmarin argues that “a genre is chosen or defined to fit neither a historical nor a theoretical reality but to serve a pragmatic end. It is meant to solve a critical problem, a problem that typically involves justifying the literary text’s acknowledged but seemingly inexplicable value” (49-50). Novels are placed in particular genres to draw attention to particular features of the text; many mystery critics classify cozies and traditionals as the same in order to denigrate both. Some traditional mystery authors worry that their work will be judged as less well written if it is sorted as cozy, and to a great extent, they are right.

If this term cozy is rife with negative associations, why is it employed? Why don’t writers cease using it? Would removing labels from mysteries stop the denigration of the cozy subgenre? Some mystery writers seem to think so. At the 2006 Malice Domestic conference, one panel called “Cozy Mysteries: The Next Generation” had a few panelists, mystery writers all, who argued that calling certain books cozies was strictly a marketing gimmick.

Further, these authors argued that categorizing books is a mistake. In fact, they thought that categories, like police procedural, historical, and cozy should simply be eliminated. “We don’t need to classify like it’s a science project,” argued Leann

Sweeney. Kathryn Wall took this a step further. “We’d like to give up the labels.” She argued further that publishers should give readers credit for knowing what they like.

“Get rid of labels. This might do away with discrimination.”

Librarians would disagree with mystery writers about the value of categorization.

A librarian working in the Cleveland Public Library system explained that “genre stamping,” a practice wherein each book arriving in the library is stamped on its binding

248 to indicate what kind of book it is (e.g. romance, mystery, western), and this is necessary to help library users.6 She stated that users want to know what they are getting. She says that people go directly to the genre shelf and browse, finding both beloved and new authors. In the main branch of the library, she pointed out, all mysteries are shelved with fiction with no type of genre stamping to indicate subgenre. Circulation figures at the main branch of the Cleveland Public Library were lower than they should be for mystery book circulation, and her belief was that it was because the books were not marked.

“Readers frequently do not remember the names of their favorite authors. Finding mysteries is easier for them if they are gathered altogether. More books would be checked out if there were a separate section” (Interview).7 Herald argues that “This

grouping by type is relevant to readers’ tastes, which tend to be selective within particular

genres. Indeed, many readers are also selective about the types of books they will not

read. A savvy bookstore clerk or library reader advisor would do well to discuss a

reader’s likes before suggesting new authors” (xxii). Having additional categories helps

the librarian or book clerk find books for the reader.

Categories are not just capricious decisions made by publishers. Bookstore

owners need to be able to hand sell books, and without categories will find that difficult

to do. Herald states that “The most frequent query from patrons (in bookstores as well as

in libraries) [is]: ‘Do you have any more books like…?’” (10). She further explains that

“The criteria for defining ‘likes’ is more complex than a simple ‘both authors write in the

same genre’” (10). The reader who is knowledgeable about genre can use it to find the

books she is interested in. Why make things more difficult for the reader to find what she

wants?

249

What Isn’t a Cozy, Or Quite a Cozy, and Why It Matters

Next to cozy, the most popular selling mystery subgenre is historical mystery, commonly known as simply “historical.” According to historical mystery writer Patricia

Wynn, historical mysteries began to be popular in the late 1980s and 1990s when many strictly historical writers lost their contracts. (Focus Group). Critics of the time said that readers were no longer interested in lengthy books because they had less leisure time, so historical novels went unsold. Historical writers found that the mystery genre was welcoming. In the 1990s, historical romance writers too began to lose their contracts, and they made their way as well into the mystery realm. (Wynn, Focus Group; Malo, email). However, it is a mistake to assume that historicals are cozies. “Most historical fans don't really care for tagging historicals as cozy [or] hardboiled,” according to Kim

Malo, “so they don't think in terms of that connection, while most cozy fans I know actively avoid historicals, believing they are all like the one they tried and disliked, for reasons such as force feeding period detail on the reader” (Interview). For her, the time and place of a mystery are more important than whether or not it satisfies the definition of the cozy.

A historical mystery is defined by the website Crime Thru Time as having two

parts “Rule 1: Book or series must be listed as a mystery,” and “Rule 2: The mystery’s

setting must be 50 years or more before the original publication date, thus a book

published in 2002 would need to be set before 1952.” Malo, an assistant to the site,

suggests an alternate definition

250

Basically the setting […] is far enough in the past to be effectively a

different world, where basic aspects of everyday life are different. That

setting also has to be integral to the story, which could not occur the same

way today. Not just a modern story in fancy dress, but one whose

characters have a truly different worldview based on differences in their

world, not just their personality. For practical purposes, my cut off is

about the early 80s, largely because of the wide reaching changes in

technology everywhere and their ripple effect on how everything from

toasting bread to making contact to how we think of medicine and health

care. (Interview)

Fans of historical mysteries echo what Malo says. In her bestselling, softboiled

“Alphabet” series, Sue Grafton has kept her stories firmly planted in the 1980s, so that her detective is cut off from contemporary technological advantages. With mysteries set well before the 1980s, crime technology was primitive, so more of the crime solving involved the detective’s wits. Many historical mystery fans like historicals because the detective cannot rely on forensics.

It might be possible to allow that a book can be called both historical and cozy without one subgenre predominating. An excellent example is the award-winning book

Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear. The book opens in 1929 as Maisie Dobbs opens a

detective agency. Her first client is a man who wants his wife followed. What Maisie

discovers is that the woman is grieving a lost/dead love, a soldier severely wounded and

disfigured in a WWI battle. He died mysteriously, possibly by suicide. It is that mystery,

251 as well as the painful psychological struggles of how men and women are affected by war, that Maisie explores.

The novel is historical. It takes place a decade after the end of WWI, and the plot illuminates what the war was like for average Britons, as well as what Britain was like before the war. Maisie is from the servant class, and Winspear does a good job of showing the class system, and the changes in the class structure with the war. As Maisie is a woman during the 1920s, she comments upon the rise of the suffragettes and is sympathetic with them. She has taken on a male profession and is well aware of gender politics.

This book could be considered a cozy. Maisie is tough psychologically. She forces herself to become a nurse, serving in France during WWI, when she hates blood and gore. The violence is understated, despite its descriptions of battlefields and wounded soldiers. As in any good cozy, murder happens off stage. Winspear says, “I think it’s a case of ‘less is more’” (10).

The romance is also understated. Maisie's WWI romance is revealed at the end of the novel, and its impact is all the greater because emphasis has been placed on the mystery that Maisie is detecting rather than on her romantic exploits. Mystery remains at the center.

According to many of my survey takers and focus group participants, cozies should lack emotional depth. Readers don’t want books that are edgy and “nail biters”; nor do they want emotional pain and too much poignancy. But Maisie Dobbs is poignant through and through. It is emotionally disruptive, but it is still as much a cozy as it is a historical. Daphne Sayed, mystery reader and participant in the CrimeThruTime website,

252 states that “All the Maisie Dobbs [novels] have the element of cozy as well as History

[sic]. What distinguishes one from the other is whether the history is the major factor or whether the story is.” In a review for NPR’s Fresh Air, Maureen Corrigan said that

Maisie Dobbs is

[A] class-conscious feminist fairy tale about a woman without advantages

finding autonomy…[this] is a quirky literary creation. If you cross

pollinated Vera Brittain’s classic World War I memoir Testament of

Youth, with Dorothy Sayers’ Harriet Vane mysteries and dash of the old

PBS series Upstairs, Downstairs you’d approximate the peculiar range of

topics and tones with this novel.

If the term cozy is seen as a larger and more abstract category, then Maisie Dobbs fits

into the cozy continuum and is another reason why the subgenre is so popular.

Niche

“Niche” and “chick-lit” are subsets of cozies, or “subsubs.” As we have seen

throughout this dissertation, it can be hard to distinguish between genres and subgenres.

Even ardent mystery fans confuse traditionals with cozies and hardboiled mysteries with

noir. To make things even more difficult, there can be deliberate genre or subgenre

blending. As Daniel Chandler argues, “genres overlap, and there are 'mixed genres' (such

as comedy-thrillers). Specific genres tend to be easy to recognize intuitively but difficult

(if not impossible) to define” (“Problem”). This was typically the case when I asked

focus groups, individual interviewees, and survey takers what cozies were. As shown in

Chapter Four, they stretched the meaning of cozy to incorporate their own personal

253 definitions. When in a group, though their definitions did not mesh completely, they were forced to defend their view points and explain, for example, how they believed that cozies shouldn’t have profanity, yet a particular author they identified as cozy used extreme profanity. The focus group member would then point out other ways in which the book was a cozy, often relying on themes that cozies share, or the emotional ambience created by the text. So while group members would disagree about a particular work in a cozy canon, they would tend to agree about particulars that made works cozies.

Categorization is more problematic when it comes to subgenres, and more so with subsubs. Stephen Neale argues that it is easy to underplay the differences within a genre.

He declares that “genres are instances of repetition and difference,” yet mere repetition would not attract an audience (48). Cozies owe their strength to their flexibility, their ability to stretch and change, and to be what the reader wants them to be. By stretching, cozies allow for subsubs that start with the formula, but become focused on one particular aspect of it. Subsubs both strengthen and weaken the genre that they emerge from.

The weakness of the subsubs is their reliance on the gimmick aspect of the cozy.

New mystery writer and former romance writer Emilie Richards argues that “we may fall prey to gimmicks in the cozy—not a book about characters and community—but there is a difference between gimmicks and hooks” (“Cozy Mysteries” Panel). Many survey takers and focus group members pointed out that they read cozies for the characters.

They stated that they preferred characters to plot. Niche books often have little of either.

Richards points out the problem for the new writer is that “editors are looking for gimmicks, not hooks.” What is the difference between a hook and a gimmick? The problem in distinguishing between the two sums up what is meant by “niche” mysteries.

254

A “hook” is a central idea or theme that will attract the reader to pick up a book in the first place. The hook is generally something to do with the protagonist; often, the protagonist has an unusual occupation or a skill or a disability that separates her from the crowd.

A gimmick is ephemeral, slight and facile. As bookseller Robin Agnew argues,

“the ‘sub-sub’ books are often more product than books, and I think those authors will write a few and burn out, with publishers continuing to try to find something new”

(Interview). These series often don’t last simply because the idea fizzles in the first book.

Niche books follow the dictates of cozies: they have no profanity, no onstage violence, and no sex. Cozies already strain the credulity of many because of the amateur sleuth who stumbles on dead bodies, but niche books push that feature farther. Many of the survey takers said that they read and enjoyed cozies because of the interesting occupations held by the protagonists. Cozies often use a protagonist’s interesting profession as a hook to get the reader interested. But the successful cozy writer goes beyond that initial hook and develops rich relationships and characters. What niche books do is hyper-focus on a particular area; thus we have knitting books, and gourd making books, and scrap book cozies, and quilt making books. Credulity is strained when suburban moms kept finding their way into crime. What about scrap-booking or carving gourds makes someone especially gifted to solve crimes?

Jim Huang argues that niche books are popular because they are easy to sell. At a time when more and more readers buy their books from box stores and convenience stores not known for their educated staffs, consumers have to find books for themselves.

There is no skilled handselling going on. A person sees that there is a mystery that takes

255 place in an embroidery shop (such series as Monica Ferris’), or a knitting company (such series as Maggie Sefton’s) and thinks, “Hey! I like to knit! I think I’ll read that book.”

These books, according to Huang, sell themselves (Huang Lecture).

Books that fall into the niche category play strongly to gimmicks. A quilting mystery can be sold in a box store, or at chain stores like Target or a Wal-Mart, but it can also be sold in a store that sells quilting supplies. Focus group member Kate calls this

“cross selling for fresh blood.” Patricia Wynn suggests that Susan Wittig Albert, “has hit a jackpot” (Focus Group) with her mysteries featuring a former lawyer turned herbalist, and tie-ins to a particular herb with information about how to use it.

One way of looking at the niche subcategory is as an attempt on behalf of the publisher to further commodify the mystery genre. In the case of niche, however, additional items are added to the basket. One does not just buy the book, but scrap booking supplies, candle-making equipment, card making materials, etc. Emphasis is not on writing, or even on entertaining, but on connecting people to a product. The cozy, per se, however, does not have tie-ins to other products.

Chick Lit

Melissa Bank’s The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing (1999) is considered the

book that launched the “chick lit” revolution in the U.S. (Vnuk). Chick lit mysteries

weren’t far behind. In 2004, Publishers Weekly announced that “Chick lit[…] has now

arrived full–force in the mystery genre” (Danford). Mysterious Press associate editor

Kristen Weber says that chick lit draws in younger mystery readers (Danford). Most

bookstore owners say that the average mystery reader is a woman in her forties.

256

According to my surveys, the median age of the mystery readers is 51. (Bookstore owner interviews; Surveys). Sarah Weinman, Baltimore Sun crime fiction columnist, suggests

that “If these books get the 18-34 female crowd, who then might be prevailed upon to

pick up some more traditional mysteries of the past if they are effectively marketed to

them, then maybe chick lit mysteries are the gateway to revitalizing the cozy” (qtd. in

Goldberg).

On the other hand, USA Today suggests, “Some critics and consumers still dismiss the genre as brainless pap. The market is oversaturated—something some publishers call ‘the curse of the pink cover’ (Vnuk). NPR’s Maureen Corrigan suggests

that “After a while, giddiness about boys and designer bustiers without some gravitas is

grating.” Most critical of all is The New York Times mystery critic Marilyn Stasio:

You can’t miss its gaudy manifestations—those slender volumes with cute

titles like “Dating Dead Men” and “Killer Heels” and covers in such juicy

colors you don’t know whether to read the flap copy or lick the jacket.

Slim stories. Joke titles. Juicy jacket art. Does a pattern begin to

emerge? For a category of mystery still relatively new to the market the

babe book has already settled into some fairly narrow grooves. Even if you

ignore the generally deplorable level of the writing (which is surely an

unintentional aspect of the formula), these novels scrupulously observe all

the basic chick-lit conventions: the giddy girls in their glamorous jobs, the

shopping sprees and fashion makeovers, the gossipy friends, the disastrous

dates and the wry comic voice of a heroine so adorable she could be…you.

But Bookseller Kathy Harig states “Chick lit may not be a fad. These do not sell well in

257 our Baltimore stores, but do better in our Oxford, Maryland, store that has more tourists in the summer. They are beach reading definitely” (Interview). Mystery critic and publisher Otto Penzler reports that a senior editor at HarperCollins was asked what kind of mystery fiction they were looking for. She replied: “In the mystery world, we have long tried to appeal to romance readers, and we found that crossing chick lit with mystery was the perfect way to do that. For paperbacks, we seek mostly cozies of about 75,000 words or chick litty type mysteries. I also have mysteries with cats, cooks, gardeners and wedding planners” (“Cynical”)

While chick lit mysteries are very popular, according to mystery bookstore proprietors, my survey takers for the most part disparaged romantic suspense and other romance centered mysteries. But in a chick lit mystery there is always romance and there is usually sex. In a Malice Domestic Panel called “Chicklit Mysteries: We’ve come a long way baby!” Elaine Viets said that “chick lit are mysteries for grown-up women—you can take it.” In a cozy, there is frequently romance, though the sexual element (if there is any) tends to be off stage and subtle.

Why does any of this matter? As we learned in Chapter Two, how a work is defined has an impact on the readers. It has an impact on whether or not critics will read the book and write reviews, and on whether or not the bookstores will sell them. Cozies sell well and have a following, yet they generate minimal respect and attention. For many in the mystery community, chick lit garners even less respect. Is chick lit actually cozy? It seems clear to me that chick lit should have its own category. Genre critic

Reichert asks a perhaps deeper question: “Do genres ‘explain’ literary works?” (58). He

258 argues that in a sense genre does just that. He states, “…descriptions of a genre, or references to a well-known genre, can render a work intelligible, clarifying the relations among its parts, and perhaps helping to fit it into a larger historical framework” (58).

This is a line of argument advanced earlier by Todorov, who argued that each genre has its own semantic rules—a sonnet differs from a joke for example, each having its own discursive rules. Chick lit books may have elements of cozy, but they aren’t cozies. They have graphic depictions of sex, they make romance a driving force for the protagonist, and they often contain profanity. The more interesting question is why they would be classified as cozy? Lippman and others suggest that mystery novels written by female authors, whether they be cozy, traditional, soft-boiled or noir, do not receive the same respect as mysteries written by their male colleagues. The reason for placing chick lit in the cozy subgenre would be is that it is written by women for women.

On the other hand, Kress suggests that genre is a “practical device for helping any mass medium to produce consistently and efficiently and to relate its production to the expectation of its customers” (qtd. in D. Chandler). Kress believes these processes are negative because genre controls the behavior of producers of such texts and expectations of potential consumers (qtd. in D. Chandler). There may not be any political or ideological thinking involved at all; rather, chick lit is a marketing decision.

According to Rian Montgomery, who runs the Website Chicklitbooks.com, chick lit has many themes. “There’s fantasy, time travels. There’s bigger-girl chick lit. Weight- loss chick lit. There’s single city girl chick lit. There’s hen lit…a more mature chick lit.

There’s lad lit-chick lit written by guys. There’s Christian chick lit, which is getting more popular--it’s very clean” (qtd. in Weinman). In fact, chick lit has led to the creation

259 of new subsubs: “There’s also bridesmaid lit, gossip lit, nanny lit, mom/pregnancy lit, marriage lit, paranormal lit (featuring vampires and the like; see Bras and Broomsticks by

Sarah Mlynowski), and Sistah Lit-- the African American version” (qtd. in Weinman).

