Cozy Delights

Just love them. Starting with Agatha Christie.
I finished reading all her books sometimes in the 80’s. And then I chanced upon Ruth Rendell and P D James. That’s when I figured there is some serious, mind blowing fiction here so what if it is genre.

Innocent Blood by PD James can easily qualify as a literary work. There are so many layers to the novel. Then there are all those books by Rendell written under her pseudonym Barbara Vine. My favourites among them are A Dark Adapted Eye, The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy, Gallowglass, A Fatal Inversion…all of them actually, including the latest The Birthday Party.

I am such an avid fan of James and Rendell that I track when they are releasing their new cozy and start hounding the local book shops as soon as it is published in UK. The problem is it takes at least six months for the Indian editions to be out and that’s always a bitch. Sometimes understanding friends who live or are travelling there, oblige.

Inspector Morse used to be a personal hero and then Colin Dexter decided to do away with him. But BBC is ingenious enough to carry with his sidekick Lewis. I was thrilled when I discovered the DVD’s of the Lewis series in The British Library.

I also have to thank the library for helping me to shed my ambivalence towards Reginald Hill and his two detectives Dalziel and Pascoe. For some reason I was never sold on Hill as an author. Until I started watching their DVDs that the library stocks! Now I have added Hill and his obnoxious Dalziel to my list of favourite cozies.

The latest discovery is Elizabeth George. She’s an American but her books are set in England. I used to think of her as a lesser writer. Sometime back I picked up a book of hers called What Came before He Shot Her. I was expecting the usual page turner and end up discovering this gem that is in the same league as A Dark Adapted Eye and Innocent Blood.

Some interests always take you to a circle. You begin from where you thought it ended.