Cozy question

"It's up to you" isn't a good answer, but it's the correct one.

I recently read a book where I got to page 100 and had no idea who was going to get killed. My own books usually start out with a murder, so the reader is only slightly ahead of the other characters in finding out what happened.

The factors I'd consider are whether you want us to get emotionally attached to the victim, and whether the other characters are emotionally attached to the victim either. As well as whether you want to show how the characters interact before the crime occurs, so we can see what changes in their demeanor.

Agatha Christie generally used two techniques:

• The murder has already occurred and someone connected to the victim comes to the detective for assistance (this style only occurs with Poirot as far as I can tell), or
• The detective interacts with a group of characters, one or more of which will be the victim, and one of which is the murderer. The victim is usually someone who presents themselves as being a ghastly person (The Mousetrap, Evil Under the Sun) or the person you wouldn't think anyone would want to kill (The Mirror Crack'd, Murder in Three Acts).

Glad I could help!

Definitely read some cozies. Read what's out there now and see how they do it. I can't offer any suggestions other than the above advice about Agatha Christie, because I don't read cozies at all. I do have someone in my writer's group working on a cozy, and she killed the victim off around chapter three, I think.

I was wondering about this the other day and looking through some of my cozy paperbacks to find out. I'm not at home so can correct this info when I get back there, but as I remember, I was looking at 2 books in particular, each the first in a series.

One was "The Alpine Advocate" by Mary Daheim. This was the first in a series that is now up to I think 20 ... quite a nice run, eh? First pub in 1992 and still going strong. Set in a small town in Washington. The actual murder appeared somewhere around pg 37 ... (will have to look to be sure).

The other was the first in a new series by Nancy Martin, called "How to Murder a Millionaire" pub 2002. I think she's got 4 or 5 out now. The murder there occurred even later, I think. Set in the rural area outside of Philadelphia.

Since they were each the first in a series, the author had to take the time to do a bit of character and set building. I haven't looked at the 2nd book in each series, but I would assume that there's not quite so much, hoping that a reader would have already read the 1st one and be somewhat familiar with that stuff.

It really does just depend.

I think a lot of it is the focus of the story. Is the really interesting thing -- the stuff that a reader is going to remember and want more of -- something to do with the corpse or something to do with the sleuth? That can help you focus.

If it's the sleuth, then start with her. Good example is Donna Andrews's "Meg Langslow" series. The murders don't really matter; even the solution doesn't really matter. The reason the stories are so compelling is the cast of crazy characters, with Meg deftly maneuvering her way around them. MC Beaton's books are like that too. The murder is really secondary to a reader's interest in the protagonist/sleuth.

If it's the murder -- the puzzle of who and how and why -- that's most interesting, then start with that. I don't have a really good book example of this, but in movie/tv format, there's Midsomer Murders (BBC tv series, based on a British author's books). It's sort of a cozy procedural. They start with the murder, and introduce the detectives later. Some of the Peter Wimsey stories are like that, but they may have been later stories, so readers were expecting Peter to show up, and didn't need to ond with him, because they already had.

There are exceptions, of course. Parnell Hall's "puzzle lady" series is clearly more about the characters (the puzzle lady) than the murder. And yet, the first one, IIRC, started with the dead body, and then introduced the sleuth. Same for Amanda Cross, who tended to start with the dead body and then get to the sleuth, although it's been years since I read them, so I could have remembered that wrong.

Seconding the "it depends" comments. I think its more about the execution.

I'm reading a cozy right now where the victim is discovered in a prologue. The only thing about this that I didn't like is that the prologue was told from the POV of someone who was not the main character, which confused me a little.

I read another cozy where the murder didn't occur until like page 100. My problem with this was that the previous 100 pages were pretty boring and focused on the person who was eventually to be killed rather than the actual main character.

I don't see an inherent problem with either technique, just each author's execution of it.

Ok, back home, here's the real stats from my previous post.

"Alpine Advocate" - murder discovered on pg 48, of 233 total pages

"How to Murder Millionaire" - body discovered pg 37, murder suspected pg 42, of 254 total

I might have the 2nd in each series around here somewhere, to see if the murder comes quicker than in the 1st, but not sure where those books would be. Might dig them up sometime. I'd like to know this info myself.