Genre critic Fishelov places a positive spin on these developments. He suggests that

[T]he real hallmark for the survival of genre is not whether its works are

read or interpreted ‘correctly’ (as Fowler argues) but whether new works

associated with a specific generic tradition are produced. The stress on

productivity goes hand in hand with the biological analogy that regards the

procreation (not merely the existence of individuals) of a species to be the

hallmark of its survival. A necessary condition, of course, if new works

are to be produced, is that important manifestations of the genre are

available and become part of the ‘cultural middle ground’ (37).

Just as traditional mystery writers and other practitioners of non-cozy works need to recognize the value of cozies for their readers, so must cozy writers and readers recognize that niche and chick-lit are just twists on the theme of cozy. Readers will quite likely be drawn to the cozy through these subsubs. What is not known, what cannot be predicted, is which subgenre of mystery will endure. Fishelov explains that the “the question that a true evolutionist will ask concerning literary genres is not ‘how is a genre produced by its cultural environment?’ But rather ‘how does a generic tradition, having been produced, succeed in establishing itself on the literary and cultural scene?’ (36). The cozy subgenre has answered this question by creating conferences and cozy websites and listservs. The attendance at these conferences and on the listservs continues to grow, so it appears that cozies will continue to be a successful subgenre. What seems to work,

260 according to booksellers and librarians, is introducing readers to a variety of subgenres based on their own interests and then matching like with like. Limiting the scope of and exposure to subgenres does nothing to stretch the readers’ comfort zones.

Woo-Woo

The subsub that has achieved the greatest financial success is that of the paranormal or “woo-woo” mystery. “Citing the success of such TV shows as Medium and The Ghost

Whisperer, Avon publisher Liate Stehlik interprets the [cozy] industry’s focus on the

supernatural as a reflection of popular culture’s current obsessions,” says Williams. Pari

Noskin Taichert’s novel The Clovis Incident has a talking cat, and the protagonist gets

help from a ghost. Charlaine Harris has several best selling series; the latest features

Harper, a woman who, after being struck by lightning, has the unusual ability to find

corpses by being able to “read” the last few minutes of the dead person’s thoughts. Lelia

Taylor says that it is difficult to know where in her store to shelve these mysteries

(Interview). Taylor argues that genre blending has given a boost to the mystery market.

What the woo-woo books reflect, she hints, more so even than historicals, niche and

chick lit, is the way in which hybrids are created. As Daniel Chandler argues,

“Traditionally, genres (particularly literary genres) tended to be regarded as fixed forms,

but contemporary theory emphasizes that both their forms and functions are dynamic”

(“Problem”). But he continues, “As the generic corpus ceaselessly expands, genres (and

the relationships between them) change over time; the conventions of each genre shift,

new genres and sub-genres emerge and others are 'discontinued' (though note that certain

genres seem particularly long-lasting)” (“Problem”). The benefit of the endlessly

261 expanding genres, especially in terms of the mystery, is that there is always something new for the reader to read. Readers may be unable to find the backlist of beloved writers, so they are unable to read the complete series, but they can find something else that appears tailor made for them.

Gendering the Genre: The Future of the Cozy?

Is the mystery genre a male genre? Kathleen Klein argues in The Woman

Detective that the detective genre is masculine and that female detectives are therefore

destined to fail. She cites Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar: “Most Western literary

genres are, after all essentially male--devised by male authors to tell male stories about

the world” (18). Klein also cites Joanna Russ, whom she states “has convincingly demonstrated [that] replacing male heroes with female protagonist does not transform men’s stories into women’s” (18). Mysteries, Klein contends, are inherently a male genre, though she does not explain what makes a genre gendered. How can a genre be inherently male or female?

Gilbert and Gubar argue in The Madwoman in the Attic that

[I]n its original form [...] the novel traditionally traces what patriarchal

society has always thought of as a masculine pattern [...] while from the

epic to the historical novel, the detective story to the western European

and American narrative literature has concentrated [...] on male characters

who occupy powerful public roles from which women have almost always

been excluded (67-68).

262

Though they believe in the existence of male genres, Gilbert and Gubar believe that it is possible for women to “crack” these genres and to create original texts. They state that

19th century women writers

revis[ed] male genres, using them to record their own dreams and their own

stories in disguise. Such writers, therefore, both participated in and--to use

one of Harold Bloom’s key terms -- ‘swerved’ from the central sequences

of male literary history, enacting a uniquely female process of revision and

redefinition [...] these authors managed the difficult task of achieving true

female literary authority by simultaneously conforming to and subverting

patriarchal literary standards (73).

One might argue that writers who feature female sleuths are pursuing the same course that these 19th century women writers took. Gilbert and Gubar argue that what women writers need are female precursors who will model new behavior, who will show that “a revolt against patriarchal literary authority is possible” (49). They state that “the female writer’s battle for self-creation involves her in a revisionary process. Her battle, however, is not against her (male) precursor’s reading of the world but against his reading of her ”

(49). Just as Gilbert and Gubar argue that women need to be wary of the potential hostile reading of their works by men, women need to examine how they judge each

other’s texts. It is more useful to examine these texts in light of what the texts (especially

mystery fiction) make possible for women. Cozies have been gendered female, many

writers and critics argue, which has led to their denigration. The negative treatment of

the cozy by critics, and the limited number of reviews that cozies receive, has led to

writers distancing themselves from the cozy.

263

But more and more men are winning cozy awards. In 1993, the Malice Domestic

Conference began awarding the St. Martin’s Press/Malice Domestic Contest for Best First

Traditional Mystery. This award is given to a writer who has never published a traditional mystery, and who is not yet under contract to a traditional mystery publisher. The last three winners of this award have been men. And there are male readers who like cozies.

Mystery reader John Bohnert says, “Frankly, I don't understand readers who will only read authors of one sex. How silly. I'm a 64-year-old male reader and I love to read female authors. In fact, most of the authors in my TBR pile are female. The sex of an author never enters the picture when I'm deciding to buy a book. I'm looking for a well-told story --- not a date.” Gilbert and Gubar suggested that what women writers are doing is changing male perceptions not of genre but of women themselves. Feminist critic Kimberly Dilley argues that female subgenres in mystery are feminist with female protagonists in control, solving crimes by using their wits and relying upon themselves and sometimes a network of friends. Feminists might argue that more men reading cozies would show women’s strength.

What is a Cozy?

I have written a dissertation of over 250 pages, and my purpose has allegedly been to define what is a cozy. I’ve allowed the experts in the production and consumption of the mystery genre—the publishers, booksellers, librarians, critics, writers and readers—to attempt to define what the word “cozy” means. But after all these descriptions and arguments, what I end up with is the possibility that there isn’t a clean, clear definition of cozy that will be agreed to by everyone, even by most people. Rather,

264 it seems to be a term that is rife with alternate connotations, positive or negative, depending on the commentator. Of what use has my exploration been? Much: the search for the meaning of the word “cozy” has been an invaluable heuristic.

In attempting to define and explain the emergence of the cozy, I have pursued many questions. For example, what is happening in publishing today both in small and large presses, and how do their decisions affect the cozy? In Chapter Two, I revealed how smaller presses have worked to preserve and promote the cozy, while larger presses have all but ignored it. What are some of the differences among booksellers—the box stores, the chain stores, the independents and mystery bookstores, and online retailers— and what impact have they had on the cozy subgenre? In Chapter Two, I also showed how independent mystery bookstores, through hand selling and education of their customers, have continued to promote cozies’ bestseller status. What impact have libraries had on cozies? All the librarians I spoke to stated that mysteries were the most circulated of all their genre books; further, they warned that while we think of libraries as permanent repositories for backlist, because the public is hungry for DVDs, CDs, and video games, there is less space for books. If publishers don’t produce backlists, and libraries don’t store them, many series’ titles and older mystery novels will be lost.

In Chapter Three, I’ve shown that second wave feminism has affected the mystery community. Advocacy groups were formed to provide mystery readers with the books that they want, empowering writers to produce them. And who are mystery readers? Are they different from readers of other genres? In Chapter Four I explored, for the first time in this genre, who the mystery readers actually are, in their own words: what they read, why they read, why and what they buy and how they do so. I’ve allowed the mystery

265 readers to speak for themselves and explain why they value what they do. Finally, what has been the impact of major publishers and their practice of bestsellerdom? How will changes in technology and publishing business practices shape the future of the subgenres? Technology, in a nutshell, is one of the reasons why the cozy subgenre remains successful. This heuristic approach has also enabled me to point out the problems of contemporary publishing—the way that midlist mystery writers are ignored for example—and I’ve been able to show how this treatment and its consequences have damaged independent mystery bookstores, and perhaps most importantly, mystery readers, who find themselves with fewer choices.

In some ways, the evolution of the cozy may be a function of television, aging, and changing gender expectations. It isn’t just male readers who want tougher and darker mystery novels. Reader advisor and librarian Bartlett thinks that it is

an aging demographic. Younger customers reach for more hard-edged

stuff, and I think that’s a matter of matching what they see on TV. I don’t

see them eventually wanting cozies. At the end of the day, it’s about selling

to women, and I think women’s tastes are changing…. I have never, and I

mean never, had to help a twenty or thirty year old choose a cozy. They

head right for at least the Scotttoline/Fairstein range” (Email interview).

There are men writing “softer” novels, but women mystery writers are moving toward grittier works, even in cozies. Bartlett says that cozies “will always be around, but I think the tougher stuff trending up is a permanent trend and not something that’s likely to level off soon…I think the tough stuff market has a wider audience that is gaining steadily”

(email interview). Not all my experts had such bleak pronouncements on the future of

266 the cozy. Agnew argues that “the kind of soft writing done by women will continue to sell well, especially to women, and the women who are real quality writers will obviously be around for a long time. (Margaret Maron isn’t going anywhere.)” (Email interview).

Librarian Susan Branch believes that “As long as people read I think there will be a market for the cozy.” She thinks that cozies will continue to change: language will become more profane and cozies “may get more noir.” She feels that noir audiences and cozy audiences have different enough demographics not to impinge on each other (Email

Interview).

I suggest that books ought to be clearly marked as cozies. Cozies should be marketed as cozies, separate from traditionals. Second, writers are wrong not to want categorization. Third, publishers need to have more midlist writers, and to be more supportive of their marketing efforts. Cozies are the best selling subgenre, yet publishers go all out to market their hardboiled and noir books, ignoring most cozies and traditionals. Each reader has a sense of “prototypicality”8; in my interviews, nobody

veered off into brand new territory when talking about the subgenre they love. Publishers

and mainstream bookstore owners would be wise to pay attention to what it is the readers want, rather than concluding wrongly that they know better than the average fan.

267

Appendix A

Online Survey Questions

Mystery Readers' Survey

Page 1 of 3

The information in this survey is to be used in a Ph.D. dissertation entitled What is a Cozy? It will take approximately 30 minutes to an hour to complete this survey. A linked glossary defines mystery subgenres such as cozies, historicals etc.

1. Please check one of the following boxes to indicate how you wish your information to be used.

Do you wish to remain anonymous? If you check this box, you will be assigned a pseudonym and identifying information will be

removed or altered to protect your confidentiality May I quote your response directly? If you check this box, you are giving me permission to use your exact words with attribution. Do you wish your responses to be used only indirectly? If you check this box, I will only use your information as part of the

whole and will not quote you.

2. Name

268

3. Email address

4. Age

5. Gender

Female

Male

6. What racial group(s) do you identify with?

American Indian or Alaskan Native

Asian

Black or African American

Native Hawiian or Pacific Islander

White

Other:

7. What nationality do you consider yourself?

269

8. What do you consider to be your sexual orientation?

Lesbian or gay

Bisexual

Straight

9. What is your religion?

10. What is your profession?

11. Income range (Please check the most applicable.)

12. In what type of environment do you live? (Please check the one that best applies.)

City, urban environment

Suburb

Small town

Rural

Other:

270

13. What is your highest level of educational attainment?

none

Grade 1-4

Grade 5-6

Grade 7-8

Grade 9

Grade 10

Grade 11

High school graduate

Some college, no degree

Associate degree, occupational

Associate degree, academic

Bachelor's degree

Master's degree

Professional degree

Doctorate degree

Other:

14. How would you describe your political affiliation? Please check all that apply.

271

Apolitical--don't vote

Don't vote, but am politically active

Democrat

Republican

Liberal

Progressive

Conservative

Moderate

Other:

15.

272

none

Grade 1-4

Grade 5-6

Grade 7-8

Grade 9

Grade 10

Grade 11

High school graduate

Some college, no degree

Associate degree, occupational

Associate degree, academic

Bachelor's degree

Master's degree

Professional degree

Doctorate degree

Other:

16.

273

none

Grade 1-4

Grade 5-6

Grade 7-8

Grade 9

Grade 10

Grade 11

High school graduate

Some college, no degree

Associate degree, occupational

Associate degree, academic

Bachelor's degree

Master's degree

Professional degree

Doctorate degree

Other:

17. Describe your parents' professions.

Page 1 of 3 Next Page

This document last changed 21 June 2005. Page 2 of 3

274

18. In what way are you involved with mysteries? Check all statements that apply.

I am a reader and/or fan.

I am a published mystery writer.

I hope to become a published mystery writer.

I am a critic.

I am an editor or an editorial assistant.

I am a publisher or work for a publisher.

I own or work for a mystery bookstore.

I own or work for some other kind of bookstore.

Other:

19. How long have you been reading mysteries? What age approximately did you begin reading them?

20. Do you remember what mystery writers or series you started with?

275

21. How many mysteries do you read a month?

22. How many mysteries (approximately) do you read a year?

23. Are mysteries the main genre that you read?

Yes

24. Why do you read mysteries?

276

25. What types of mysteries do you read? Please check all that apply.

Cozies

Hardboiled

Romantic suspense

Historicals

Thrillers, especially spy and espionage

Crime novels

Humorous

Psychological suspense

Legal thrillers

Golden Age

Juvenile

Police Procedurals

Other:

26. Why do you like the type of mysteries that you checked?

27. What are some of the things you don't you like about the ones you didn't check?

277

Page 2 of 3 Next Page

This document last changed 21 June 2005. Page 3 of 3

28. What other kinds of books do you read?

Science fiction

Romance

Westerns

History

Biography/autobiography

Psychology or self-help

Science

Humor

Religion or philosophy

Other:

278

29. How do you know what new mysteries to read? Please check all that apply.

Newspaper reviews in major newspapers (e.g., New York Times, Washington Post) Newspaper reviews in local newspapers

Edgar award winners

Agatha award winners

Any other awards (e.g., Shamus, Anthony)

Librarian Recommendations

Mystery magazines

DorothyL listserv

Mystery sites on the net

Author recommendations

National Public Radio (NPR)

Bookseller recommendations

Mystery packaging/back cover blurb

Mystery conferences

Book clubs

Friends

PBS

Other:

30. Do you find that you read by association? For example, if you like Nevada Barr's environmental mysteries, do you find yourself looking for other environmental mysteries by other writers? Or if you enjoy Tony Hillerman's Native American mysteries, do you look for other writers who write with Native American protagonists?

Yes

279

31. Do you buy mysteries? Please check all that apply.

Hardcover

Trade

Paperback

Used

32. In general, how often do you buy them?

33. How much money (in US dollars) do you spend a month/year approximately?

34. Are you more likely to get books from the library? If so, how often do you go? How many mysteries do you generally check out? Do you ever buy mysteries that you have previously read from the library?

35. Do you ever reread mysteries?

280

Yes

36. Where do you get your mysteries? Please check all that apply.

Mystery bookstore

Amazon, Powells or other internet site

Grave Matters or other mystery internet sites

Borders, Barnes and Noble or other regular bookstore

Library

Used Bookstore

Gifts

Swap with friends

Mystery conferences

Other:

37. Have you ever been embarrassed to acknowledge reading mysteries?

Yes

38.

281

39. Is the mystery genre superior to, equal to, or inferior to other genres (such as romance, science fiction, Westerns, classics, etc.?) Why or why not?

40. Do you ever read mysteries by an author of a different ___ (Please check all that apply)

Gender

Race

Religion

National Origin

Sexual Orientation

Class

Political Stance

Other:

41.

282

Gender

Race

Religion

National Origin

Sexual Orientation

Class

Political Stance

Other:

42. If so, please explain why.

43. Are you interested in reading books about people with professions/interests that are similar to yours?

Yes

44. If you are in a book club, has your group ever read or considered reading a mystery?

Yes

283

45. Why or why not?

46. Are mysteries an academically significant genre? In other words, should they/could they be read in college and studied?

47. What makes an ideal mystery?

48. Please list some of your favorite authors and/or titles. Why do you like these in particular?

284

49. Do you ever read cozies?

Yes

50. Why or why not?

51. If you read cozies, how do you select the cozies/series that you will read?

285

52. Please list some of the things you have learned from reading mysteries, if anything.

53. Where did you find out about this survey?

Mystery print publication (e.g., Drood, Mystery Scene, Mystery Readers International) DorothyL listserv

Conference

Librarian

Friend or word of mouth

Bookstore

Google

Accident

Other:

54. Do you ever identify with the protagonist, or do you prefer to read books where you identify with the protagonist?

Yes

286

55. This is a catchall question. Is there a question I should have asked? What else do you have to tell me? Please feel free to expand on any of the questions in this survey, or introduce new topics in the mystery genre you think it would be useful for me to explore.

