I write cozy mysteries, so all my books are set in a small community, feature an amateur sleuth (although Eve Apple is now dabbling in the world of the private detective) and have no graphic violence or sex on the page. I’m also careful about the language I use. My books are all series, and that presents an issue that series cozy mystery writers must confront: how many murders can a small community generate before it becomes the murder capital of cozy mystery fiction? Not only does the number of murders in a small village begin to read as unlikely, but the reader soon comes to believe she can trust no one in the town. And too many murders make the town an unpleasant place to read about. There are several approaches that authors can use to keep the story line believable as well as cozy like. Here are a few of them:

1. Move the story from place to place

My husband has the best protagonist. He writes Bobby Navarro, the biker who rides all over the US. Bobby had been a cook on a cattle ranch, discovered a body in a parked car while on his way to the Grand Canyon and he’s now working on a murder in Key largo, where Bobby spends some vacation time. This is the perfect scenario for keeping your protagonist’s sleuthing believable—murders spread out over the county.

While most cozy mystery writers don’t create protagonists who travel on motorcycles as Bobby does, taking the protagonist on vacation or to another location to visit a friend or family creates the opportunity to move the murder out of the usual setting and is employed by many series cozy mystery writers, myself included. If the protagonist is retired, road trips in an RV, cruises, and other travels move the story out of the confines of small village life.

 

2. Make the small village a center for tourism or for a special event

Although my brewing series is set in a village in a valley in upstate New York, the location is one populated by many breweries, an attraction for tourists in the summer and fall and a destination in the autumn for leaf peepers. The influx of outsiders creates an opportunity for murder motivated by events outside the village. In the two series I write set in rural Florida, a mud bog truck events and the re-enactment of an 1800s battle also attract outsiders and are exciting settings for murder.

 

3. Introduce new characters

Characters not met with before in the series bring their lives from beyond the village into the setting and make it possible for a reader to believe that another murder makes sense because of the circumstances surrounding the character introduced. How, for example, does one introduce the Russian mafia into rural Florida? I did it by having Eve Appel’s uncle visit her. He brings along with him family connections to some very nasty Russian kidnappers. go to https://lesleyadiehl.com/publications for information on my books

 

4. Create a village with connections to a larger population

Colleges in small communities bring in students from other locations including urban and suburban areas. My protagonist in the Laura Murphy murders is a professor at a college in a small town in Upstate New York, but the issues she confronts come from both the community and the college. The murder of the college president stirs controversy involving the pollution of the lake she lives on. In the second book, she confronts fraternity shenanigans, pranks that turn out to be deadly.

A small community is often the place where people choose to live, but they may work in a nearby city. Connecting the two locations through a murder can make for an interesting and complex twist on motive.

 

5. Redefining the small community

Setting the murder in a small community makes sense in a cozy because it gives the protagonist insight into the possible suspects and into motive, and a reason for the amateur sleuth to get involved in solving the crime—it’s her community, her friends, her family. A threat to any of them means the protagonist wants to take action. It’s possible to have the same advantages operating in an area of larger population if the writer defines community as school, workplace, a residential area of a city or a defined business location such as a block with bookstores, antique shops, other small businesses where the owners know one another. The important issue here is that the protagonist has knowledge of and access to people who know the victim.

 

I’m certain you’ve found other ways to keep within the guidelines for a cozy mystery and yet move the setting out of a small village. I’d love to have you share your approaches which could generate ideas for other writers.