I do not profess to write cosy fiction, and for the most part I do not read a lot of cosy fiction. I like visceral, I like viscera. I like a little blood on the page, figuratively speaking. Cosy fiction is all well and good but I am not one who wishes to snuggle into a blanket, with a cup of hot coco, with a cat purring softly on my lap, while I read something suitable.
Cosy is just too damn cosy, it makes no attempt to take you out of the cosy for a moment now and again. Nothing morally ambiguous ever happens. The good guys and girls are the good guys and girls. The bad guys and girls are the bad guys and girls. Good guys only do good things, no matter what happens This is true of most cosy fiction at any rate, not all, there are exceptions. Those exceptions also tend to be the best cosy fictions, because there are always some shades of grey.
The really good ones don’t let you know there is a shade of grey coming, they just throw you a googly* when you least expect it when a character does something that is unexpectedly grey morally speaking, while entirely in character at the same time. And if the writer of cosy fictions is really good at cosy fictions, they will do it once and once only, perfectly timed to impact both reader and the other characters. Both of which have to deal with a sudden moment of moral ambiguity they were not expecting.
*A googly is a ball occasionally bowled in cricket which if timed right catches the batter unaware. Its a rarely bowled ball because it requires you to spin the ball in the opposite direction to the one the batter is expecting. If a googly bowled badly it is almost always hit for six. but if it is bowled right and the batter caught unaware it invariably slips passed the bat and take out middle stump. Hence the term ‘to be bowled a googly’. Your welcome..
Shelley Adina is one of my favourite writers in any genre, not least because she bowls me the odd googly in every one of her novels. In one cast it was a well placed utterly unexpected ‘oh Bugger!’ around page 251 of the second book in her Cosy steampunk, Lady Georgia Brunel Mysteries. I reviewed that book a couple of years ago and the first in the series the year before that, the third got a mention in a sweep of books last year, and then round about April this year the fourth came out, on kindle only…
For reasons beyond her control, Shelly did not bring out the paperback at the same time. So I waited, because I have the others in paperback and wanted to continue the set. So I was checking ever few weeks to see if the paperback was out. It was a long wait…
The wait was worth while.
When it finally came out in paperback I got a copy and as ever happily wrapped up in a virtual cosy blanket of cosy steampunk mystery goodness with the two ladies of a certain age once more pulled into a mystery by want of being in the wrong place at the right time. The same charming characters, clever plots and wonderful writing, that just carries you along in a genteel jaunt of delight and intrigue.
Added to this there was a certain extra joy in this latest book due to the cameo appearances by characters from Shelley’s other steampunk series set in the same universe which I first read way back when I was first considering turning my keyboard to steampunk*. The young heir, not even a toddler, to Lord Falmouth’s estate gets kidnaped, and Georgia’s adult son has vanished too in the night. A venetian assassins coin left behind as the only clue to what may have happened. And so the race is on to find them both before the prince arrives.
*My own steampunk novels may be very much not cosy fiction. Yet there are some deep aesthetic roots for the world of both Maybe and Hannibal Smyth in Shelley’s mysterious devices universe. Noticeably less chickens I must admit, but I shall leave the fowl to Shelley...
Mystery piles on mystery, and in the clever way Shelly always seemed to do, the astute reader might spot clues the ladies miss, and feel rather proud of themselves in a cosy kind of way… The missing heirs sister saying she had only ever found one secret passage, spring to mind. Or other times things are said that characters miss. These touches are artful, light and placed in a way you might miss them yourself.
The plot rolls along, revels it self in snippets as it goes and eventually there is a chase through the sky’s in airships and plenty of daring do… All wonderfully written, all perfectly paced, all a delight, with just the right kind of tension both romantically between characters who have been sharing the pages for four novels now, and in the mystery itself.
But around about page 251 Shelley bowled her readers a googly (I don’t have the book in fount of me and that page number is a pure guess, but the in the middle of the final third of the novel) something morally ambiguous occurs over the English Channel, which catches you out as you don’t expect it. A moral ambiguity that gives our heroine Georgia a moment of uncertainty about someone of whom she is so certain. A moment of uncertainty that is soon lost in the drama of the chase to rescue the kidnapped baby and her son from the clutches of those. A moment of uncertainty that I am almost sure will come back around in the next novel in the series, due out next spring.
Shelley Adina is one of my favourite writers for a reason. I read her cosy fiction for a reason, the reason is that it is never quite as cosy as it seems. The good guys are not always entirely good. The bad guys are not always entirely bad, but merely misguided or driven by not unreasonable agenda’s. There are wonderful shades of grey, delicately hidden in behind all that nice safe cosy.
Hiding in plain sight like venetian assassins, waiting to catch you unawares.
You should read all her books, you should certainly read this one,
Right at the front of the book there are a series of quotes from reviewers one of which is this blog, which is to say from my review of the second novel. One of the other quotes is from Madeleine Holly-Rosing. This I feel puts me in damn fine company as I also love Madeleine’s work.