56. May I follow up with a further survey?

Yes

Page 3 of 3 Submit Survey

This document last changed 21 June 2005.

287

Appendix B

Questions asked of focus group participants

1) What is a cozy? How do you define it?

a) Give me some examples of cozy authors or titles that you love

b) Give me some examples of cozy authors or titles that exemplify the cozy

c) Can you think of a writer who gets identified as a cozy writer but that you

think definitely isn’t?

d) Can you think of a writer who doesn’t get identified as cozy writer but that

you think definitely is?

2) What aspects make you want to keep reading an author or series?

3) Series:

a) Do you prefer standalone books or series?

b) Do you read the series in order? (Must they be read in order?)

c) Do you get them all at once?

4) Characters:

a) Do you have a preference for gender, profession, hobbies, amateur sleuth,

romance, humor…

5) Do you think there is a type of person who likes cozies?

6) What do you think of paranormal, “woo-woo” in cozies?

7) A popular subgenre of the cozy is now the “niche” cozy where the emphasis is on

needlepoint, or quilting, or antiquing etc.

a) How do you feel about this niche subgenre?

288

b) Have you bought or checked out any of these mysteries?

c) Are you likely to in the future?

d) Do you feel this niche marketing is a good thing or a bad thing?

e) Do you like to read books that are based on hobbies, crafts, etc?

8) When you read a cozy, what are you looking for in terms of emotional

satisfaction/need?

9) Why do you read cozies? Why don’t you read cozies if you don’t?

10) How do you know what cozies to read?

11) Are there any mystery writers (cozy or not) whose series have been dropped?

12) What makes a satisfying ending in a cozy?

13) What aspects make you stop reading a cozy author or a cozy series? What

problems do you see with cozies? What is the worst thing that a cozy author can

do?

14) Is there a difference between “cozies” and “traditionals”?

15) Do you feel the word cozy is a derogatory term? Why or why not?

16) Are cozies “women’s” books? Do cozies receive the amount of media attention

(book reviews, advertisements, etc.) that they deserve?

17) Do you prefer male or female authors, or does it matter? Are male authors as

good at writing cozy literature as female authors are?

18) Some people believe that hard-boiled fiction is more literary than cozy fiction.

Do you agree or disagree with this statement, and why?

19) What percentage of books do you read that are cozy? Soft-boiled? Medium-

boiled? Hard-boiled? Noir?

289

20) Do you read soft-boiled, medium-boiled, hard-boiled or noir fiction?

a) Give me some examples of the above that you have liked

b) Give me some examples of the above that you have disliked

21) If you read soft-boiled, etc, but you love cozies, how do you explain that?

22) If you prefer soft-boiled, medium-boiled etc, but you enjoy cozies, how do you

explain that?

23) Do you have a TBR pile?

a) How many books are in it?

b) Where did you get the books/know what to buy?

24) A cozy should not contain the following ______

25) Who are the authors from the past people should read to understand the genre?

26) Who are the authors writing today that will be read in 50 years?

27) Have your tastes for particular subgenres changed over time? Why? How?

28) Do you find yourself positively/negatively affected by reading mysteries? Have

you changed in any way by reading mysteries?

29) Have cozies changed over time? How? For the good or bad?

290

Appendix C

Figures

Full-page charts follow this page.

Figure 1: Borders' Mystery Copies by Subgenre

Cozy Golden Age 1.2% Cozy Noir 0.2% Cozy Historical 3.6% Historical 3.8% Legal 6.6% Thriller 31.3%

Police Procedural 8.8%

Hardboiled 15.0%

Cozy 29.6% 291 Figure 2: Proclivity to Read Outside of Own Demographic

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

Author 50% Protagonist Readers

40%

30%

20%

10%

0% Gender Race Religion National Sexual Class Political Other

Origin Orientation Stance 292 Figure 4: Education of Mystery Readers

Grade 10 Grade 11 other Did not answer 0.3% 0.0% 3.8% 1.3% High school graduate 2.6% Doctorate degree Some college, no degree 8.1% 11.4%

Professional degree Associate degree, 5.4% occupational 2.5% Associate degree, academic 2.4%

Master's degree Bachelor's degree 33.6% 28.6% 293 Figure 5: Religions of Mystery Readers

180

160 168

140

120

100 96

Count 80 75 60 60

40 43 39 37 20 23 20 18 15 13 11 11 10 10 0 7 6 5 None Roman Catholic Christian Protestant Jewish Agnostic Episcopal Methodist Unitarian Atheist Pagan Wiccan Presbyterian Lutheran Anglican Baptist Buddhist ofChrist United Church Mormon Hindu 22Quaker Muslim 1111111111Pentecostal Scientist Christian Orthodox Russian Druid Catholic Byzantine Witness Jehovah's Taoist Mennonite Catholic Orthodox 294 Figure 6: Reading Habits: Mystery Readers vs. General Readers

60%

51.72% 50%

40% 38.54%

30%

21%

Percent of respondents Percent 20%

12%

10% 9% 6.59% 4% 2.87%

0% 1-5 6-11 12-49 50+ Books read per year

Mystery Readers General Readers (per NEA) 295 296

Endnotes

Introduction

1 Heta Pyrhönen’s study Murder from an Academic Angle: An Introduction to the Study of the Detective Narrative records over 180 studies of the mystery genre. 2 Many critics support the idea that the mystery genre has conservative values that support a repressive state system. Among critics who share these views are Kathleen Klein in The Female Detective: Gender & Genre, Dennis Porter in The Pursuit of Crime: Art and Ideology in Detective Fiction), and Stephen Knight in Form and Ideology in Crime Fiction. 3According to Google, a tea cozy “is a padded cloth covering to keep a teapot warm.” Since cozies frequently involve the drinking of tea, and in a larger sense involve domestic settings, some have concluded that this is how the cozy subgenre got its name. 4 According to the Romance Writers of America (RWA) website, “Simba Information reports U.S. book sales (net revenue from retail sources) at $6.31 billion for 2006, which is a slight decline over 2005.” The 2006 publishing figures indicate that romance novel sales accounted for over 26.4% of all books sold in the United States and account for over 1.37 billion dollars in sales (RWA). Cathie Linz remarks in Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women that the world’s largest publisher of books, Harlequin Enterprises, has reported annual sales of over 190 million books worldwide (11). According to RWA, romances already outsell all other mass-market books, except for the religion/inspiration category. In fact, the AP-Ipsos Poll indicates that 1 in 5 books sold in the US (including hard cover texts) is a romance (RWA). In 2006, 6,400 romances were released in the United States, nearly tripling the number released in 2002. Simba reports that in 2006 sales by genre included the following: Romance fiction: $1.37 billion in estimated revenue for 2006 Religion/inspirational: $1.68 billion Science fiction/fantasy: $495 million Classic literary fiction: $448 Mystery: $422 million Graphic novels: $128 million 5 Publisher’s Weekly reported that according to the Audio Publishers Association 2001 Consumer Survey, 28% of listeners ranked Mystery/Horror/Suspense as their favorite audio genre, by far the most preferred category. Sales of audio mysteries increased 19% in 2003 over 2002 (Danford). The popularity of audio books will be explored more thoroughly in Chapter Five. 6 This information comes from my interviews with mystery bookstore owners, focus groups, the listservs DorothyL and 4MA, as well as my over 700 surveys that I received between July 2005 and February 2006. In addition, the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) reports that “The number of books sold dropped by nearly 44 million between 2003 and 2004, even as the annual number of books published approaches 175,000….[BISG]…estimated sales of 2.295 billion books in 2004, compared to an estimated 2.339 billion the previous year” (“More Titles”). 7 Mary Alice and Richard Gorman of Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Pennsylvania

297

explained that publishers have a desire to categorize books for their readers and will make up categories if an author doesn’t quite fit. Thus, Barr’s environmentalist themed mysteries that take place mainly in national parks are called “outdoor mysteries” and are blurbed as such. 8 Robin Agnew, owner of Aunt Agatha’s, a mystery bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan, argues just this (Interview). Maggie Griffin, co-owner of Partners &Crime Mystery Booksellers in New York City, states, “The enduring strength of the mystery genre comes from the way it reinvents itself every few years” (Dahlin). 9 Mystery critic and small press publisher Otto Penzler explains “Cozies are successful because they appeal to women who can feel secure passing them on to their 14-year-old daughters. Many of these books features cats or recipes. If they have both, I want to burn that book unless the recipe involves a cat” (Trachtenburg, “Eccentric”). Penzler is one of many mystery critics who disparages cozies and argues for the superiority of the hardboiled form. 10 In my 2005 email interview with mystery writer Carolyn Hart, Hart stated about the word cozy that “It was at one time used by critics of the traditional mystery to indicate that those books were silly and unrealistic. It is true that the term is no longer pejorative but I still don't like it and prefer that these kinds of books be described as traditional mysteries.” Hart is considered by most readers, bookstore owners, and critics to be a cozy writer making her protest all the more interesting. 11 According to Chris Steinbrunner and Otto Penzler, eds. Encyclopedia of Mystery & Detection, Haycraft’s fame in the genre rests with two landmark books. “The first Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story (1941) was the first book about detective fiction as a literary form to be published in the US” (193). 12 Christie is considered by many to be a cozy writer. I make the argument that she is a traditional, Golden Age writer, and that while there are cozy elements to her stories, traditional mysteries and cozy mysteries are different. I explain differences between the two subgenres throughout the dissertation, but at length in the conclusion. 13 In her article “Reading Reading the romance,” Radway explained why she chose to write about women readers of romances. She states that the American Civilization Department at the University of Pennsylvania, argued “that if accurate statements were to be made about more ‘ordinary’ Americans, the popular literature produced for and consumed by large numbers ought to become the primary focus of culturally-oriented scholarship” (63). This was not a view shared by the English Department at the time she was doing her work because it was concerned only with what it considered the “greatest works of art.” Radway’s belief was that “in an effort to reconstruct culture, it would be necessary to connect particular texts with the communities that produced and consumed them and to make some effort to specify how the individuals involved actually constructed those texts as meaningful semiotic structures. Hence my conclusion that what American Studies needed were ethnographies of reading” (65). 14 In Taste Bourdieu talks about detective fiction. He believes it is primarily for a middle-brow audience, though it can be appreciated by the upper classes when it is associated with the avant-garde. Yet, even there, an appreciation of detective fiction, along with jazz, an appreciation for comic strips, and science fiction, among other things,

298

can be a rebellious act, a negative response to what the dominant classes consider legitimate arts. Here is his quote in full:

The hierarchy of ‘average’ rates of profit broadly corresponds to the hierarchy of degrees of legitimacy, so that knowledge of classical or even avant-garde literature yields higher average profits in the scholastic market and elsewhere, than knowledge of cinema, or, a fortiori, strip cartoons, detective stories or sport. But the specific profits, and the consequent propensities to invest are only defined in the relationship between a field and a particular agent with particular characteristics. For example, those who owe most of their cultural capital to the educational system, such as primary and secondary teachers originating from the working and middle classes are particularly subject to the academic definition of legitimacy, and tend to proportion their investments very strictly to the the value the educational system sets on the different areas. By contrast, ‘middle-ground’ arts such as cinema, jazz, and even more strip cartoons, science fiction or detective stories are predisposed to attract the investments either of those who have entirely succeeded in converting their cultural capital into educational capital or those who, not having acquired legitimate culture in the legitimate manner (i.e., through early familiarization) maintain an uneasy relationship with it subjectively or objectively, or both. These arts, not yet fully legitimate, which are disdained or neglected by the big holders of educational capital, offer a refuge and revenge to those who, by appropriating them, secure the best return on their cultural capital (especially if it is not fully recognized scholastically) while at the same time taking credit for contesting the established hierarchy of legitimacies and profits. In other words, the propensity to apply to the middle-ground arts a disposition usually reserved for the legitimate arts--that measured, for example by knowledge of film directors--depends less closely on educational capital than on a whole relationship to scholastic culture and the educational system which itself depends on the degree to which the cultural capital consists solely of the capital acquired in and recognized by the educational system. (Thus, members of the new petite bourgeoisie have generally inherited more cultural capital than the primary teachers but possess much the same educational capital: they know many more directors but fewer composers.) In fact, one can never entirely escape from the hierarchy of legitimacies. Because of the very meaning and value of a cultural object varies according to the system of objects in which it is placed, detective stories, science fiction or strip cartoons may be entirely prestigious cultural assets or be reduced to their ordinary values, depending on whether they are associated with avant-garde literature or music--in which case they appear as manifestations of daring and freedom--or combine to form a constellation typical of middle-brow taste--when they appear as what they are, simple substitutes for legitimate assets. (87-88)

299

This quote perhaps above all influenced my decision to study who the American readers of mysteries were. Bourdieu’s work influenced what questions I asked on the survey, and his project has definitely suggested a variety of paths in which to take my research further. 15 Sensation fiction, according to Lyn Pykett in The Sensation Novel: From the Woman in White to The Moonstone, was a creation of the 1860s. It featured novels about bigamy, adultery, and crime, and the produced emotional sensations within its readers. Key practitioners were Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and Ellen Wood. 16 These critics include Jeffrey Marks in his book Atomic Renaissance (2003), Julian Symons Bloody Murder (1992), and small press publishers and reviewers Enid and Tom Schantz.

Chapter 1

1 Cicero was known as a great and “fiery” speaker. He was famous, especially, for two law suits that he prosecuted. One involved the Governor of Sicily. Cicero was not afraid to accuse the Governor of murder and fraud and drove the Governor out of office. In a second famous case, Cicero proved that a young man was being framed for patricide because the perpetrators of the crime wished to steal the family’s fortunes (MysteryNet.com). 2 Dorothy L. Sayers, “The Omnibus of Crime,” The Art of the Mystery Story, ed. by Howard Haycraft 74. Other stories in the Apocrypha concern Daniel’s solving a “locked room” mystery. Daniel must figure out who is stealing the food left for the god Bel. 3 Bruce Cassaday, ed.,“The Three Sharpers,” Roots of Detection: The Art of Deduction before Sherlock Holmes 15-26. In this story, a wise man is able to identify where missing animals are, the family origins of the Queen’s mother, etc., similar to Holmes’ tricks of looking at someone’s hat or watch and determining biographical features. 4 Cassaday 26-29. In this story, Voltaire is making fun of the dangers of reason in an unreasoning age. Zadig is able to “find” animals and explain their appearances without ever having actually seen the animals. 5 For example, some critics believe that works like Crime and Punishment could also be classified as mysteries. Jay Pearsall, an owner of Murder Ink Bookstore, states in Mystery and Crime: The New York Public Library Book of Answers that “Crime and Punishment is first and foremost concerned with the human condition not with the process of detection. This makes it a novel, not a mystery” (130). Certainly this can be quibbled with. Mysteries can concern themselves with the human condition, but most critics would agree with Pearsall that what makes the mystery genre stand out is the concern with detection. There are certain ingredients mysteries share. Necessary criteria include: a crime, which is usually a murder; clues and red herrings; suspects with secrets, and a detective, professional or amateur, who hopes to solve the crime. 6 Panek explains that Bulwer-Lytton devised four different classes of criminals: a) gentlemen highwaymen in the style of Robin Hood—these men are “intelligent,

300

educated, honorable, and jovial”-- and Panek points out that this class was used to show the hypocrisy of honest society (21); b) geniuses who went astray—readers are to witness the “nobility of their suffering” (21); c) the “naturally vicious man genetically inclined thug, murderer, cheat, or lecher” (21); and d) “the criminal that is not a criminal.” Lytton believed that criminal behavior was genetic and that gentle folk naturally eschew violence (22). 7 Among those critics is Charles Rzepka who stated “Messac was the first to note those elements of Caleb Williams that make it an important harbinger of things to come: the terror and mystery of crime; the obsessive nature of suspicion; the paranoid thrills of flight, pursuit, arrest, and escape; and the daring use of incognito and disguise” (n.p). Michael Cohen recognized Caleb Williams for its use of physical evidence that aids in ferreting out the crime, but also can be misleading; and “how the rich and powerful seek to railroad the lowly and innocent” (qtd. in Rzepka n.p.). Thomas Beebee suggests in his entry “William Godwin” in Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction that Caleb Williams “looks back to eighteenth century forms of literature where problems of communication and of class structure are major themes” (750). He admits “mystery and detection per se are always secondary in Godwin’s work to subjects such as the inequities of the English legal system, the relation between guilt and innocence, and the links between power and knowledge in the personal, legal, and political sphere” (750). But Beebee argues that Caleb Williams was not only one of the “finest English novels” but that it also had a profound impact on the mystery genre (750). And George Woodcock in his entry “Godwin, William” in St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers states that Godwin was “the first British writer of consequence to use fiction as a vehicle for social criticism” (423). He argues further that the novel is a “political thriller and […] a forerunner of the detective story in its strictest sense” (423). 8 Among the critics who believe Edgar Allan Poe to be the father of the mystery are Julian Symons in Bloody Murder, R. A W. Lowndes in “The Contributions of Edgar Allan Poe,” J. R. Christopher in “Poe and the Tradition of the Detective Story,” E. M. Wrong’s in “Crime and Detection,” and Dorothy L. Sayers in “The Omnibus of Crime.” 9 It cannot be overstated how important this convention of the superior sleuth with the average sidekick is. It is a clever convention because the reader is represented by the “average,” usually amiable, sidekick who needs to have things explained to him or her. In the Charlie Chan mysteries, for example, the sidekick was Keye Luke who “as Number One son, became an important adjunct, hindering and helping his father” (LeJeune 64). Even children’s stories followed this model, perhaps most famously with Nancy Drew and her friends, Bess and George. In the late 20th century, most Americans are familiar with Perry Mason who had as his sidekicks Paul Drake, and to a lesser extent, his secretary Della Street. In a very interesting twist, Columbo had as his unwitting sidekick whichever murderer he was tracking in that week’s installment. I would argue that part of the success of the show was due to the tension between Columbo and the murderer, since the murderer felt him or herself to be superior to the bumbling police officer, and both would play a cat and mouse game, neither conceding until the end who was the cat and who was the mouse. Columbo was able to manipulate the murderer into helping him in solve the case.

