Books: The next big thing

BOOKS Magazine claim that the cozy mystery genre is the next market leader - More and more people are reading cozy mystery books. And within the cozy mystery genre, holiday themed cozies have also been increasing in popularity. Some authors of the cozy mystery book subgenre specialize in holiday and special occasion mysteries. These books are often written in a series, with each covering a different holiday.

My own cozy series featuring the pensioner sleuth Granny Smith is experiencing strong sales, though interestingly I'm selling twice as many books in the US market than I am in my native UK. The Granny Smith series, currently two books, with a third out this winter are set in the semi-fictional South Wales village of Gilfach, which is very much based on Gilfach Goch, the village I grew up in - the geography is the same but the Gilfach of the books is populated by a bunch of surreal characters and I'm having great fun playing with them.

" A great mystery here and brings that style of cozy forward into the twenty-first century, touching on modern subjects that wouldn't have been tolerated back then, Hell, not even thought of back then." From Amazon reviews.

Now cozy crimes traditionally don't feature any graphic violence or sexual content, and whilst the Granny Smith books mostly follow these conventions, I have tried to push the genre somewhat, which is why you will often find the Granny books to be a little more risque than most other cozies. In fact I don't think of Granny Smith as strict Cozies, but rather un-cozies. I mean they are not serious crime novels, far from it - I think they are far more humorous than most and there are definitely passages which are all out comedy.

"The murder mystery has good flow. The characters are a hoot." From Amazon reviews

"Very interesting and a very fast and fun read. Was a surprise ending, I loved the way granny defends herself." From Amazon Reviews.

The third Granny Smith novel (The Welsh Connection) which will see print this winter continues directly on from Granny Smith and The Deadly Frogs, and finds Granny and her extended family setting off for Disneyland to celebrate the wedding of Granny's son Gerald to his long term partner, Wayne. It's going to be the gayest of gay weddings - indeed Granny calls it The Royal Wedding.

With Granny at Disney mayhem ensues - murder, mayhem, narcotics and a mouse. I do hope many of you who read the Archive will try the series and to celebrate the success of Granny Smith and the Deadly Frogs, it's just outside the top one hundred on Amazon  you know, both of the currently available books in the series have been dropped to a low low price (£1.34 UK/ $2.06 US)  for the remainder of this month.

Extract: Granny Smith and the Deadly Frogs

That was one possibility, Granny thought but just because Mark and Carol had shared a night together didn’t mean he had killed her.

During her younger days Granny had experienced a few one-night stands herself, it had seemed almost compulsory at the rock festivals of her youth. And if murder followed casual coitus then she herself would be a serial killer – well, she would have bumped off at least two men at Glastonbury and another at Knebworth. And Keith Richards certainly wouldn’t be around to twiddle his twangy strings, not after Hyde Park.