Why are we so sniffy about cosy crime novels?

When I picked up a copy of Deborah Crombie's No Mark Upon Her (Pan,
2011) my expectations weren't high. The cover showed a misty river
scene complete with rocks in the foreground and a lowering sky, the
title was printed in blood red and a strap-line helpfully informed me
the book was part of her popular Kincaid and James series.

I was, literally, judging a book by its cover and in the process doing
its author and the whole sub-genre in which she works a gross
disservice.

The plot involving the murder of a senior police officer and champion
rower, which, naturally, featured hidden rivalries and shameful
secrets being dragged out into the open within the closed communities
of the police and a Thames side rowing club was familiar. It is the
standard model used for that sub-genre of the crime novel termed
'cosy' by fans and reviewers; usually with a barely disguised sneer.

What surprised me, although it shouldn't have, was the way in which
Crombie fashioned out of such mundane material a darker and more
complex story of thwarted ambition and the abuse of power; the bonds
of friendship and the possibility of redemption.

The characters were well rounded and obviously changed by their
experiences in this and other books and she shows a real feeling for
the the landscape of the Thames and the lives of the people living
along its banks.

All the factors were present that I would expect to find in a piece of
fiction that engages my attention; so why was it such a surprise to
find them here?

Perhaps my feeling that reading a 'cosy' crime novel is something of a guilty
pleasure and finding things to admire in one a failure of my critical
faculties is down to having read Julian Symmon's Bloody
Murder at a formative age. It is
a seminal text when it comes to criticism of the crime genre, but not
one without some significant prejudices.

Symmons did not like 'cosy' crime novels one little bit, he gave them the
collective name 'hum-drums' and castigated their authors for treating
the business of creating a novel like assembling a crossword puzzle
where clues and tricks trump narrative. He wasn't much kinder towards
the audience for such books, likening their readers to children who
want to climb up onto nanny's knee and be told that everything is
going to be fine.

My first response to this is and why not? One of the things we come to
stories looking for is the experience of being frightened and then
reassured. 'Cosy' crime novels do that better than any other type of
story, their whole purpose is to set up a problem that disturbs the
settled order of things ad then show the journey to a solution that
sets things right again, almost.

There is also that small matter of 'cosy' crime novels of the sort written
by people like Georgette Heyer, Dorothy Simpson and, of course,
Deborah Crombie demonstrate values of basic craftsmanship that are
often absent from more self consciously literary fiction. Plots have
to hold water, characters, particularly ones that stick around for
more than one novel, have to be convincing and loose ends have to be
tidied up.

Most importantly of all such stories have to at least admit the
possibility of redemption for at east some of their characters. That
responds to a very human need for hope in a better future however
awful things may be in the immediate moment.

That's why despite the condescension of critics and some readers of the
wider genre 'cosy' crime is alive and well and will stay that way.
The novels in this unduly despised genre do brilliantly what anyone
who reads it comes to fiction hoping to find, something that speaks
through invented lives to what we hope for in our real ones.