301

10 The “locked room” mystery is another important convention of the genre, and had its heyday during the Golden Age. I will discuss the concept further later in the chapter. 11 According to Symons, he’s not the first recorded detective. That honor belongs to insurance investigator Nadgett in Dickens’ novel Martin Chuzzlewit (1844). Symons adds that while Nadgett might be the first, he is a minor character, while Inspector Bucket is a major one. (Bloody 44) 12 While it might appear that such involvement between female protagonists and police officers would indicate the cozies are socially conservative, this is not always the case. In some cozies, there is a strong attraction to law and order; on the other hand, frequently the police officer who has the romantic liaison with the protagonist is the “nice” cop as opposed to police officers who denigrate the amateur. Another common source of tension for cozies is the differences between the amateur and the paid professional. In cozies, it is often the amateur sleuth who has to defend pursuing the criminal in a crime because often the police officer doesn’t believe a crime has even occurred. Cozies preserve the sense of ambivalence towards forces of the law. 13 Kimberly Dilley in Busybodies, Meddlers, and Snoops: The Female Hero in Contemporary Women’s Mysteries states that it is the women writing female PI fiction that have received most of the attention, but in some ways the “greater force” is in the amateur sleuth subgenre. “The amateur sleuth can be anyone, in any circumstance, and in any time or place. She can even be married and have children. Her influence and importance to the genre and reading public are often overlooked by critics because she appears to typify the ‘normal’ and unquestioned qualities of woman” (97). Dilley suggests that while a female private detective meets violence on the street, the amateur sleuth brings the danger home “a place that popular gender mythology has constructed to be a haven of nurturing, peace, and love. It is the woman who is primarily responsible for creating this environment. In the amateur sleuth mystery novel, she is also the one now responsible for threatening the safety of the family” (99). In The Moonstone, Collins creates tension and surprise by making Frank a) an amateur sleuth, b) the romantic love interest, and c) the unknowing perpetrator of the crime. Rachel’s role is interesting too in that she attempts to preserve the family network by not revealing what she knows of Frank’s “crime,” but in not revealing what she knows, she prolongs the problems and nearly destroys the domestic sphere. 14 See Kathleen Klein, The Female Detective: Gender and Genre. Klein argues, “because detective fiction follows rather than parallels social reality, the genre’s inherent conservatism upholds power and privilege in the name of law and justice as it validates readers’ visions of a safe and ordered world” (1). 15 Symons would disagree with this assessment, seeing Holmes as the model. For Symons, the more important issue is that Holmes has earned his right to be called the greatest detective. Sherlock Holmes doesn’t merely assert his genius; he proves it time and again. Holmes is a master at inductive reasoning, and in every tale he proves his ability to observe and draw conclusions. He is also a master of disguise, and frequently solves his cases based on his ability to take on other roles. He finds it simple to not only imagine what his criminal counterpart will imagine and think, he is also able to empathize with particular criminal actions. He is not so removed that he is unable to

302

understand the occasional necessity for breaking the law. “It is a mark again of Doyle’s skill that Sherlock Holmes comes through to us as a man who genuinely had a genius for his occupation” (Symons, Bloody 71). 16 In “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton,” Holmes performs many dubious actions. He becomes “engaged” to a housemaid of Milverton’s in order to get access to his house; he breaks into the house to steal blackmail material; and he allows Milverton to be murdered by another of Milverton’s victims. Upon the retreat of the killer from Milverton’s den, Holmes gathers up all other evidence of Milverton’s crimes and burns it so as to spare other victims from having their truths revealed. Finally, Holmes lies to the police about the events of the evening and refuses to assist them in tracking down the murderer, allowing the case to go unsolved. 17 In The Mystery Lover’s Companion, Art Bourgeau writes this book based on his experience of running a successful mystery bookstore, and shares with readers a different approach to designating mysteries. He argues, “there is the American Mystery, subdivided in the ‘Eastern,’ the intellectual detection story, and the ‘Western,’ the hardboiled Mike Hammer style novel. The English mystery includes the ‘Indoor’ set in a country manor or a train, and the ‘Outdoor’ set in a country village […]”(flyleaf). The Eastern mystery is modeled on the British traditional mystery, and is the forerunner to the cozy. Bourgeau uses these categories to help readers find books that they want to read, an approach used by librarians known as “reader advisory.” Reader advisory will be explored further in Chapter 2 and in the conclusion. 18 Whether readers agree that the mystery as a genre is an umbrella over a possible 20 different sub genres (and debate is fierce: are techno-driven doomsday books really mysteries? What of romantic Gothic thrillers?), critics do agree that there are certain ingredients mysteries share. First, in order for a text to be a mystery, according to Jacque Barzun, the primary function of the novel needs to be detecting (qtd. in Holquist 154). He further argues “the main interest of the story should consist in finding out, from circumstances largely physical, the true order and meaning of events that have part disclosed and part concealed. Crime is attractive but incidental.[…]Crime[...]makes plausible the concealment that arouses curiosity” (Barzun 249). 19 The Detection Club, the earliest important mystery writers’ organization, was founded by Anthony Berkeley in London in 1928 and had as its first “ruler” G.K. Chesterton. The Club continues to this day. Membership is only by election, and members have included Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, E. C. Bentley, and the American “Eastern” writer, John Dickinson Carr. See Chris Steinbrunner and Otto Penzler, eds. Encyclopedia of Mystery & Detection (301). 20 In 1928, Knox published his famous Decalogue of rules for mystery writers including the infamous rule that “No Chinaman shall figure in the story.” This was not just prejudice against Asians, which was rampant at the time in the west. When Knox published his Decalogue, it was a cliché in the mystery world for “inscrutable” Chinese to be the killers. One of the strengths of the mystery genre is that authors so rarely adhere to all the “rules” set down for them. In 1925, Earl Biggers created the first Charlie Chan novel, The House Without a Key. He was inspired to do this because “sinister and wicked Chinese are old stuff, but an amiable Chinese on the side of law and order had never been used” (Steinbrunner and Penzler 27). Bigger’s depiction is a

303

stereotype as well, but interestingly, it is a positive one featuring Chan as profound and far more knowledgeable than the white people that he meets. 21 Locked room mysteries were popular during the Golden Age. The locked room provided a conundrum: how did the crime (usually murder) occur in a room that appeared to be impossible for anyone to penetrate? These stories were more likely to be penned by British mystery writers, and written at a time when novelists were more concerned with techniques of crime and “howdunnit” rather than with character studies. In time, locked room murders became somewhat passé (Steinbrunner and Penzler 248). 22 It is significant that the subtitle of this novel is A Love Story with Detective Interruptions. Sayers was the one of the strongest antagonists of romance in mysteries, yet with her last book she abandons this idea. 23 For most lovers of cozies, the term “cozy noir” is paradoxical at best and ridiculous at worst. Noir suggests that the circumstances in the story are hopeless, the emotions of the major characters are bleak, and the ending will be negative. Cozies are the opposite: circumstances are always hopeful, the emotions are calm, and readers feel secure. Cozy noir is an attempt on the part of publishers to entice readers, but it is a bizarre strategy because it defeats the purpose of both the cozy and noir categories. One example of cozy noir is Carol Nelson Douglas’ Midnight Louis series. The books themselves are cozies, but the cat, who is the protagonist, is a hardboiled detective. They are described as “cozy noir.” Spinetingler magazine capitalizes on this paradox and sponsors a contest every year for the best cozy noir short story. Some publishers feel this distinction may be necessary for readers so that they won’t be unpleasantly surprised by the darkness that they find between the covers of the novel. 24 It would seem obvious that if the sleuth is a police officer or private detective than the novels are not traditionals. But police procedurals are more than novels with police officer protagonists. The emphasis in these books is supposed to be on the procedures of police work and the “grind” of the job. In the books of Christie and Marsh, very little is written about the actual mechanics of detective and police work. 25 In Chapter Four, I discuss several problems that readers have with cozy mysteries. One survey responder called cozy protagonists who get romantically involved with police officers “badge bunnies.” She rarely read these books because she found them so cliché. 26 When people are asked to define cozies, they frequently refer to Miss Marple, Agatha Christie’s elderly spinster amateur detective. While the Miss Marple novels fit the description of cozies in many ways in that there is no profanity, no sex, and no “on screen” gore, I believe the Christie novels to be traditional Golden Age novels rather than cozies. The key difference between Christie’s Miss Marple novels and cozies is the emotional ambience of the Christie texts. Miss Marple believes in evil, and sees evil as the motivator for many criminal actions. Cozies are an optimistic view of the world. While bad may happen, it can be explained. Cozies don’t involve themselves in philosophical issues of good vs. evil except on a very surface level. For Miss Marple, these are eternal struggles. 27 In some ways, as I mentioned in the introduction, the mystery genre can be seen as a binary with the two poles being hardboiled/noir vs. traditional/cozy. When the hardboiled school began in America in the late 1920s, the critique of each pole began

304

with each side claiming the greater “realism” or more literary nature. This argument persists to this day and will be explored at much greater length in Chapter Three. 28 Law and Order is the longest running crime series in the United States, and second longest running drama series on U.S. television. While it was still finding its way, it interrupted its successful format of presenting in the first half of the show the crime and the police procedural—the plodding investigation and the set-up for the arrest, followed by the second half of the show that became both a traditional puzzle and a legal thriller. In the fourth year, in order to build audience, writers moved to develop more fully the characters, and gave them families with traumas that sometimes interfered on investigations. After the fifth year, this was discontinued, and the police procedural formula was returned to. Ratings went up. 29 Highsmith seems an odd choice for Symons to make as an exemplar of the crime novel, but I believe that he chose her because of the emotional impact of her work. She was fascinated with criminal psychology, and she was a master at creating ambivalence—do we side with Ripley as he cons people and even murders them? Or do we see him as the villain of the piece? Her novels are the antithesis of cozies: Highsmith’s world is noirish and hardboiled and complex, which is what Symons desires in a proper mystery novel. 30 I am suggesting that cozies and traditionals were still important to readers. It is difficult to get sales figures for books by subgenre at any time, and the earliest subgenre sales figures I can find are from the Drood Review of Books begun in 1989. We do know historically that hardboiled books were reviewed more (as were mystery novels written by men in general). I will support the claim about reviews of male-authored books in Chapter Three. Another way to measure interest in cozies is to look at awards. The Mystery Writers of America was the only mystery organization in the United States giving awards for mysteries before the 1980s. Grandmaster (the first ever MWA award) was given to Agatha Christie in 1955. After that, no women received the Grandmaster nod until Mignon Eberhart in 1971. St. Martin’s Guide to Crime and Mystery Writing describes Eberhart as having a “gothic sensibility” with an emphasis on psychological suspense. She is the opposite of a cozy writer (332). The next woman to receive a Grandmaster award was Ngaio Marsh, a Golden Age writer, in 1978 (MWA, “Awards”). As will be shown in Chapter Three, interest in the cozy did exist and finally received support in the mid-1980s. One support for this contention is the following: In Female Detectives in American Novels: A Bibliography and Analysis of Serialized Female Sleuths, Francis Della Cava and Madeline H. Engel point out that between the 1880s and 1979, there were 44 series featuring female protagonists. Between 1980 and 1993, there were 115 series featuring female protagonists (xi). Finally, we do know that Agatha Christie’s books did not go out of print.

Chapter 2

1 While some Borders’ stores may differ as to how many books are in any particular sections (some stores have on average 120,000 books, and the 515 superstores throughout the US have as many as 200,000 books), the types of books that are sold are determined by one mystery book buyer for all the stores in the country (“Borders”).

305

There are minor differences in stock; there may be representation from some local authors, for example, but the vast majority of the books that are stocked are determined by the central office in Ann Arbor, Michigan. One Borders is very much like any other Borders, which is part of its appeal and success. 2 BISG is the Book Industry Study Group. The amount of money is the form that they use and represents millions of dollars. 3Smaller publishers are at a disadvantage in big box stores. “We cannot afford to have books fronted out and on book tables,” said Jessica Tribble, Associate Publisher of Poisoned Pen Press in an interview. She explained that decisions as to what books would appear on the tables, the first books to draw the eyes of customers as they walk in the store, were made at the corporate level, often a year in advance. Space is made ahead of time in the plan for local pieces, but the vast majority of space is purchased for national bestseller hopefuls. Photos as to how tables should look showing which books are to be represented and where specifically they should be placed, are given to the network of Borders and Barnes & Noble stores from their corporate offices. 4 Return policies depend on the supplier. Some publishers allow six months before books need to be returned, but the trend is for books to be returned within three months or less. Tess Gerritsen, a New York Times bestselling mystery and suspense writer explained how to read the barcode sticker on a Borders book. If you ever wonder how many of your books were stocked in your local Borders bookstore, just flip over a copy and look at the Borders barcode sticker on the back. Here’s an example, which I’m copying from the back of THE KEEP by Jennifer Egan, which I recently bought from Borders: BORDERS $13.95 EGAN JENNI 8793900 7# Fiction/Lit 2214 D5A 4196690 83007 There are some mysterious numbers there, but you only need to focus on two of them: The 7# tells you how many copies came in that particular shipment. The 83007 tells you the date the copies came in. These are really useful numbers to know. Store clerks are reluctant to tell you how many copies of your book they’ve sold. (In fact, I’ve heard that they’re forbidden to give out that information to authors.) But they will happily tell you how many copies they have in their store at the moment. By looking at the sticker, you’ll know how many copies the store brought in, so you’ll be able to calculate how many they’ve sold. If your book has been selling well, the store will re-order more copies, so you may find different stickers on copies that came in later shipments. Let’s say you find some books with 7# on 8/30/07 and others with 5# on 9/15/07. This is really good news. It means that two separate shipments came in, and the store got a total of 12. If there are only four left in the store, you know they’ve sold at least 8 copies. The store may have sold even more than that. If all the books in a

306

particular shipment sold out, you won’t find any of those stickered copies left in the store. Important note: This tip is only good for the Borders chain. Barnes and Noble doesn’t use this sticker system. Not allowing books to remain on their shelves longer than a few months does not allow for books without a publicity machine, or hand-sellers to direct attention to them. 5 When I visit Borders bookstores, I continue to pay attention to the marketing practices. In December, 2007, I was in a Borders in Virginia, and found an end cap display declaring all the works to be cozies. I thought that Borders had finally decided to pay attention to the subgenre. I examined all the titles only to discover that not one was a cozy and in fact, at minimum they were soft-boiled. This is a foolish mistake. Readers who know the term cozy will initially gravitate to those books and discover books that are not what they want to read hence causing them to distrust other books that Borders promotes. 6 Gelder states that “The amount of novels sold to produce a top-seller--- that is, the bestselling bestsellers--- has increased substantially over the years. In the early 1800s--- during Sir Walter Scott’s time--- sales of over 10,000 copies would have suggested real popularity (Terry 1983: 28). By the 1970s, records were broken with sales of around 300,000. By the 1990s, a top-selling novel meant sales of over one million. Indeed, first print runs for top-sellers can now be one million, or more: sometimes a lot more. Records are continually broken by top-selling fiction--- as well as nonfiction” (7). In Chapter Five, I will explore how major publishers in the US determine bestsellers and the problems that many critics associate with the pursuit of bestsellerdom. 7 This keen interest in series and backlist is discussed in depth in Chapter Four. 8 Learmonth argues that a “downside” of superstores like Borders is that “…staffs at these mega-bookstores tend to resemble workers at your local multiplex. They don’t exactly exude the passion and knowledge of literature that used to characterize smaller bookstores or art movie houses.” Godin laments “Occasionally a book gets handsold, but generally speaking, bookstores have become self-serve establishments. ‘Here’s 10,000 or 50,000 or 100,000 books, well organized. Please find what you need and we’ll see you at the checkout.” Conversely, what Mac’s Backs and other independent bookstores do is emphasize hand selling. This is necessary if they are to compete with larger stores 9 Amazon and other used book sites on the Internet appear to be hurting some independent mystery stores. “Amazon and the chains have put a lot of indies out of business,” said Poisoned Pen Press’ Tribble. John Cross of Columbus’ Foul Play bookstore has seen a fall off in business. He says, ”Amazon and the Internet have killed used book sales. It is the not browsing in the store that really hurts.” If people can find the books that they want at cheaper prices without leaving their homes, why visit a bookstore? Amazon offers not only used books, but also used copies of books that have just been published. 10 Murder Ink, perhaps the most famous mystery bookstore in America, was founded in 1972, and closed its doors December 31, 2006. Jay Pearsall, the owner of the store, explained there were several reasons for going out of business, including “The rent has been increasing by 5 percent a year and currently runs $18,000 a month…. A Barnes

307

& Noble at 82nd Street and Broadway has been chipping away at business for years. Amazon and eBay killed off mail-order business and sales of rare books.” (Bosman) 11 “Libraries are our number one market,” said Tribble in an interview. Further, many of their individual customers are collectors and like receiving the hardcover books. In 2005, Barbara Peters, founder of Poisoned Pen Press, told me about the success of their book club. “The clubmembers get 1 signed hardcover book at cover price [which I pick out], [and] the upper limit is 24 a year but generally I do about 18. Right now 2005 has 16. Some of them are British books.” Their books are available in mystery bookstores and by mail order, but they learned the lesson that Five Star learned, and that is that libraries ultimately are a superior revenue producing market. Thus, they publish in hardcover, which is sturdier and more likely to be purchased by libraries. 12 Every librarian interviewed for the dissertation does reader advisory, and each expressed the same sentiments as Badger’s. Pat Dempsey, Materials Selection Manager and Cynthia Orr, Fiction Selector, both of the Cuyahoga County Public Library, said that the issue of direction is important because what can happen after the interview is that the reader ends up with a stack of books that are the librarian’s favorites and that this happens time after time with particular librarians. The significance is that these books are not centered to the readers’ interests but the librarians. Catherine Ross in her book Reading Matters states that a sizable percentage of books are returned unread. Since the readers who most frequently use reader advisory are patrons who don’t read very much, bad advisory recommendations can turn off readers and make them less likely to later borrow books from libraries. 13 While it is promising that large bookstores are attempting to remedy their lack of knowledge in terms of helping customers, it is interesting to note at the same time that the field of reader advisory developed by librarians is actually denigrated by members of their own profession. Dempsey and Orr stated that their library was going to have a workshop on the importance and value of pleasure reading. When I expressed my surprise that such a workshop would be needed in a library, they explained that genre books in particular are denigrated by many librarians. Ross states that Teachers and parents sometimes need to be reassured of the value of pleasure reading, a domain in which libraries have taken a lead role. What the research shows is that people become readers by doing lots of reading of extended text; that what motivates novice readers is the pleasure of the reading experience itself; and that libraries, schools, and communities need to support pleasure reading by making the books accessible, by helping readers choose books, by celebrating and modeling the love of reading, and by creating communities of readers--- either face-to-face or in an electronic environment--- who share the excitement of books (ix). 14 Ross’s figures come from the Book Industry Study Group’s finding from 1999 (6).

