Words Matter, a guest post by E.J. Copperman

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Bones Behind the Wheel by E.J. Copperman!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Mystery readers and writers are used to our genre getting sliced and diced (no pun intended) by agents, publishers and bookstores. Do you write dark psychological thrillers? Madcap historical mysteries? Police procedurals? Romantic suspense? Most of us - readers and writers alike - would prefer their mysteries classified in one of two ways: Will I like it? Or won't I?

 I know many, many JRW readers put E.J. Copperman's books in the first category. His Haunted Guesthouse series continues to grow in popularity (the newest one, BONES BEHIND THE WHEEL is now out!) and his Asperger Mystery series garners critical acclaim and five star reviews. So love Copperman, love his books - just please think twice about how you describe them...

Photo from Poison Pen Bookstore

Let us, for a moment, consider the term “humorous cozy mystery.”

I am, at least it says in some of the reviews of my books, a writer of humorous cozy mysteries. I have, for the past 17 or so years (but who’s counting?) been making my living as such. You could say, were you so inclined, that humorous cozy mysteries have been the main source of my income for a good portion of whatever career this is.

The problem is, I hate the term “humorous cozy mysteries.”

Now before you get out the torches and pitchforks, let me clarify: I don’t for one second dislike the genre (Subgenre? Sub-sub-genre?) itself. I like mystery novels. I like mystery novels that don’t rub my face in the gory details and try to get me to think that the world is a horrible, depraved, frightening place. There’s the newspaper for that.

I’m a particular fan of those novels – mystery, bloodless or otherwise – that exhibit a sense of humor. I am a comedy nerd. I have little patience for any form of entertainment (art, if you must) that has no sense of humor at all. It bores or irritates me. So I am not by any means suggesting that the type of books I and so many others (who tend to get nominated for awards, but am I bitter?) write are in any way a second-rate art form. Much to the contrary.

It’s the words “humorous cozy mysteries” that I object to. To which I object. Fine. Be a grammar cop. Because words do matter, and those are possibly the most terrible choices available for the kind of stories I tend to write. Let’s take them one at a time:

Humorous. If there’s a worse way to say “funny,” I’m not aware of it. Humorous has an almost sarcastic ring to it, like what you would say to someone who just tossed off an unusually bad joke or pretended an insult was just their way of kidding. There’s a scene in Silver Streak where Richard Pryor jokes that Gene Wilder is more or less acting in a racist fashion. Pryor doesn’t mean it but he makes the joke. Wilder looks at him and says, “Oh, that’s very humorous.” 

 

It’s the comedy version of pleasant. You might as well say that something is droll or whimsical. Even amusing is better than humorous. It makes comedy polite. Who needs that?

Cozy. Perhaps the worst culprit of the bunch. The word cozy in and of itself demeans the form it describes. If there’s a dead body on the floor and you feel cozy there is something deeply wrong with you, or you just killed that guy. There are no other explanations.

No, cozy was adopted to assure some readers that nothing nasty (sex) was going to happen in this novel and no unpleasant images (sex and violence) would be presented. Cozy says, You’ll be fine. Don’t be afraid. And once you’ve done that to a work of fiction you might as well just say that it’s toothless, pointless and free of any honest human emotion. It will be, at best, cute, a word which is mercifully left out of the phrase humorous cozy mysteries.

Cozy has led to a serious segregation of the form, too. Cozies are separated in the mystery section at the bookstore, they are generally left out of any awards discussion (except the Agatha, and no, I didn’t set out to write a piece about mystery awards), and they tend to feature crafts and baking over, in some cases (not all!) plot and character.

I was once having lunch with a group of cozy authors and discussing the trends of the day in that field. It was observed that the two big features publishers wanted at the time were crafts and supernatural beings, in particular vampires.

Joking, I said, “What about a knitting vampire?”

One of the authors didn’t look up from her soup. “I was offered that one,” she said.

Cozy.

Mysteries. That was a tease. I have no argument at all with the word mysteries.

We should call these things what they are: Funny Mysteries with No Sex or Graphic Violence. Granted, that’s not as catchy as humorous cozy mysteries, but it’s more accurate and less grating to the ear. I’d be happy to hear your suggestions for ways to banish those words from our mystery vocabulary. Ideas?

E.J. Copperman is the author of many funny mysteries with no sex or graphic violence. Wow. That took up a lot of words. Well, the latest one is the 10^th (!) Haunted Guesthouse mystery, BONES BEHIND THE WHEEL. E.J. would greatly appreciate it if you’d pick up a copy. You can put it down again after that, but paying for it would be nice.

 E.J. Copperman, is on Twitter as @ejcop, has a web site and a blog, SLICED BREAD.  You can also learn more about his alter-ego Jeff Cohen at his web site,  friend him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter as @JeffCohenWriter.