Cozy. by
Parnell Hall
hbk out September 02
Published by Orion
at £17.99
One of the sub-genres of crime fiction is 'the cosy', meaning plots set in homes, country
villages and decent hotels, the archetype being Miss Marples.
Parnell Hall has taken the word as his title, as it is entirely set in a New England 'bed and
breakfast', which the narrator's snobbish wife insists on calling an 'inn'.
It is a very funny book, one of the author's Stanley Hastings series, where Stanley, an
insurance investigator, tells the story in the first person, almost entirely through dialogue.
The plot is complex and does not matter a great deal, being really a core around which the
clever and often hilarious dialogue is entwined. Stanley and his acerbic wife Alice take a
long weekend in the countryside to get over their small son's first absence at summer
camp. At the Blue Frog Ponds Inn, two of the other guests meet a sticky end, though the
mechanics of the killings are hardly worth a mention. The repartee, especially between
Stanley and Alice and the apparently thick police chief are excruciatingly funny, especially
to long-married readers who can identify so closely with the situations.
This is a 'laugh-out-loud' book and the admittedly thin 'whodunnit' aspect is more than
compensated for by the sheer wit of the writer.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