Chapter 3

308

1 According to Drood Review of Books, in 1989, 1598 mysteries were published in the US. In 1996, that figure was 1599 books. Jim Huang, editor of the Drood Review, states that between 1989 and 1999 publication of mysteries remained quite steady. In 2003 there was a surge in publication of mysteries (2). He suggests that a “handful” of mysteries may be missing from these figures if the books were published by very small presses which did not release marketing information. 2 Poisoned Pen Press (PPP) has been very successful in recruiting authors. Associate publisher of PPP Jessica Tribble states that a major reason for this is the issue of publicity. If a writer is with a major publisher, it is unlikely that the person will receive marketing support. Tribble states that only blockbuster authors are accorded publicity anymore. 3 Prior to the work of Gilligan and Miller, when social scientists wanted to graph how human beings behave through their life times, men were used as models. So when exploring what was “normal” for a teenager to behave when leaving for college, for example, the investigators would examine male teenagers. When female teenagers were compared to male teenagers, they were viewed as other and strange since they didn’t share the same emotional issues as the male teenagers did. A famous example of the misuse of male models as maps for human beings are the studies done by Kohlberg and his stages of ethical development in which he concluded that women were less advanced than men ethically. This claim was challenged by Gilligan, and Kohlberg did finally recognize that he was biasing his perspective by using male behavior as normative. 4 Initially, MWA was not going to give awards, but the founders decided that something needed to be done to start giving mystery writing respectability. Mystery writer Dorothy B. Hughes explained how MWA decided to award the Edgar. [A] new idea was conceived by MWA. An award for the Best Mystery of the Year. (And, as we know from that idea came not just one award by many, to honor the various aspects of the genre.) ...Our award was to honor the mystery writer who didn't have a chance at the Pulitzer or National Book Award; our award was one to which all in our field might aspire and some, hopefully achieve. It was yet another step in dignifying the mystery writer, in enhancing his work, and, let's face crass materialism (or, back to the original slogan, "Crime Doesn't Pay - Enough,"), anything that enhances the author and his work means more money in his pocket. (Zeman) 5This debate continues. When the Edgar nominations came out in January 2008, the president of the SinC Internet Chapter, Steve Kelner, did his yearly break down of the awards by gender and subgenre. Note: Mystery aficionados refer to the whole list of awards that are given at the MWA banquet as the Edgars. Here is what he found:

* Best Novel: 100% Male (5/0) * Best First by American Author: 80% Male, 20% Female (4/1) * Best Paperback Original: 60% Male, 40% Female (3/2) * Best Critical/Biographical: 60% Male, 40% Female if you count by book; actually one had three male authors, so technically 71%/29% (5/2)

309

* Best Fact Crime: 100% Male (5/0) * Best Short Story: 60% Male, 40% Female (3/2) * Best Young Adult: 40% Male, 60% Female (2/3) * Best Juvenile: 20% unknown, 0% Male, 80% Female (1/0/3) * Best Play: 100% Male (3) * Best Television Episode Teleplay: 60% Male, 40% Female, sort of (10, but one had two authors [one of each], one had two story writers and two teleplay writers, one of which was in common, but I counted twice.) * Best Motion Picture Screen Play: 100% Male (6/0) if you just count screenplay writers; if you count the source novels, then it is 8/0 (100% Male)

Last year I noted that it appeared to be ‘the best year ever for the big fiction categories (Novel, Best 1st, PBO, Short Story), which overall score 65% Male, 35% Female (13/7), and exceptionally even in the novel categories (6/5). Note the Female tilt in YA[Young Adult] and Male tilt in anything to do with Hollywood...’

This year it is notably worse for women. 85% male, 15% female in the big four categories (novel, best 1st, PBO, short story), 71% male overall (41/17) if one counts every writer in the above categories (and one woman twice!). Again, only YA and Juvenile even tilted female (Juvenile may be 100% female, but Pseudonymous Bosch is, well, pseudonymous, even if described as male), whereas four categories, including Best Novel, Best Fact Crime and Best Motion Picture Screenplay were 100% male. 6 According to Publishers Weekly, “Sisters in Crime counts 3,600 members, not all of them women. All author members including our Brothers in Crime—are treated equally,” says [past president of SinC Kate] Grilley. “And Sisters in Crime is unique in that it does not give awards or sponsor contests, nor does it place one author’s work over another” (Danford). 7 Ross states that “For Jan Hajda (1964), the factor that explains the inactivity of non-readers is depression and social isolation. Hajda investigated the myth of the avid reader as social misfit in a doctoral dissertation completed at the University of Chicago titled “An American Paradox: People and books in the Metropolis.” He found that the opposite is the case: book readers are more likely to be actively engaged with the community, and nonreaders are more likely to be lonely and isolated”(24).

Chapter 4

1 From a sample size of over 17,000 American adults 2 Literary reading includes genre fiction, poetry and literary prose. It does not include non-fiction.

310

3 While other genres like science fiction and romance, also sometimes receive their individual sections, according to the librarians I spoke to, in their libraries, only the mystery genre had enough support to lead their libraries to create sections for them alone. In those particular libraries, science fiction, romance, and western would receive category stickers on their spines, but their books were integrated with other literary fiction. 4 Catherine Sheldrick Ross wrote Reading Matters: What the Research Reveals about Reading, Libraries, and Community because librarians need a resource that supports their purchases of “pleasure reading” materials. This is necessary because many boards of libraries, and even librarians themselves, believe that the library should be a place for “serious” materials and information. In some libraries, she explains, the purchasing of popular genre books is frowned upon. Her research supports the contention that readers are created and sustained when they read what they find interesting. Bobbie Anne Mason in The Girl Sleuth: A Feminist Guide echoes this sentiment when she explains that “Some critics today are studying popular culture, devotedly, for its own sake; some perhaps for escape; and some are studying it because for better or worse popular culture is important to people. It reflects our real desires and values and it helps mold them” (ix). 5 According to the Romance Writers of America (RWA) website, “Simba Information reports U.S. book sales (net revenue from retail sources) at $6.31 billion for 2006, which is a slight decline over 2005.” The 2006 publishing figures indicate that romance novel sales accounted for over 26.4% of all books sold in the United States and account for over 1.37 billion dollars in sales (RWA). Simba reports that in 2006 sales by genre included the following: Romance fiction: $1.37 billion in estimated revenue for 2006 Religion/inspirational: $1.68 billion Science fiction/fantasy: $495 million Classic literary fiction: $448 Mystery: $422 million Graphic novels: $128 million 6 I interviewed booksellers with bookstores in the following city and states: Ann Arbor, Michigan; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Baltimore, Maryland; Richmond, Virginia; Lyons, Colorado; Columbus, Ohio; and Carmel, Indiana. 7 I explain the methodology in the introduction. 8 The fact that so many people responded to this extensive survey in such a short period of time is in itself significant. Most social scientists who regularly conduct surveys are well pleased when they receive fewer than 100 responses. Many social scientists who discovered the number of responses to my survey expressed disbelief that so many had responded. Something drives people in this genre to want to discuss it and support it. 9 I have so far analyzed my surveys by looking for umbrella themes for each question, and then coding the responses. The information then is placed into an Excel file. 10 David Skibbins in 2004 won the Malice Domestic/St. Martin’s Press First Mystery Award for his cozy featuring a Tarot card reader who is also a political radical. Lev Raphael’s cozies featuring a gay composition professor are being used in college

311

classrooms. And Lawrence Block is famous for the hardboiled series starring Matt Scudder, but his Bernie Rhodenbarr, the bookstore owner/ burglar cozy series is better known. 11 Throughout this chapter, when I quote or paraphrase a survey response, I put the number of the survey in parentheses. Although I only received 734 surveys, the numbers don’t match because a survey number was generated every time someone opened up the survey or when the survey was adjusted by the person who created it. 12 Also saying practically the same thing, Surveys 71, 110, 15, 24, 35, 34, 36, 21, and 53. 13 Simply determining what class is complex. This is especially so in America where issues of class are rarely discussed. Making it more difficult is that most Americans view themselves as middle class. According to Washington Post reporter Robert J. Samuelson Almost all Americans see themselves as ‘middle class.’ To declare yourself middle class is to say you’ve succeeded without openly bragging that you’re superior…You’re like everyone else, only a little more or less so.[…] [A] recent poll done for the Economic Policy Institution[…]finds that only 2 percent of Americans put themselves in the ‘upper class’ and a mere 8 percent consider themselves ‘lower class’. The large majority of classify themselves as ‘upper-middle class’ (17 percent) or ‘middle class’ (45 percent). The rest (27 percent) see themselves as ‘working class…’ Douglas Eichar gives a good overview of some of the definitions of class in Occupation and Class Consciousness in America. Michael Zweig in “The Challenge of Working Class Studies” in What’s Class Got to Do with It? American Society in the Twenty-First Century makes the argument that the US is predominantly a working class nation. He reports that “Over eighty-eight million people were in working class occupations in 2002, comprising 62 percent of the labor force” (4). 14 Where would we place African-American cozy writer Barbara Neeley, whose character, Blanche White, a contract domestic worker, questions issues of class and race in every book? Chick-lit/ cozy author Sarah Strohmeyer’s series stars working class beautician/reporter/sleuth Bubbles Yablonsky, and Charlaine Harris’s Shakespeare series stars Lily Bard, a housecleaner; where would these go in the spectrum of middle class mysteries? 15 Many critics support the idea that the mystery genre has conservative values that support a repressive state system. Among critics who share these views are Kathleen Klein in The Female Detective: Gender & Genre, Dennis Porter in The Pursuit of Crime: Art and Ideology in Detective Fiction), and Stephen Knight in Form and Ideology in Crime Fiction. Popular culture critic John Docker in Postmodernism and Popular Culture: A Cultural History rejects the view that genre fiction (especially detective fiction) is inherently ideological. As part of his argument, he critiques Knight’s Form and Ideology in Crime Fiction by pointing out that while Knight makes claims about the “social function” of detective literature on its audience, Knight admits to knowing very little about the actual audience. Docker is justly skeptical about Knight’s claims to understand how detective fiction will ideologically influence readers. (220).

312

Genre critic David Chandler in An Introduction to Genre Theory explains a variety of critical positions that critics may take when approaching issues of genre, including a few critics who see most genre fiction as supporting the status quo. 16 If there were one subgenre that upholds or reports on religion though, it would be cozies. Patricia Sparkles’ “Thoroughly Southern Mysteries” feature weekly attendance at church, private prayer, and discussions of specific religious practices as important plot points for revealing character. Church attendance, and/or discussions of minister or rector activities is pretty common in small town, small village mysteries. 17 Faye Kellerman’s bestselling novels have a homicide detective married to an Orthodox Jewish woman. The plots always have religious undertones. Rochelle Krich’s protagonist is a female practicing Orthodox Jew who is also a crime reporter. 18 There is a reason why so many mystery readers mentioned Nancy Drew. Bobbie Ann Mason explains that There has been nothing in children’s books like the success of Nancy Drew. She solved her first mystery in 1929[…]. By 1933 Macy’s in New York was selling 6,000 Nancy Drews (ten titles by then) at Christmas, compared with 3,750 of Bomba, the Jungle Boy, the most popular boys’ series[…]. [Harriet S. Adams who took over the series after the first three were written], estimates that [by 1975] sixty million copies of Nancy Drew books have sold. (49) 19 This has become common knowledge in the mystery community. Every mystery writer I interviewed, and at every panel of mystery writers, novice writers were encouraged to create series rather than standalones, and to be prepared with a series arc before approaching publishers. 20 According to Ross, 60% of all avid readers read series books as kids (82). My survey takers surpassed this percentage. This information suggests to me that part of why so many read mysteries and continue to do so throughout their lives is because of the comfort factor. Mason suggests that “…built into the series form is the American dream of infinite possibilities…” (25). 21 Only 12 people used the term “intellectually challenging” in their responses. Many more people suggested in a number of different ways that mysteries were intellectual. 22The first two groups consisted of participants from a DorothyL listserv dinner and a book signing at Aunt Agatha’s, Robin Agnew’s bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The other focus groups were held at the Malice Domestic Conference in Crystal City, Virginia. Each group had three to seven people in it. I notified people about the focus groups by placing a notice on the DorothyL listserv. I also asked Agnew to tell her customers, and I made an announcement about my project during the book signing. At Malice, I put up a sign on the community board and advertised times and place that I would be available each day. I specified that the groups would meet for at least forty-five minutes, and that participants would be contributing information to a dissertation. A regular comment from participants was that the focus group was the best and most interesting part of the conference. 23 In the very first book of the series, so the least dark of the series, Kay

313

Scarpetta is tracking a serial killer who tortures his female victims. In almost loving detail, Cornwell explores the violence done to the women. At the end of the novel, Scarpetta herself nearly becomes a victim, and before she is rescued, the killer explains to her what he intends to do. In addition to this, Scarpetta performs autopsies that are thoroughly explained. Lee explained that she didn’t mind graphic details. If the reader does not have an aversion to bad language, or graphic sexual details, or gritty descriptions of violence, then the reader concludes that the book is a cozy if it has elements, like being “family-driven,” and if she likes it. The novel becomes what she wants it to be.

