There are lots of different subcategories within crime fiction. The term ‘crime fiction’ itself is an umbrella term, as I recently learned. It encompasses mystery, a story of the process of solving a crime or conundrum, and thriller, a tale of suspense with crime or espionage elements. Carolyn Wheat’s How to Write Killer Fiction compares mysteries to the ‘fun house’ at a fair, where the reader is misdirected, surprised, and presented with situations where things are not as they seem, like the reflections in funny mirrors. Wheat compares the thriller to a roller coaster, where the reader follows the wild ride of the protagonist’s flight or pursuit, dangers, surprises, and upsets.

Mystery readers typically like the intellectual challenge of following the clues and trying to guess ‘whodunit,’ while having the satisfaction of seeing justice done in the end. Thriller readers? No idea, because that’s not me. When I read a thriller, I finish exhausted and temporarily traumatized. Who would do that for fun?

Anyway, within mystery there are still more sub-categories. In my evolution from book shopper and library patron to author, I’ve had to learn about these categories because they affect how your book finds its readers. These categories include police procedural (where the police are the main characters), hardboiled or noir (think The Maltese Falcon), traditional, amateur sleuth, and “cozy.” There are still more permutations—I am condensing here—and of course there is “historical,” which can overlap with any of the above, but be set at a time prior to the author’s present day. All these have unique category codes called BISAC codes that are used by bookshops and libraries to determine how to shelve, group, and promote their titles. Amazon has similar but not identical categories and codes. A book can have more than one code.

My Anglo-Saxon mysteries are coded as historical fiction, medieval historical fiction, historical mystery, and traditional mystery for internet search and metadata purposes. A category I had never considered for them was “cozy mystery.”

But when someone recently described The Viking Sword as a cozy mystery, it brought me up short. I’ve come to suspect that the definition of a cozy mystery may vary quite a lot from one person to another. When you look at the Cozy Mystery section in a bookstore, what you see are titles like Murder and Muffins. The covers are brightly-colored, the title fonts are whimsical, and there is often a cat.

All right, there is a cat in my books as well. There may also be muffins or the Anglo-Saxon equivalent. But…are my books cozy?

Everyone’s favorite online encyclopedia defines the cozy mystery as follows:

Cozy mysteries (also referred to as cozies), are a sub-genre of crime fiction in which sex and violence occur offstage, the detective is an amateur sleuth, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community. Cozies thus stand in contrast to hardboiled fiction, in which more violence and explicit sexuality are central to the plot. The term “cozy” was first coined in the late 20th century when various writers produced work in an attempt to re-create the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. […] Cozy mysteries do not employ any but the mildest profanity. The murders take place off stage, frequently involving relatively bloodless methods such as poisoning and falls from great heights. The wounds inflicted on the victim are never dwelt on and are seldom used as clues.

Some of that is true of the Edwin stories—I share the attitude of the kid in the film The Princess Bride with regard to ‘kissing books.’ And since I don’t use profanity myself, I don’t see any reason to take down my characters’ bad language verbatim. Moreover, it’s hard to find any community in the Anglo-Saxon period that was not small and socially intimate. Maybe it’s those aspects that prompted the reader to use the term ‘cozy.’ Reading the Wikipedia description, though, it sounds like some of the sanitized aspects of modern cozies are shaped by the requirements of prime-time network TV. (Confession: I love a good episode of Murder, She Wrote or Death in Paradise, but can’t imagine reading them as novels.)

And my observations here aren’t meant to reflect negatively on the writers or readers of cozy mysteries. Sometimes cozy in the fullest Wikipedia sense is the ideal escape when our days are distinctly un-cozy. Sometimes we are just in the mood for a bit of fun. Sometimes our tolerance levels lean more towards the muffins than the murders. Thank goodness we have so many books to choose from, right? I just wouldn’t want someone to pick up my book as a cozy mystery and be distressed to find rigor mortis and blood stains, and the occasional fight with my protagonist having to strike a fatal blow.

As readers of this blog will know, my inspiration is the Golden Age of detective fiction, roughly the inter-war period of the twentieth century when Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and other great authors defined the mystery genre. The people who were writing and reading during this period were of the World War I generation. The First World War was definitely not one of our more bloodless wars. If you read Golden Age mysteries, you don’t get this sanitized-for-TV treatment of clues. For instance, the first chapter of Sayers’ Have His Carcase is hardly cozy in its treatment of “The Evidence of the Corpse.” Is it a coincidence that in the years after that senseless and tragic conflict, readers yearned for the triumph of the detective and the reasoning ability of the human mind over lawless acts?

I can imagine that the West Saxons of the late ninth century had a similar yearning for the stability of law and the restoration of order. Their homes and livelihoods had repeatedly been at the mercy of the Viking Great Army. They had seen many of their leaders killed in battle, and some had seen fit to change sides and collaborate with the Danes. There were food shortages due to interrupted farm work and trade, and of course the Great Army living off the land. There would have been swathes of the country that were badly affected to one degree or another, and pockets that had remained relatively undamaged. However, the country as a whole was in a state of shock and slow recovery in 879 when the Edwin stories start. I’ve tried to convey that in small ways, such as how characters in the story respond to the thought–ever present as a possibility–of the Vikings coming back, and in their attitudes toward food and clothes.

In another parallel with the World Wars, most of the men of fighting age would have either seen combat or have been required to send young men from their community to serve in the fyrd, the Anglo-Saxon militia or national guard. At home, they all participated in the sort of farmyard bloodshed required in having meat on the table from time to time. Some of my characters ostentatiously glory in the warrior role and find peacetime hard to cope with (like Edwin’s older brother Edmund), while others, like Edwin, do what they must and pay the emotional price later. Some, like Edwin’s retainer Buntel, are physically brave but genuinely squeamish—he excels at hunting and tracking, but wants nothing to do with combat.

Just think of a society like this, the far-off ancestors of the Golden Age detectives, returning from the tumult of the war years to the mundane daily routines of their rural society, and ready to turn their minds to the sort of intellectual puzzle that comes from a good riddle, or a death that’s not easily explained by disease, starvation, or a heathen’s battle-axe.

Authors and readers have to find the right balance (and this will depend on individual experience and temperament) between taking death seriously on the page, and gratuitous descriptions of suffering and gore. The best Golden Age mysteries do have that edge to them, that acknowledgement that death is messy and murder is horrible, but without crossing the line out of consideration for war veterans who may have seen the real thing.

If cozy means a fantasy world where the body is a sort of wax dummy, merely a jumping-off point for a story about some endearing characters and their muffins, that’s not what I want to achieve. I’m reminded of a time when I was talking about books with a friend, and another person—not a reader—joined us at that moment. “Murder mysteries?” she asked, sympathetically. “My cousin was murdered. They never found who did it.”

What do you say to that? Fiction to hard, hard reality in 0.2 seconds. Murder is a genuine family tragedy that leaves a mark for generations. Though it’s fiction, I want my stories to acknowledge that. I never want to make light of crime, but to show that life still has joy, hope returns, and in the end, justice will prevail.