What’s a better time of year for a cozy mystery than Halloween? There are cats and witches and long, dark nights around the hearth, drinking mulled cider and telling ghost stories. It seems like All Hallows’ Eve is second only to the December holidays as a popular time of year for amateur sleuths to track down the ghastly murderers who disrupt their communities.
If you haven’t yet bobbed for books in the Halloween cozy barrel, here are a few to get you started during the days and nights ahead.
Killer Takeout: A Key West Food Critic Mystery by Lucy Burdette
Being a seasonal resident of Key West means I’m a particularly avid fan of Lucy Burdette’s Key West Food Critic Mysteries. You don’t have to know all the real places Burdette includes in her mysteries to love the stories. Key West is a foodie town, and never more so than during Fantasy Fest, the weeklong celebration that leads up to Halloween. In Killer Takeout, the seventh book in the series, intrepid journalist and amateur sleuth Hayley Snow is running herself ragged covering the food trucks, the costumed Pet Parade, and the Zombie Bike Parade. When would-be festival queen bites the dust, Lucy must uncover the identity of the murderer quickly as a hurricane bears down on the Keys. I particularly love the way Lucy takes Fantasy Fest, a decidedly PG event in real-life, and weaves a captivating, cozy whodunnit around it.
Witch Hunt: A Full Moon Mystery by Cate Conte
For those who prefer to start a series with the first book, there’s Witch Hunt, the debut in Cate Conte’s Full Moon Mystery series. Violet Mooney is busy running her crystal shop when her world is upended by the murder of a city councilor with whom she’s had a very public disagreement. And then there’s sudden appearance of Vi’s mother, absent since she was five, with a previously unknown sister in tow. While Violet struggles to find the killer and clear herself in the councilor’s death, she must also deal with her mother and an unexpected and life-altering family secret. I devoured this paranormal mystery that is also a kind of coming-of-age story.
Digging Up the Remains: A Garden Squad Mystery by Julia Henry
I love Julia Henry’s Garden Squad Mysteries about a plucky band of guerrilla gardeners dedicated to beautifying their town of Goosebush, Massachusetts (and solving murders in their spare time). In Digging Up the Remains, the third novel in the series, Halloween is wrapped in a two-weekend fall festival including a 10K race. When a prying reporter is found dead on the racecourse there are plenty of suspects, including Garden Squad leader Lilly Jayne. These civic-minded sleuths are so smart and multi-dimensional you’ll wish they lived in your town.
The Skeleton Haunts a House: A Family Skeleton Mystery by Leigh Perry
Any of Leigh Perry’s hilarious Family Skeleton Mysteries would work for Halloween, but The Skeleton Haunts a House, the third book in the series, specifically takes place at Halloween. The holiday enables Sid, the walking, talking skeleton who normally resides in college professor Georgia Thackery’s attic, to get out and stretch his legs. When a body is discovered in a Halloween haunted house and Sid gets trapped inside, he’s in a perfect position to hear the police as they interview witnesses and suspects. But when an innocent person gets arrested, Sid and Georgia must work together to track down the killer.
Be My Ghost: A Haunted Haven Mystery by Carol J. Perry
Another series debut is Be My Ghost by Carol J. Perry, author of the popular Witch City Mysteries set in Salem, Massachusetts. In this first in the Haunted Haven Mystery series, set at Halloween, Maureen Doherty inherits an inn in a town on the Florida Gulf. It seems too good to be true—and quite possibly it is. She’s also inherited a building in need of updating, a snarky manager, the resident ghosts, and a guest who drops dead on day one. Maureen and the ghosts must solve the murder to save the place they all live.
Hallowe’en Party: A Hercule Poirot Mystery by Agatha Christie
No list of Halloween cozies would be complete without one from the mother of us all. In Hallowe’en Party sleuths Hercule Poirot and Ariadne Oliver work to uncover the killer of a thirteen-year-old girl found dead in an apple-bobbing bucket. The attention-seeking teen had bragged that she’d once witnessed a murder but hadn’t understood what she was seeing at the time. While the townspeople interviewed would prefer to see the killer as a deranged outsider, Poirot is convinced a past murder must be the motive for the present one. As he digs through a list of suspicious deaths and disappearances, more suspects and motives emerge. Most contemporary American cozies wouldn’t kill off a young teenager with quite such sangfroid, but Ms. Christie, even writing in her later years, is a brilliant storyteller and can do whatever she pleases.
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