Chapter 5

1 According to the Romance Writers of America (RWA) website, “Simba Information reports U.S. book sales (net revenue from retail sources) at $6.31 billion for 2006, which is a slight decline over 2005. Simba reports that in 2006 sales by genre included the following: Romance fiction: $1.37 billion in estimated revenue for 2006 Religion/inspirational: $1.68 billion Science fiction/fantasy: $495 million Classic literary fiction: $448 Mystery: $422 million Graphic novels: $128 million 2 The New York Times points out just how problematic these advances are. All of the major houses have also lost on big bets. One of the highest advances ever paid was more than $8 million for a proposal that became “Thirteen Moons,” the second novel by Charles Frazier. He is the author of “Cold Mountain,” which sold 1.6 million copies in hardcover.Random House printed 750,000 copies of “Thirteen Moons” for the hardcover release in October. The book became a best seller, but it has sold only 240,000 copies so far, according to Nielsen BookScan. That would account for less than $1 million of earned royalties, under standard contract terms. The paperback will be out next month, further diminishing hopes of selling out even the initial hardcover print run (Boss). 3 Kathy Lynn Emerson, a midlist writer stated in a DorothyL post that soon she will have three series. “I write the Face Down Mysteries (16th century gentlewoman/herbalist sleuth) and the Diana Spaulding Mysteries (1888 US) under my own name. Since the new series, starting with KILT DEAD, set in the fictional Maine village of Moosetookalook… is contemporary instead of historical, I'll be writing those under the pseudonym Kaitlyn Dunnett. Truthfully, I think I know more authors these days who write more than one series than write just one. For one thing, the income from only one book a year simply isn't enough to live on. 4 Mystery writer Kate Flora, in a blog entry titled “Here’s the Truth: Staying Published is like Spending Twenty Years on Survivor” said:

314

So we smile and say “Thank you” even when we want to beat our heads against the table and weep or scream in frustration that we cannot create the kind of partnerships with our publishers which will help us sell books. We smile and say, “No problem” when we cannot learn our pub date so we can plan author events, or can’t learn the size of the print run, or learn that our print run is so small we’ll never do more than earn out our small advance. We murmur politely when we’re frustrated that we can’t see the cover copy or the cover design or when we can’t get a copy of the cover in a timely fashion so we can print the postcards we’ll pay for and mail or the bookmarks we’ll pay for and distribute. We nod agreeably when we’re advised to have a content-rich web site, which we must pay for. We ask for content suggestions when we’re told to create a newsletter, which means time away from our writing to write about ourselves or find other topics of interest to draw readers to our personalities as well as our writing. Her blog entry is receiving a lot of attention on mystery listservs and all the midlist writers who have responded say that Flora has captured what it is to be a midlist writer. 5 Nobody knows how to predict what will be the bestseller, and that is the concurrence of the major publishers themselves. “It’s an accidental profession, most of the time,” said William Strachan, editor in chief at Carroll & Graf Publishers. “If you had the key, you’d be very wealthy. Nobody has the key” (Boss). 6 As Publisher’s Weekly notes, “And yet, this advance inflation continues. What's more, some see it as a publishing philosophy: Better to spend "big" on potentially big books, and to pass on anything not "likely" to sell beyond 30,000 copies.” 7 Perseverance Press opened its doors in 1999 with a goal of continuing series by mystery authors who had had their series dropped by their original publishers. Since they began, Perseverance Press has acquired 14 series, and also started the careers of several writers including Taffy Cannon, Eric Wright, and Lora Roberts who went on to become bestselling writers (Phillips “Perseverance”). 8 Of further problem for the publishers in not knowing their market is this: avid mystery readers buy books as we’ve seen in chapter 4. Casual mystery readers don’t buy nearly as many books as the NEA shows. Trying to predict the bestseller market is extremely difficult because there seems to be so little connection between who buys what. Avid mystery readers in that regard are more predictable and certainly the opinions of bookstore owners would be a huge help. The New York Times reports that “We need much more of a direct relationship with our readers,” said Susan Rabiner, an agent and a former editorial director. …“Before Amazon, we didn’t even know what people thought of the books,” she said. Most in the industry seem to see consumer taste as a mystery[…]. Eric Simonoff, a literary agent at Janklow & Nesbit Associates, said that whenever he discusses the book industry with people in other industries, “they’re stunned because it’s so unpredictable, because the profit margins are so small, the cycles are so incredibly long, and because of the almost total lack of market research” (Boss). 9 Burton explains that her information comes from the PMA website and she defines some of the terms used in the quote: “Sell a minimum of…”—if the publisher’s books do not sell at this level, the publisher’s status will be reviewed, and they may be

315

offered the chance to stay with Ingram if they offer a larger discount on books to resellers. And “net after returns” means $20,000 after they have subtracted the cost of all the returned books from the figures. 10 Wendy Armstrong, a special markets manager at Consortium Book Sales and Distribution is quick to tell publishers what her customers need. “Especially in the gift market, whose ‘major forces’ are Urban Outfitters and Restoration Hardware, covers are so important. Many times customers say they need books with buttery yellow and moss green on the cover” (Mutter 22). The buyers educate the publishers on what sells, and on what they want to sell, and the publishers more and more often comply with what the buyers say. Armstrong “readily calls books ‘product’” and, at sales conferences while reps and editors talk about books’ contents, she says, “I’m like, I need moss green!” (Mutter 22). 11 Trachtenberg makes it clear that the number of books going to Wal-Mart, for example, is anecdotal since stores like Wal-Mart, K-Mart and Costco won’t release those figures. The 60,000 is an estimate made by my mystery experts like the Schantz’. What Trachtenberg can verify however is this which lends credence to the 60,000 figure: A publisher who wants to supply an average of 25 copies to the 690 superstores that Barnes & Noble […] will have to ship 17,250 copies to that company alone. In 1985, Warner Books printed a total of 35,000 copies for Word of Honor the first Nelson DeMille novel it published. Today, Warner Books typically prints 800,000 copies of the new offering” (“Shelf” C3). Besides the need to stock so many stores, Trachtenberg explains that “Because potential bestsellers have only a short time to get established, publishers say they need towering stacks at the front of stores to ensure their titles get noticed and to make sure they don’t miss any sales” (“Shelf” C3). 12 Jessica Tribble says that at a recent publisher’s conference the statement was made that “book publishing is like a horse race; you can’t be sure who will win.” One of Tribble’s concerns with the New York bestseller syndrome is that so much is bet on a particular book being a megabestseller at the expense of so many other books that would probably sell well. She doesn’t like the gambler aspect of New York publishing. 13 Parnell Hall’s story is quite dramatic. Writer of the bestselling and award winning softboiled mystery series featuring private investigator Stanley Hastings, Hall was in danger of having his contract dropped due to declining sales. He surveyed the market and saw that cozies, especially those featuring older women as protagonists, and those with some sort of hook or niche, had a better chance of success. Booklist describes his protagonist thus: "If sweet-looking, gray-haired Miss Marple cursed, smoked, and carried a gun in her purse, she’d be a ringer for Cora Felton" (Hall). Hall states that Cora is better armed and more dangerous than fumbling Stanley Hastings who never carried a gun, and wasn’t a particularly good detective. Cora’s hook, besides being feisty and obnoxious, is that she is known as the “Puzzle Lady” and all the novels contain crossword puzzles that have clues to the murder(s) in the books. Hall submitted the manuscript under the name Alice Hastings (wife of fictional character Stanley) to his former publisher. They immediately purchased it with a larger advance then he had ever received from his PI series not realizing that their client wasn’t female and only discovered the truth of his identity when he met with them to sign his lucrative contract (Interview). Hall’s success with “the puzzle lady” has pumped blood

316

into what appeared to be defunct Stanley Hastings series, and those books are being reprinted. Reprinting the work of even successful authors is unusual and unpredictable though. 14 The damaging of books isn’t always accidental. Canadian mystery writer Sharon Wildwind recounts that for chain bookstores it was standard practice to order books, keep them until five days before they had to pay, then return them all and order a fresh set that they had assigned one staff member to do only this task. That way they made sure the books were always returned before they had to pay.[…] It was company policy to take the least amount of care possible with returns. They actually wanted them to reach the distributor damaged so there would be no chance they would get the same books back. 15 O’Brien said this in a conversation with Mark Schumann, a long time customer and supporter of the store. 16 The figure I quote in the dissertation is from 2005. In 2008, the Small Press Center states, “There are an estimated 70,000 publishers in the country today publishing books in a wide range of genres, many of these are considered to be small press publishers.” The seeming vagueness of the language is deliberate because there is disagreement over what constitutes a small press. 17 I am grateful to Canadian mystery writer Sharon Wildwind for sharing this information with me. The cost of the study is prohibitive, and no libraries in Cleveland possess this book. 18 In a recent controversy, publisher Quiet Storm has lost its “approved” status. Quiet Storm promised to print and distribute books for its writers, but after months of waiting, books were not distributed and phone calls were unreturned. Authors scheduled for book signings had no books; Agatha award winning writers were unable to provide book vendors with copies. 19 The number of publishers on the MWA approved list come from 2006. In 2008, these figures have changed, boding ill for small publishers. The approved list has now dropped to 97 acceptable publishers. MWA publisher status is important for another reason beyond the ability to join MWA. Some conferences, most notably Left Coast Crime and Malice Domestic, are invoking MWA publisher credibility for invitations to appear on panels or even to have their books stocked in the book seller rooms. The argument on the part of the conference organizers is that they want to protect mystery readers from poorly produced, non-editor guided books. Many members of Sisters in Crime, for example, are writers whose books are self-published or published by small presses not acknowledged by MWA. There has been a great deal of anger over these new rules since conferences are a key place for midlist and newbie writers to advertise their books. 20 Bestsellers can run small publishers into the ground. The Time Traveller’s Wife has followed an increasingly common trajectory in American publishing. Ignored by mainstream presses, it was plucked from the wilderness by a daytime-television book club and eventually became a bestseller. (Amidon) According to Tribble, the unexpected bestseller success of The Time Traveller’s Wife nearly drove MacAdam/Cage out of business when they were expected to reprint so many unplanned copies of the book. All

317

resources needed to be directed to the novel. Meredith Phillips of Perseverance Press states that “Small presses aren't set up for bestsellers: filling a huge bookstore or wholesale order would bankrupt us, then half of them might come back!” 21 Savvy librarians, especially those who participate in DorothyL and 4MA, do realize that small publishers have worthy mystery writers. Genreflecting’s Diana Herald, because of her concern over the dropping of midlist writers, published in her blog a list of smaller houses so that her librarian colleagues would be aware of the books ignored by major publishers. She included website addresses so that her colleagues could order the books directly. 22 This writer asked to remain anonymous. 23 Returning books so early means that the author has less time in which to develop an audience. There was a time when books would remain on shelves for six months or longer. Now the time to return books can take place in under six weeks. Publishers Weekly reports that “Many publishers noted that time for a writer’s development is a luxury they can ill afford. As Scribner senior editor Susanne Kirk puts it, ‘Sadly, less time is given now for growth than used to be the case. Ten or 15 years ago, I could do six books by somebody, but now if the company doesn’t see growth from book to book it’s often more difficult to continue’ (Danford). 24 Wall said in a blog interview that I always tell aspiring writers that self-publishing should be your last option, not your first[…]. Because the paradigm of the POD publisher was so new back then, I didn't have a lot of information about the drawbacks inherent in my choice: inadequate discounts, non-returnability, and so forth[…]. The goal for most writers has always been a traditional NY press. My advice is to do your best to achieve that goal, because the truth is that being able to name St. Martin's as my publisher carries a cachet that opens most doors. Will that change? Maybe some day. But for now, don't take shortcuts until you've exhausted your other options. But . . . more and more, legitimate, royalty-paying small presses are giving the big boys a run for their money, and I say more power to them. We can all rattle off a list of the major players in this area who sign good and sometimes great writers, edit and advise, and publish quality products. These enterprises are worthy of our support and play a welcome role in giving mystery readers lots more books from which to choose. 25 A “closed” bookstore is one that has a great deal of stock, but does not have a physical building that is open to the public. Rather, people order through either hard copy catalogues, or more frequently lately, on line. This cuts down on overhead. 26 Bartlett reported that earlier listeners were often truck drivers on long commutes. (Email Interview). 27 An ebook is an electronic book. Google dictionary further suggests that “ebooks (eBooks, e-books, Ebooks...) can be anything from the digital version of a paper book, to more interactive content that includes hyperlinks and multimedia. It can even be the electronic reading device such as a Rocket eBook or Pocket PC.” 28 There is a danger to newbie writers who publish their first works as ebooks. According to the experienced writers on SinC-IC, no mainstream hardcopy publisher

318

will publish a work that has been an ebook first. This may change as ebook technology and gadgets like The Kindle become more common; for now, though, epublishing has many pitfalls for the writer.

Conclusion

1 According to Daniel Chandler in An Introduction to a Theory of Genre, Contemporary theorists tend to describe genres in terms of 'family resemblances' among texts (a notion derived from the philosopher Wittgenstein) rather than definitionally (Swales 1990, 49). An individual text within a genre rarely if ever has all of the characteristic features of the genre (Fowler 1989, 215). The family resemblance approaches involves the theorist illustrating similarities between some of the texts within a genre. 2 Traditonals in the Golden Age did not have profanity. One difference between contemporary traditionals and Golden Age is that there is sometimes profanity. 3 The most famous example of criticism denigrating the traditional is Raymond Chandler’s essay “The Simple Art of Murder.” See also Stephen Knight in Form & Ideology in Crime Fiction, and Julian Symons in Bloody Murder. 4 As was shown in Chapter Four, most Americans believe themselves to be members of the middle class. 5 There are a number of cozy series where the cats are major characters and can even speak. The following authors have bestselling series with these incredible cats: Shirley Murphy Rousseau, Rita Mae Brown, and Carol Nelson Douglas to name some of the more popular ones. There are also cozy series where the cats have special powers and an uncanny ability to communicate and thus solve mysteries. These series include: Lillian Jackson Braun’s, Cat Who…books and Marion Babson’s standalones with titles like Canapés for Kittens. Many traditional and even softboiled books have important animal characters, most famously the Martha Grimes books where animals’ thoughts are revealed, and Dana Stabenow’s series where the protagonist’s dog, Mutt, is a companion and strong character in her own right. Even Sara Paretsky’s hardboiled series has a dog that is a recurring character that has saved the life of V. I. Warshawski at least twice. However, a major difference between these traditional to mediumboiled books and cozies is that the animals in the former always act like animals. Further, only animals in cozies are virtually guaranteed safety. Animals even in traditionals are sometimes harmed or killed. 6 This librarian was the only the second person in my three years of interviewing who asked to remain anonymous. Her first job was with the Cleveland Public Library, and she feared that her criticisms of the library might harm her advancement in the library profession in Cleveland. 7 According to librarian Pat Dempsey, the anonymous, former Cleveland librarian quoted in the dissertation is correct. When Dempsey took over the Parma branch of the Cuyahoga Public Library, that library too did not separate genre fiction from the rest of literature. She changed that, and created a separate section for mystery. She said almost immediately there was a four-fold increase in the number of mysteries that were checked

319

out. Genre fiction makes up a large part of pleasure reading, and Ross points out in Reading Matters that “At the end of the twentieth century, Kenneth Shearer (2001, xiii) analyzed circulation statistics in Kentucky, New York, and North Carolina--- the only states that separate fiction and non-fiction in their circulation data--- and found that fiction accounted for 60 to 70 percent of public library circulation” (6). 8 Cognitive psychologist Eleanor Rosch’s research project Offers a powerful model [for understanding family resemblance in genre theory] combining the concept of family resemblance with that of a prototype. Her basic hypothesis is the members of a category come to be viewed as prototypical of the category as whole in proportion to the extent to which they bear a family resemblance to (have attributes which overlap those of) other members of the category. Conversely, items viewed as most prototypical of one category will be those with least family resemblance to or membership in other categories. (qtd. in Fishelov 62).

320

Works Cited

Agnew, Robin. Personal Interview. 19 August 2004.

--. Email interview. 24 September 2006.

--. Email interview. 13 January 2007.

Allen, Robert C., ed. Channels of Discourse, Reassembled. Chapel Hill: The University

of North Carolina Press, 1992.

---. “Audience-Oriented Criticism and Television.” Allen 101-137.

Alewyn, Richard. “The Origins of the Detective Novel.” 1974. Stowe and Most 62-78.

American Religious Identification Survey. The Graduate Center. Cornell University.

2001. 6 February 2008.

http://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_briefs/aris/aris_index.htm.

American Library Association (ALA). “Number of Libraries in the United States.”

American Library Association. 2008. 24 February 2008.

http://www.ala.org/ala/alalibrary/libraryfactsheet/alalibraryfactsheet1.cfm.

Amidon, Stephen. “Review: Fiction: The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey

Niffenegger.” TimesOnline. 25 January 2004. 22 February 2008.

entertainment/books/article999339.ece>.

Anderson, Chris. The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.

New York: Hyperion, 2006.

“Anthony Awards.” Books. ConsumerHelpWeb. 2002-2008. 7 March 2008.

http://book.consumerhelpweb.com/awards/anthony/anthony.htm.

Ashley, Mike, ed. “Patricia Highsmith (1921-95) U.S.” The Mammoth Encyclopedia of 321

Modern Crime Fiction. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2002. 228-229.

Audible.com. 1997-2008. Loomia. 18 August 2006.

ookie=Yes&pskw=true>.

AudiobookStand.com. 2002-2006. The Audiobookstand. 18 August 2006.

“Awards.” Mystery Writers of America. 2006. CincinnatiMedia. 24 June 2006.

Aydelotte, William O. “The Detective Story as a Historical Source.” Nevins 306-325.

Ayers, Jeff. “Mystery Goes Global.” Library Journal. 1 April 2005. 7 March 2008.

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA512194.html.

Badger, Ann. Telephone interview. 7 September 2006.

Bartell, Gerald. “Sexism at the Edgars? The Debate on Whether Women Mystery-

Writers Are Worthy.” The Book Standard. 29 April 2005. 30 January 2006.

Bartlett, Wendy. Email interview. 13 January 2007.

Barzun, Jacques. “Detection and the Literary Art.” Nevins 248-262.

Beebee, Thomas. “William Godwin.” Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction

Ed. Frank Magill. Pasadena: Salem Press, 1988.

Belenky, Mary Field, et al. Women’s Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self,

Voice, and Mind. 1986. New York: Basic Books, 1997.

Bohnert, John. Online posting. 28 June 2006. DorothyL. 28 June 2006.

. 322

Boone, Kaye. Online posting. 18 April 2007. DorothyL. 18 April 2007.

Borders. 2007. Borders. 21 February 2008.

Bosman, Julie. “Many Suspects Seen in the Death of a Mystery Bookstore.” New York

Times. Nytimes.com. 20 December 2006. 19 February 2008.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/20/books/20murd.html

Boss, Shira. “The Greatest Mystery: Making a Best Seller.” New York Times.

Nytimes.com 13 May 2007. 28 February 2008.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/business/yourmoney/13book.html?_r=1&sc

p=1&sq=The+Greatest+Mystery%3A+Making+a+Best+Seller&st=nyt&oref=slo

gin.

Bourgeau, Art. The Mystery Lover’s Companion. New York: Crown Publishers, 1986.

Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. 1984. Trans.

