We cozy readers and writers are a curious and quirky bunch.  We love our bucolic little towns and affable gentlefolk, living their law abiding lives and then wham!  A dead body is found in the oddest of circumstances — a foot sticking out of a rosebush, a hand emerging from a giant birthday cake, a corpse floating in a goldfish pond.  And, we take it in our stride, laughing at the absurdity in the face of death.

In reality, as an individual citizen or real person, if you came across a dead body, especially murdered and possibly of a relative or well known acquaintance, you might spend the next five days curled up in the fetal position, rocking and calling for Mommy.  At least, a ten session round of therapy may be required.  Instead, we enjoy the black humor as it is peppered with klutzy sleuths who come face to face with the murderers, while living through hectic households and/or complicated love lives.  And of course, everyone is on friendly, first name terms (or even more intimately) with the top cops.

So here we are again, basing a brutal end to another character, thinking up fun and delightful mishaps for our heroes and heroines, sticking our noses into other peoples’ business, on a fun and almost festive ride with the Grim Reaper.  Oh, what a ghoulish and yet lively bunch we are!  Isn’t it lovely that we always catch our murderer in the end, but not before there is plenty  of mischief and mayhem with a scar or two and a good story to tell the grand-kids.

Toodles,

Barbara Jean Coast