(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia)
As juxtapositions go, “cosy crime” is right up there on the list of sub-genres that might make you a double take.
After all, what could possibly be cosy about murder, injustice and weirdly depraved attacks on people?
Quite a lot as it turns out; not so much because of the crimes themselves which do not diminish in their sheer awfulness, but because of the people who investigate the injustices done, many of whom are not just Miss Marples-esque amateurs with a keen eye for seeing the right thing done.
Not everyone likes their crime being Jessica Fletcher-ed but if you do, you will find a lot to enjoy in cosy crime, and especially in novels like A Clock Stopped Dead by J. M. Hall, the third instalment in the Thirsk Garden Centre Mysteries series which began with A Spoonful of Murder in 2022 and continued with A Pen Dipped in Poison the following year.
If the titles sound a little twee and playful and the name of the whole series delightfully suburban, then that, dear reader friends, is the whole idea.
We are meant to feel safe and cosy in our slippers and PJs, sitting on our favourite couch or tucked up happily in bed, being exposed to crimes that are heinous but but not so heinous that we blanch and recoil in grim horror; so think Vera or Midsommer Murders rather than the darker British efforts of Nordic noir.
Liz felt a shiver of fear. ‘How could you possibly know?’ she said. With chilly uncertainty the pair followed Thelma and Val through the door and with a small thrill of horror Liz saw the vista pf black with snarling tiger heads and red, green and blue foliage.
The good news for those of us who pick up a book and don’t realise it’s a part of a series until we’re home, is that A Clock Stopped Dead works perfectly wonderfully as a standalone novel.
Granted, you would likely get even more out of the book if you had already spent two books getting to know Pat, Liz and Thelma, old friends and workmates from school teaching days who live in North Yorkshire, but Hall realise each of these women and their overall friendship dynamic so well without getting mired in exposition that you can plunge into the third book and still enjoy a wholly satisfying read.
A Clock Stopped Dead begins, as do many of these stories, with an explicable happening; a friend of the three women, Marguerite, who is prone to flights of fantasies and lovelorn obsessions, decides to have a drink at the pub one night after her train is cancelled and she has an hour or so to kill.
What starts out as a nice idea soon becomes a terrifying experience in darkness and fog as she stumbles into a strange charity shop in search of a toilet and finds herself confronted by a crowded set of artefacts and assailed by a disembodied voice full of regret and threat.
Understandably freaked out, Marguerite somehow manages to escape this twisted retail trap and make her way home, shaken so much, but also quietly thrilled by her intriguing experience, that she shares what happened with Pat, Liz and Thelma.
(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia)
While all three woman has issues of their own going on – Pat’s gay son Liam is home from uni and won’t talk about what send him barrelling home early, Liz’s son has marriage troubles and Thelma feels herself unable to connect with her husband’s new retirement gig and life – they cannot help but investigate what took place that strange night to Marguerite.
And thus begins a cosy crime delight, which is as much about the women investigators and the changing post-work dynamics of their relationships as it is the crime at hand.
In fact, while red herrings are found and discounted and clues joined together in a fashion that satisfy those looking for a real world explanation for what Marguerite believes is some fantastical spiritualist mind games, what you winningly get a lot of is how three women, who are all quite different, navigate later lives that come with a fair few challenges.
While we like to think of retirement as one blissful waltz of happiness, the truth is, people don’t stop being people, and while the three women value their friendship, they are also at odds with each other from time to time, a hallmark of any friendship, no matter how robust.
It’s low-key drama but its drama nonetheless, and coupled with the twists and turns of the investigation, which sees the women getting away with asking some pretty ballsy questions of often complete strangers – people are rather apt to answer them too which is handy because that wouldn’t happen in real life – makes A Clock Stopped Dead as much an exploration of the human condition as it is a mystery to be solved.
… A dark shape appeared in the doorway, semi-lit from below by the torch.
‘Why did you do it?’ The voice was harsh, unearthly.
Liz screamed.
But then, you could argue that’s true of the crime genre as a whole.
After all, what intrigues us so much about crime stories is what it reveals about us as a people, how it tears off that polite facade of civilisation and exposes that, advance as we might be as a society, that there is still a fiendish cruelty and brutality to be had.
We are but wolves in sheep’s clothing much of the time it seems, and while novels like A Clock Stopped Dead don’t wade deep into the bleakness and terrors of the fetid depths of the unleashed human soul, they don’t exactly avoid it either, and you are reminded one again of just how beastly we can be to each other.
A good thing too because without this civilisation-shedding behaviour, we wouldn’t have crime as a genre, nor cosy crime as its appealing variant, and we would lose the fun, for fun it is despite its bleakness, is what we have in novels like A Clock Stopped Dead which gives us appealing protagonists, who are welcomingly real in their troubles and experiences and the unifying nature of their friendship, a fine mystery to be solved, and an ending which ties things up and yet somewhat doesn’t too, the perfect mix of justice served with a tantalising sense that life is never really fully done with and there may yet be issues in the offing.