Richard Nice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Branch, Susan. Email interview. 22 September 2006.

--. Email interview. 16 January 2007.

Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. 1984. New York:

Vintage Books, 1985.

Buckingham, David. Children Talking Television: The Making of Television Literacy.

London: The Falmer Press, 1993.

Burcell, Robin. Email Interview. 24 June 2005. 323

Burke, Jan. Online posting. 30 April 2007. DorothyL. 30 April 2007.

Burton, Tony. “Distribution Discombobulation.” Weblog. Poe’s Deadly Daughters: A

Blog for Mystery Lovers. 23 June 2007. 6 March 2008.

Business Wire. “Book Industry Statistics. BookWire: The Book Industry Resource.

Bowker. 28 February 2008.

http://www.bookwire.com/BookIndustryStatistics.asp.

Caillois, Roger. “The Detective Novel as Game.” 1941. Stowe and Most 1-12.

Carr, John Dickinson. “The Grandest Game of All.” 1946. Nevins 227-247.

Cassiday, Bruce. “Into Something Rich and Strange.” Mystery Writer’s Handbook. ed.

by Mystery Writers of America. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1976. 13-

21.

___, ed. Roots of Detection: The Art of Deduction before Sherlock Holmes. New York:

The Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1983

Cassidy, John. “Going Long: In the New ‘Long Tail’ Marketplace, Has the Blockbuster

Met Its Match?” New Yorker. 10 July 2006. New Yorker: Printables. Kelvin

Smith Library, Cleveland, Ohio. 22 July 2006.

Champigny, Robert. What Will Have Happened: A Philosophical and Technical Essay

on Mystery Stories. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977. 324

Chandler, Daniel. “The Problem of Definition.” An Introduction to Genre Theory. 5 July

2000. 15 August 2007.

Chandler, Michelle. “Turning the Page.” Knight Ridder Tribune Business News. 1. 9

Oct. 2005. ProQuest. Kelvin Smith Library, Cleveland, Ohio. 22 July 2006.

entld=43422&RQT=309&VName=PQD>.

Chandler, Raymond. “The Simple Art of Murder.” 1944. Haycraft, Art 222-237.

Charney, Hanna. The Detective Novel of Manners: Hedonism, Morality, and the Life of

Reason. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1981.

“Cherry Ames Is Back!” The Cherry Ames Page.. 24 February 1996. Netwrx

Consulting Inc. 25 August 2006. http://www.netwrx1.com/CherryAmes/.

Christie, Agatha. The Murder of Roger Akroyd. (1926). New York: Pocket Books, 1974.

--. Mysterious Affair at Styles. (1921). New York: A Berkeley Book, 1984.

Christopher, J. R. “Poe and the Tradition of the Detective Story.” Nevins 19-36.

“Cicero.” MysteryNet.com. 1996, 2005. MysteryNet Timeline. 13 February 2005.

Clark, Mindy Starns. Online posting. 29 April 2006. DorothyL. 29 April 2006.

Clee, Nicholas. “The Book Business: Nicholas Clee on Why Most Bookshops These

Days Offer You the Same Stuff.” New Statesman 134 (1996): 55.

Clemens, Judy. Personal interview. 22 October 2004.

--. Email interview. 28 June 2005. 325

“Cozy Mysteries: The Next Generation.” Malice Domestic Conference. Crystal City,

Virginia. 23 April 2006.

Collins, Natalie. Online posting. 28 March 2007. DorothyL. 28 March 2007.

Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone. 1868. Middlesex: Penguin Classics, 1986.

Corrigan, Maureen. “Book Review: ‘Maisie Dobbs.’” Fresh Air. National Public Radio.

13 August 2003. 2 March 2008.

--. “Pink Mysteries: ‘Sex and the City’ Sizzle Mingle with Bridget Jones-y Ditherings

and the Occasional Corpse.” Washingtonpost.com. 14 August 2005. 26 August

2006. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-

dyn/content/article/2005/08/11/AR2005081101476.html.

Cranny-Francis, Anne. Feminist Fiction: Feminist Uses of Generic Fiction. New York:

St. Martin’s Press, 1990.

Cross, John. Personal interview. 11 September 2004.

Crime Thru Time. 5 March 1999. Kat’s Graphics. 25 June 2006.

http://www.crimethrutime.com/.

Curtis, Richard. “Gone Today, Gone Tomorrow? Why Amazon Could Usher in a

Returns-Free Model for the Whole Industry.” Publishers Weekly. 74. 1 August

2005. 12 November 2005.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA631077.html?q=.

Dahlin, Robert. “A Massive Crime Wave: As Mayhem Mounts and Espionage

Escalates, Might Publishers Be Guilty of Overkill?” Publishers Weekly.com. 21 326

April 2003. 23 June 2005.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA293064.html?q=

D’Amato, Barb. “Would Christie Be Published Today?” Panel moderator. Magna Cum

Murder Conference. Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana. October 30, 2005.

Danford, Natalie. “The Bodies Keep Piling Up. PW: PublishersWeekly.com. 19 April

2004. 26 August 2005.

piling+up>.

DeAndrea, William L. Encyclopedia Mysteriosa: A Comprehensive Guide to the Art of

Detection in Print, Film, Radio, and Television. New York: Prentice Hall

General Reference, 1994.

DeGaetano, Suzanne. Personal interview. 2 September 2005.

DellaCava, Frances A. and Madeline H. Engel. Female Detectives in American Novels:

A Bibliography and Analysis of Serialized Female Sleuths. New York: Garland

Publishing Inc., 1993.

Dempsey, Pat. Personal Interview. 10 January 2008.

Derrida, Jacques. “The Law of Genre.” On Narrative. Ed. by W. J. T. Mitchell.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. 1853. Middlesex: Penguin Classics, 1986.

Dilley, Kimberly J. Busybodies, Meddlers, and Snoops: The Female Hero in

Contemporary Women’s Mysteries. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1998.

DiResto, Paul. Letter to Salon.com. 8 December 2000.

Docker, John. Postmodernism and Popular Culture: A Cultural History Cambridge: 327

Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Donahue, Dick. “Uncovering New Evidence: In the Mystery Game, Breaking and

Entering Is One Tough Caper.” Publishers Weekly. 5 December 2005: 25-26.

Donnegan, Lawrence. “Eggers Revolution Chills U.S. Publishers: Bestselling Author’s

Move To Overthrow Conventions of the Book Trade.” The Observer. 22

September 2002. 26 August 2006.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/sep/22/books.booksnews.

DorothyL: The Official WebSite. Google.Web. 17 April 2005.

Doyle, Arthur Conan. Collected Stories of Sherlock Holmes. 1892-1922. New York:

Doubleday, nd.

--“Copper Beeches.” Collected Stories of Sherlock Holmes. 316-332.

--“The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton.” Collected Stories of Sherlock

Holmes. 572-582.

“E-Books Take Off.” A NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript. Online NewsHour. 16

March 2000. 26 August 2006. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/jan-

june00/e-books_3-16.html.

Eichar, Douglas. Occupation and Class Consciousness in America New York:

Greenwood Press, 1989.

Epstein, Jason. Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future. New York: W. W.

Norton, 2001. 328

Evslin, Tom. “An Historic Murder Mystery Set in the Internet Bubble and Rubble.”

Hackoff.com. “An Historic Murder Mystery Set in the Internet Bubble and

Rubble.” 2005. 25 August 2006. http://www.hackoff.com/blook/.

Faherty, Terrence. Personal Interview. 23 October 2004

Fetterley, Judith. The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction.

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978.

Feuer, Jane. “Genre Study and Television.” Allen 138-160.

Fishelov, David. Metaphors of Genre: The Role of Analogies in Genre Theory.

University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.

Flora, Kate. “Here’s The Truth: Staying Published is like Spending Twenty Years on

Survivor.” Weblog. Writers Plot: A Blooming Good Blog. Typepad. 20

February 2008. 21 February 2008.

Foxwell, Elizabeth. Personal Interview. 24 August 2005.

Francis, Betty. “The Book Review Review Project.” Sisters in Crime: Report to Our

Members. Volume 1, Number 1. September, 1988.

Fraser, Fiona. “Get Set for the Guidelines.” Bookseller. Issue 5176. 29 April

2005 Business Source Complete. Kelvin Smith Library, Cleveland, OH. 23 June

2005.

Fry, Stephen. “Launch Day Interview Aboard the Hogwarts Express.” Bloomsbury

Press. 8 July 2000. 21 February 2008. http://www.accio-

quote.org/articles/2000/0700-bloomsbury-fry.html.

Gelder, Ken. Popular Fiction: The Logic and Practices of a Literary Field. London:

Routledge, 2004. 329

Gerritsen, Tess. “Authors: Your Book Tour Tip of the Day.” Blog. 18 October 2007. 20

February 2007.< http://www.tessgerritsen.com/blog/2007/10/18/authors-your-

book-tour-tip-of-the-day/>.

Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer

and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University

Press,1979.

Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: A Psychological Theory and Women’s

Development. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1982.

Gilmour, Robin. The Novel in the Victorian Age: A Modern Introduction. London:

Edward Arnold, 1986.

Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.

New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2002.

Godin, Seth. “Buying Books Isn’t Necessary: Bookselling Should Be about Catering to

Wants, Not Needs.” Publisher’s Weekly. PW. 25 July 2005. 12 Nov. 2005.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA628777.html.

Godwin, William. Caleb Williams. 1794. New York: W. W. Norton, 1970.

Goldberg, Lee. “Chick Lit Bit.” Weblog. A Writer’s Life. 23 August 2005. TypePad.

26 August 2006. http://leegoldberg.typepad.com/.

Gorman, Richard. Personal Interview. 13 August 2004.

Gorman, Mary Alice. Personal Interview. 13 August 2004.

--. Email Interview. 22 September 2006.

Gosselin, Adrienne J., ed. Multicultural Detective Fiction: Murder from the “Other”

Side. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1999. 330

Grave Matters. Email interview. 22 September 2006.

Gunda. Phone Interview. 8 November 2005.

Hackoff.com. “An Historic Murder Mystery Set in the Internet Bubble and Rubble.” By

Tom Evslin. 25 August 2006. http://www.hackoff.com/blook/.

Hall, Parnell. Personal Interview. 23 October 2004.

--. “Parnell Hall and His Mystery Novels.” 2003. 15 November 2005.

Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon. 1929. New York: Random House, 1992.

--. Red Harvest. 1929. New York: Random House, 1992.

Harig, Kathy. Personal interview. 25 August 2005.

--. Email interview. 13 January 2007.

Hart, Carolyn. Email interview. 4 October 2005.

Haycraft, Howard. ed. The Art of the Mystery Story. 1946. New York: Carroll and Graf

Publishers, 1992.

--. Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story. New York: D.

Appleton-Century Company, 1941.

Heilbrun, Carolyn G. “Gender and Detective Fiction.” Hamlet’s Mother and Other

Women. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. 244-251.

Heissenbuttel, Helmut. “Rules of the Game of the Crime Novel.” 1963. Stowe and Most

79-92.

Hellman, Libby. Telephone Interview. 30 November 2006.

Herald, Diana Tixier. Genreflecting: A Guide to Reading Interests in Genre Fiction.

Englewood: Libraries Unlimited, Inc.,1995. 331

Herbert, Rosemary. “Mystery Booksellers—Publish and Perish: Independent retailers

Say They Know Best What Readers Want.” Publishers Weekly. 22-24. 5

December 2005: 22-24.

--. ed. The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing. New York: Oxford

University Press, 1999.

Holquist, Michael. “Whodunit and Other Questions: Metaphysical Detective Stories in

Postwar Fiction.” 1971-1972. Stowe and Most 149-174.

Huang, Jim. “Amazon, Publishers, Readers, and Dollars.” Online posting. 9 December

2005. DorothyL. 9 December 2005. < http://www.dorothyl.com>.

--. Crum Creek Press. The Mystery Company. 2003-2007. 23 February 2008.

--.Email interview. 24 September 2006.

--.“Losing Our Way: How the Machinery of Publishing and Distribution Undermine the

Genre.” Lecture. Magna Cum Murder Conference. Ball State University,

Muncie, Indiana. 29 October 2005.

--.“Mystery in 2003: A Statistical Portrait.” The Drood Review of Mystery.

XXIV.1 (2004): 2-3.

Hutter, Albert D. “Dreams, Transformations, and Literature: The Implications of

Detective Fiction.” 1975. Stowe and Most 230-251.

Jameson, F. R. “On Raymond Chandler.” Stowe and Most 122-148.

Jenkins, Richard. Pierre Bourdieu. London: Routledge, 1992.

“Join.” Mystery Writers of America. 2006. 24 June 2006.

http://www.mysterywriters.org/pages/join/index.htm# 332

Keating, H. R. F. Crime &Mystery: The 100 Best Books. New York: Carroll & Graf,

1987.

--. “Conventions of the Genre.” Herbert 87-90.

Kelner, Steve. “The Edgars.” Online posting. 30 January 2008. SinC-IC. 30 January

2008. .

--. “FYI.” Online posting. 1 September 2005. SinC-IC. 7 January 2006.

King, Stephen. “His Works.” 1998-2006. 25 August 2006.

http://www.stephenking.com/hisworks.php.

Kirch, Claire. “Attention Kmart Shoppers: Romance Writers Hit the Road in the

Heartland.” Publishers Weekly. 4 September 2006. 21 February 2008.

mart+shoppers%22&q=attention+kmart+shoppers+romance>.

Kirkpatrick, David D. Report to the Authors Guild Midlist Books Study Committee.

Authors Guild, 2000.

Klein, Kathleen. The Female Detective: Gender & Genre. Urbana: University of

Illinois Press, 1988.

---. “Cross, Amanda.” Herbert 111-112.

Knox, Ronald A. “A Detective Story Decalogue.” Haycraft, Art 194-196.

Konrath, Joe. Online posting. 20 January 2006. DorothyL. 26 January 2006.

Knight, Stephen. Form & Ideology in Crime Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University

Press, 1980. 333

Krentz, Jayne Ann, ed. Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on

the Appeal of Romance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.

Langton, Jane. The Transcendental Murder. (1964). New York: Penguin Books, 1989.

Larsen, Michael and Elizabeth Pomada. Literary Agents. 2002-2007. DesignByAlexis. 26

September 2006. http://www.larsen-pomada.com/.

Learmouth, Michael. “Can You Read Me Now? Books As Showbiz: Mega-Chains Use

DVDs & Lattes To Seduce Buyers.” Variety.com. VBusiness 6 February 2005.

11 November 2005. < http://www.highbeam.com/browse/ Business-

Entertainment+News-Variety/February-2005>.

Lee, Felicia R. “Survey of the Blogospehere Finds 12 Million Voices.” The New York

Times. Late Edition. 20 July 2006. E.3. ProQuest. Kelvin Smith Library,

Cleveland, OH. 18 August 2006.

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?did=1080161931&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientld+260

6&RQT=309&VName=PQD.

Legeune, Anthony. “Charlie Chan.” 100 Great Detectives: Famous Writers Examine

Their Favorite Fictional Investigators. Ed. Maxim Jaubowski. New York:

Carroll & Graf, 1991: 64-66.

Leone, Nicki. “Amazon.” Online posting. 8 December 2005. DorothyL. 8 December

2005. .

Linz, Cathie. “Setting the Stage: Facts and Figures.” Krentz 11-14.

Lippman, Laura. “What the Dead Know.” Library Lecture. 22 April 2007.

--. Personal Interview. 22 April 2007. 334

“Listserv.” geeksnet.com. 2005. 30 March 2008.

Long, Elizabeth. Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

“Macavity awards.” Mystery Readers International. 1989-2208. Interbridge. 25 June

2006. .

Macdonald, Ross. “The Writer as Detective Hero.” Nevins 295-305.

Malo, Kim. Email interview. 25 June 2006.

Marcus, Stephen. “Dashiell Hammett.” 1974. Stowe and Most 197-209.

Marks, Jeffrey. Atomic Renaissance: Women Mystery Writers of the 1940s and 1950s.

Lee’s Summit, MO: Delphi Books, 2003.

Marling, William. The American Roman Noir: Hammett, Cain, and Chandler. Athens:

The University of Georgia Press, 1995.

Mason, Bobbie Ann. The Girl Sleuth: A Feminist Guide. New York: The Feminist

Press, 1975.

Maughan, Shannon. “APA estimates audio market at $800 million.” Publishers Weekly.

251. 13 December 2004: 1.

--.”Downloads Have Publishers Singing a New Tune.” PublishersWeekly. 243. Issue 19.

5 May 2006. 18 August 2006.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6332388.html?q=downloads+have+

publishers+singing.

McCracken, Scott. Pulp: Reading Popular Fiction. Manchester: Manchester University

Press, 1998. 335

McKibbon, Shelley. Online post. 24 August 2006. DorothyL. 24 August 2006.

Memmott, Carol. “Chick Lit, For Better or Worse, Is Here to Stay.” USA Today.

21 June 2006. 26 August 2006.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2006-06-20-chick-lit_x.htm.

“Mignon Eberhart.” Pederson 331-333.

Miller, D. A. The Novel and the Police. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

Miller, Laura. “Dead on the Vine.” Salon.com. 1 December 2000. 25 August 2006.

http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2000/12/01/king/index.html.

