With two of the novels reviewed today, the sub-genre of ‘cozy crime’ gets a much-needed upgrade, and the third is the Edgar Award winner for 2025.
Locked room mysteries and cold cases
Published Jun 2, 2025 10:35 am
"The In Crowd" by Charlotte Vassell
This is installment two of the crime fiction series that Vassell began two years ago, and it has won the Edgar Award for 2025. Detective Inspector Caius Beauchamp and his associates Matt Cheung and Amy Noakes are back, and after an early fifty pages, one immediately understands why the Edgar. These three resonate, and you feel at home with them right away; caring about them as people, appreciative of their inter-team dynamic, and not just seeing them as faceless members of the London Metropolitan police force. The novel opens with a scull of rowers on the Thames coming upon a dead body, that of a Jane Doe. Then, when we are introduced to Beauchamp, he’s been stood up by a Tinder date at an Importance of Beer-ing Earnest production, where the actors on the stage are all inebriated. It’s there that he meets up-and-coming milliner Callie, who’s there to support a friend in the cast.
We’re then whisked to a Georgian Villa in Southwest London, where socialites and politicos swap gossip and pat themselves on the back for being so entitled. Vassell interestingly traverses the intersection of politics, society, power, and money. There’s a second dead body that crops up, that of a private investigator who was working on the cold case of a 14-year-old girl who, decades ago, disappeared from an exclusive boarding school for girls. How these two cases are related to an unsolved crime concerning substantial pension money, plus the looming presence of a powerful but shadowy Government Minister, are all elements that Beauchamp has to juggle and contend with. Falling in love with Callie and finding she is enmeshed in the cases he’s working on makes for a very ‘Complicated' relationship status. One recurring theme of this eminently readable book is how Justice often comes at a price that only the privileged can afford.
"Fair Play" by Louise Hegarty
A birthday/New Year’s Eve party at a swanky Airbnb for her brother Benjamin is organized by Abigail, and it forms the premise for this locked room mystery that fans of Horowitz and Foley will appreciate. The party is themed Jazz-age murder mystery, and Abigail is the master organizer of the night. It’s what happens the next morning when Benjamin does not come down for breakfast, his locked room is broken into, and there’s a dead Benjamin on the bed - that lies at the mystery of this tale. Structurally, Hegarty is playful, as we are suddenly ‘dropped’ into a novel within the novel; a paint by numbers crime novel, but with the same cast of characters - but added on are a detective and his sidekick, and the Airbnb becomes a country mansion, with butler, housekeeper, and gardener.
The eminent detective, Auguste Bell, plays ‘meta’ with us, the reader, ensuring we stick to the conventions of crime fiction’s Golden Age. And what ensues is a narrative that feels like Auguste is periodically winking at us, the readers. He gives away comments on how the so-and-so chapter, which is still to follow, will be the one where a particular reveal will happen. Or he’ll remind us that this character said or did this in some early chapter, and that we should have recognized it as a giant clue. It’s this running conversation with the reader that will ultimately have you decide whether the gimmick works and lifts this crime novel into a category of its own, or whether it’s just plain annoying and self-indulgent. It does subvert the genre, as Hagerty also expands the breadth of the storyline to take on coping with grief. So this is crime fiction, but it’s also a layered study of possibilities and alternative endings.
"This Is Not A Crime" by Kelly Mullen
Suffused with cozy crime goodness, here’s a vibrant whodunit that’s set on Michigan’s Mackinac Island. It’s a quaint island where motor vehicles are not allowed, and where in wintertime, it’s like entering a snow globe. It’s on Mackinac that 77-year-old widow, Mimi MacLaine, resides, content with her life of crossword puzzles and homemade Gibson martinis. Socialite Jane Ireland has a mansion on Mackinac and is holding an auction party that she coerces Mimi to attend, as she somehow has gotten wind of the details of Mimi’s financial ‘security blanket’. Jane is a narcissist, dating her 44-year-old son-in-law, Matthew. So Mimi asks her granddaughter Addie to join her that weekend. Addie’s parents died in a car crash, and she’s currently nursing a broken heart. Her ex-fiancé Brian was a partner in designing the hit videogame Murderscape, but now claims it belongs to him alone, as Microsoft swoops in to buy the game.
At the party, it’s Jane who ends up murder victim #1, while a storm rages and traps everyone in the mansion. Addie is flummoxed, finding herself in a real-life Murderscape situation. With so much incriminating evidence pointing to Mimi as the main suspect, the pair takes it upon themselves to try to solve the mystery before the police arrive. When a second murdered victim crops up, the novel has to balance between two distinct scenarios - you’re stuck in a mansion while a storm rages and there’s a murderer in your midst, and the other softer scenario of having a 77-year-old function plausibly as your sleuth of the hour. Addie is there to provide valuable assistance, but the cozy crime brownie points will rest on Mimi’s grey head. It’s a mansion full of secrets, and I’ll give full credit to Kullen for surprising us with the revelations, such as why Mimi is open to being blackmailed.