Millett. Kate. Sexual Politics. 1969. New York: Avon Books, 1970

Milliot, Jim. “Bookstore Chains Exceed Expectations: ‘My Life’ mitigates absence of

‘Order of the Phoenix.’ Library Journal. 23 August 2004. 12 November 2005.

www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA446574.html?pubdate=8%2F23%2F2

004&isplay=archive

Mills, Wendy Howell. Online post. 24 April 2007. DorothyL. 24 April 2007.

Milofsky, David. “Despite Cold Tactics, No Heroes or Villains in Book Sales.” The

Denver Post. Final Edition. 5 June 2005: F15.

“More Titles, Fewer Readers.” USA Today. AP. 16 May 2005. 2 March 2008.

http://www.usatoday.com/community/tags/topic.aspx?req=tag&tag=Book%20Ind

ustry%20Study%20Group.

Most, Glenn W. and William W. Stowe, eds. The Poetics of Murder: Detective Fiction

& Literary Theory. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. 336

Mutter, John. “Buying Books by Their Covers.” Publishers Weekly. 252 (14 March

2005) : 22. ProQuest. Kelvin Smith Library, Cleveland, OH. 23 June 2005.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA510113.html.

Mystery Writers of America. 2006. CincinnatiMedia. 24 June 2006.

Myers, Beverle. Personal Interview. 22 October 2004.

National Endowment for the Arts. Reading At Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in

America. Research Division Report #46. Washington, D. C.. June 2004.

National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Public Libraries in the United States:

Fiscal Year 2002. March 2005. National Center for Education Statistics. U.S.

Census Bureau. 8 November 2005. .

Neale, Stephen. Genre. British Film Institute, 1983.

Nehring, Radine Trees. “Wal*Mart World?” Online posting. 30 November 2005.

DorothyL. 26 January 2006. .

Nevins, Francis M, ed. The Mystery Writer’s Art. Bowling Green: Bowling Green

University Popular Press, 1970.

Nawotka, Edward. “Rocky Mountain Low: Colorado Springs Indie to Close.” Publishers

Weekly Online. 17 April 2005. 26 June 2005.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA213283.html?q=Rocky+Mountain+

Low%3A+Colorado+Springs+Indie+to+Close.

Noreen Carol. Online posting. 13 January 2006. DorothyL. 13 Jan 2006.

Norris, Dorris Ann. Email interview. 22 September 2006. 337

O’Day, Tom. “Words From the Chair: Spring Finds Mystery Fans at Malice.” Usual

Suspects. Malice Domestic Ltd. Volume 13, Number 4. Spring 2005: 1.

Oder, Norman. “Feeling a Squeeze: Audiobooks Are Popular, but Librarians must

Navigate Multiple Options—and Tighter Budgets.” Library Journal. 129. Issue

19. 15 November 2004: 34-37.

Oleksiw, Susan. “Cozy Mystery.” Herbert 97-100.

Orr, Cynthia. Personal Interview. 10 January 2008.

Ortiz, Jon. “The Tale of the Little Guys: Independent Book Dealers Shift Strategy to

Stay Alive.” Sacremento Bee. Metro Final Edition. 1 September 2005. Business

D1.

Panek, Leroy Lad. An Introduction to the Detective Story. Bowling Green: Bowling

Green State University Popular Press, 1987.

Paretsky, Sara. Lecture. Writers and Readers Series. Cleveland Public Library. 13 March

2005.

Parish, P. J. “thrillers” Online posting. 4 Dec. 2005. DorothyL. 22 Jan. 2006.

--. Online posting. 30 November 2005. DorothyL. 1 December 2005.

Pearsall, Jay. Mystery and Crime: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New

York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.

Pederson, Jay P., ed. St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers. 4th ed. Ed. Jay P.

Pederson. Detroit: St. James Press, 1996. 338

Pekar, Harvey. “A Neighborhood Linchpin: Mac’s Backs Co-Owner Suzanne

DeGaetano.” The Free Times. August 3-September 6 2005: 11.

Penzler, Otto. “Awards for the Obstacle Race.” The New York Sun. 30 March 2005.

Arts and Letters, 16.

--. “The Cynical Art of Chick Lit.” The New York Sun. 9 August 2006. 15 August

2006. http://www2.nysun.com/article/37590.

--. “The Economics of Publishing.” Mystery Writers of America. 1999/2006. 24 June

2006. http://www.mysterywriters.org/pages/resources/index.htm.

Peters, Barbara. Poisoned Pen Press. 2003-2008. 23 February 2008.

http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/.

--. Email interview. 5 October 2005.

Peters, Elizabeth. “MALICE DOMESTIC: An Idea Whose Time Had Come.” Malice

Domestic: An Anthology of Original Traditional Mystery Stories. New York:

Pocket Books, 2002.

Phillips, Meredith. Email Interview. 30 January 2008.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Murder of Marie Roget.” Thompson 90-153.

Porter, Dennis. The Pursuit of Crime: Art and Ideology in Detective Fiction. New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.

Priestman, Martin. Detective Fiction and Literature: The Figure on the Carpet. New

York: St. Martins Press, 1991.

PRNewswire. “Joseph-Beth Booksellers and AuthorHouse Launch Groundbreaking

Venture.” 23 August 2005. Proquest. Kelvin Smith Library, Cleveland, OH. 1

September 2005. 339

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=885826721&sid=2&Fmt+3&clientld=2606

&RQT=309&VName=PQD.

Pronzini, Bill and Marcia Muller. 1001 Midnights: The Aficionado’s Guide to Mystery

and Detective Fiction. New York: Arbor House, 1986.

Private Eye Writers of America. “Awards.” 1-2-3 Publish. 26 June 2006.

http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/triv72.html#2000.

Pykett, Lyn. The Sensation Novel: From the Woman in White to The Moonstone.

Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers, 1994.

Pyrhönen, Heta. Murder from an Academic Angle: An Introduction the Study of the

Detective Narrative, Columbia, South Carolina: Camden House, 1994.

Radway, Janice. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature.

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.

--.” Reading Reading the Romance.” Studies in Culture: An Introductory Reader. Ed.

Ann Gray and Jim McGuigan. London: Arnold, 1997. 62-79.

Reichert, John. "More than Kin and Less than Kind: the Limits of Genre Theory."

Theories of Literary Genre. Ed. Joseph Strelka. University Park: Pennsylvania

State UP, 1978. 57-90.

Reilly, John. “Police Procedurals.” Herbert 342.

Roberts, Lora. “A Brief History of Sisters in Crime.” Unpublished manuscript, 2006.

Roerden, Chris. Online posting. 4 November 2005. SinC-IC. 30 January 2008.

. 340

“Romance Literature Statistics: Overview.” Romance Writers of America. 2008. 29

January 2008.

http://www.rwanational.org/cs/the_romance_genre/romance_literature_statistics.

Roosa, Heidi. Online posting. 15 April 2005. DorothyL. 15 April 2005.

< http://www.dorothyl.com>.

Rose, M. J. --. “Author’s Question Author’s Guild.” Wired. 16 April 2002. 24 February

2008. .

--. “Original and Creative.” Online posting. DorothyL. 1 Dec. 2005. 29 May 2006.

--. “Stephen King, the E-Publisher.” Wired. 11 June 2000. 25 August 2006.

Rosen, Judith. “The Espresso Machine Debuts: Newest Entrant in Digital Publishing.”

Publishers Weekly. PW. 26 June 2006. 28 February 2008.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6346866.html.

--. “Sleuthing in the Stores: Retailers Voice the Pros and Cons of ‘Serial Crime.’”

Publishers Weekly. PW. 22 April 2002. 26 August 2006.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA213578.html?q=sleuthing+in+the+st

ore.

Rosmarin, Adena. The Power of Genre. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,

1985.

Ross, Catherine Sheldrick, Lynne (E.F.) McKechnie, and Paulette M. Rothbauer.

Reading Matters: What the Research Reveals about Reading, Libraries, and

Community London: Libraries Unlimited, 2006. 341

Roth, Marty. Foul and Fairplay: Reading Genre in Classic Detective Fiction. Athens:

University of Georgia Press, 1995.

Russ, Joanna. How to Suppress Women’s Writing. Austin: University of Texas Press,

1983.

Rzepka, Charles. Detective Fiction. Unpublished ms, 2004.

Samuelson, Robert J. “Myths and the Middle Class.” Washington Post.

washingtonpost.com. 27 December 2006. 8 February 2008.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-

dyn/content/article/2006/12/26/AR2006122600772.html.

Sanders, Seth. “Creator of V. I. Warshawski Mysteries Describes Her Genre, Her

Teaching Experience at Chicago.” The University of Chicago Chronicle. 17 April

2003. Vol. 22 No. 14. 7 March 2008.

http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/030417/paretsky.shtml.

Sayed, Daphne. Email interview. 1 July 2006.

Sayers, Dorothy L. “The Omnibus of Crime.” Haycraft 71-109.

--. Busman’s Honeymoon: A Love Story with Detective Interruptions. (1937). New

York: Avon Books, 1968.

--. Strong Poison. (1930). New York: Harper and Row, 1987.

Schantz, Enid and Tom. Personal Interview. 29 October 2005.

--. Personal Interview. 22 April 2006.

--. Enid. Email Interview. 24 January 2006.

Shokoff, James. “What is an Audio Book.” Journal of Popular Culture. 34 (4) Spring

2001: 171-181. 342

Schiffrin, Andre. The Business of Books: How International Conglomerates Took Over

Publishing,And Changed The Way We Read. London: Verso, 2000.

Simmons, M. L. Letter to Salon.com. 8 December 2000.

SinC. “Welcome.” 3 December 2007. 6 March 2008. < http://www.sistersincrime.org/>.

Skibbins, David. Online posting. 15 April 2005. DorothyL. 15 April 2005.

< http://www.dorothyl.com>.

Stam, Robert. Film Theory: An Introduction. Malden: Blackwell

Publishers, 2000.

Stasio, Marilyn. “A Girl’s Guide to Killing.” The New York Times. NYTimes.com. 21

August 2005. 26 August 2006.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/21/books/review/21STASIO.html.

--. “Murder Least Foul: The Cozy, Soft-Boiled Mystery.” New York Times. 18 October

1992. 26 August 2006. BR42.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE4DC103BF93BA25753C1

A964958260.

Steinbrunner, Chris and Otto Penzler, eds. Encyclopedia of Mystery & Detection. New

York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1976.

Stine, Kate. “Criminal Associations: Forget the Mafia, these are organizations with real

criminal expertise!” MysteryNet.com. 1996, 2005. “Mystery Organizations.” 26

June 2005. http://www.mysterynet.com/organizations/.

Stowe, William W. “From Semiotics to Hermeneutics: Modes of Detection in Doyle and

Chandler.” Stowe and Most 366-384.

Strohmeyer, Sarah. Bubbles Unbound. New York: Signet, 2002. 343

Sullivan, Laurie. “Retailer’s Goal Is To Create Collaboration between Book Chains,

Improve Forecasts, Increase Inventory Turnover, and Drive down Out-of-Stocks.”

InformationWeek. 71-74. 15 Nov. 2004. Pro-Quest. 12 Nov. 2005.

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=744743831&ie=15&Fmt=4&clienttld=4342

2&RQT=309&VName=PQD.

Survey. Mystery Readers’ Survey. 734 mystery readers online survey. Done by

Katherine Clark. 22 June 2005-February 2006. http://survey.mysteryphd.com.

Symons, Julian. Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel. 1972.

New York: The Mysterious Press, 1992.

--. “Highsmith, Patricia.” Herbert 205-206.

Taichert, Pari Noskin. The Clovis Incident. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico

Press, 2004.

--. The Belen Hitch. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005.

--. Personal Interview. July 6, 2006.

Taylor, Lelia. Personal Interview. 27 August 2005.

“Tea Cozy.” Google Web. 2008. 2 March 2008.

:tea+cozy&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title>.

Thompson, G. R. Introduction. Great Short Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. by G. R.

Thompson. New York: Harper&Row, 1970.

Thoms, Peter. Detection & Its Designs: Narrative & Power in 19th-Century Detective

Fiction. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1998. 344

Tinsely, Del. Online posting. 9 May 2005. DorothyL. 9 May 2005.

Todd, Janet. Feminist Literary History. New York: Routledge, 1988.

Todorov, Tzvetan. Genres in Discourse. Trans. Catherine Porter. Cambridge: CUP,

1990.

“Tom Evslin and His Blook.” Weblog. Self Publish Blooks: If You Can Write a Blog,

You Can Publish a Book. 23 March 2006. 26 August 2006.

http://selfpublishblook.blogspot.com/2006/03/tom-evslin-and-his-blook.html.

Trachtenberg, Jeffrey A. “Eccentric Sleuths, Off-Stage Murders And Very Little Sex:

Must Be a ‘Cozy,’ the Genre for Nancy Drew Graduates; Author Credit for a

Cat.” The Wall Street Journal. 20 January 2004. 2 March 2008.

http://www.victoriahouston.com/wsj.html.

--. “The Name Blame: Authors Take Aliases To Cover Up Flops.” The Wall Street

Journal. 8 Nov. 2005. A1+.

--. “To Publishers, Megahits Mean Very Big Numbers.” The Wall Street Journal. 2 Nov.

2004. C3.

--. “Shelf Life: Quest for Best Seller Creates a Pileup Of Returned Books.” The Wall

Street Journal. 3 June 2005, A1+.

Tribble, Jessica. Telephone Interview. 9 January 2008.

U.S. Department of Commerce. “Educational Attainment: 2000.” U.S. Census Bureau.

August 2003. 1 February 2008.

24.pdf>. 345

“Used Books Find a Niche.” Bookseller. Issue 5182. 10 June 2005. Business Source

Complete. Kelvin Smith Library, Cleveland, OH. 23 June 2005.

Vidocq, Francois Eugene. Vidocq: The Personal Memoirs of the First Great Detective.

(1828-1829). Translated and edited by Edwin Gile Rich. Boston: Houghton

Mifflin, 1935.

Viets, Elaine. Shop Till You Drop. New York: Signet, 2003.

--. Online posting. 15 May 2007. DorothyL. 15 May 2007. <

http://www.dorothyl.com>.

--“Chicklit Mysteries: We’ve Come a Long Way Baby!” Panel. Malice Domestic

Conference.. Crystal City, Virginia. 22 April 2006.

Vnuk, Rebecca. “Collection Development: ‘Chick Lit’: Hip Lit for Hip Chicks.” Library

Journal. LibraryJournal.com. 15 July 2005. 26 August 2006.

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA623004.html.

Wall, Kathryn. CincinnatiMedia. 23 February 2008. http://www.kathrynwall.com/.

--. “Kathryn Wall: New Career in Mid-Life.” Interviewer: Sandra Parshall. Weblog.

Poe’s Deadly Daughters: A Blog for Mystery Lovers. 13 June 2007. 6 March

2008.

Walton, Priscilla L. “Bubblegum Metaphysics: Feminist Paradigms and Racial

Interventions in Mainstream Hardboiled Women’s Detective Fiction.” Gosselin

257-279.

Weinman, Sarah. “Chick Lit’s Hip Quotient.” Weblog. Confessions of an Idiosyncratic

Mind: Crime Fiction, and More. 2 August 2005. 26 August 2006.

http://www.sarahweinman.com/confessions/2005/08/index.html. 346

Wellek, Rene and Austin Warren. Theory of Literature. NewYork: Harcourt Brace

Jovanovich, 1977.

“What Are You Listening To?” Publishers Weekly. 252. Issue 21. 23 May 2005. 26

August 2005.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA602868.html?q=what+are+you+liste

ning+to%3F.

“What Is a Small Press?” The New York Center for Independent Publishing (formerly

Small Press Center). 2006. 22 February 2008.

http://www.smallpress.org/faq/default.asp#spc3.

Whitney, Phyllis. “Women Mystery Writers—A ‘Serious Rebellion’?” The Third

Degree. Mystery Writers of America Newsletter. January 1986. 2.

Wildwind, Sharon. “Small presses and mysteries.” Email to author. 9 August 2006.

--. “Monthly Returns.” Online Posting. 4 November 2005. SinC. 5 Nov. 2005. sinc-

[email protected].

Williams, Wilda W. “Genre Spotlight 2006 ‘Mystery’: Dark is the New Cozy-- Crime in

Translation, the Dominance of Noir, and Conjuring the Paranormal.” Library

Journal.com. 1 April 2006. 26 August 2006.

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6317229.html.

--. “Genre Spotlight 2007 ‘Mystery’: The Killer Genre—New Talent and Publishing

Initiatives for Mystery Readers. Library Journal.com. 15 April 2007. 28 February

2008. http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6431959.html.

Winspear, Jacqueline. Maisie Dobbs. London: Penguin Books, 2003. 347

Woeller, Waltraud and Bruce Cassiday. The Literature of Crime and Detection: An

Illustrated History From Antiquity to the Present. New York: Ungar, 1988.

Woodcock, George. “Godwin, William.” St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers.

4th ed. Ed. Jay P. Pederson. Detroit: St. James Press, 1996.

Wyatt, Edward. “Expo Week Arrives, and Books Are Back.” New York Times.

Nytimes.com. 2 June 2005. 7 March 2008.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/02/books/02book.html.

Zeman, Barry, and Angela Zeman. “Mystery Writers of America: A Historical Survey.”

Mystery Writers of America. 2006. CincinnatiMedia. 2 March 2008.

http://www.mysterywriters.org/pages/about/history.htm.

Zweig, Michael. Introduction. “The Challenge of Working Class Studies.” What’s Class Got to Do with It? American Society in the Twenty-First Century. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004.