Seniors Sleuth: A Cozy Mystery for Fun Reading

The crazy end-of-the-school-year schedule is wearing me out.  I love all the field trips and awards assemblies, but holy cow, I’m never home!

Right now, I don’t want to read deep, sad, or insightful.  My brain barely has enough blood flow to remember what day it is! So I’m thinking about fun “beachy” reads, and today I have a great suggestion for you.

My friend Jennifer Chow just released her “cozy mystery” Seniors Sleuth.  It was a runner-up at the 2015 Beach Book Festival, and it has plenty of fun characters and a not-too-taxing mystery to enjoy.

What is a “Cozy Mystery”?

I asked Jennifer to explain the genre to me.  She said:

A “cozy” mystery has less sex and violence than its crime fiction counterparts. It usually takes place in a community setting and often features amateur sleuths.

If you’ve read this blog at all, you know I prefer PG-13 content and under.  So, cozy mysteries fit nicely into my reading wish list.

Seniors Sleuth features the lovable, somewhat bumbling, Winston Wong, eager to start his new career as a detective.  His first case has him investigating a curious cast of characters who live together in a senior home.

Here’s how Jennifer summarizes her mystery:

Winston Wong used to test video games but has left his downward spiraling career to follow in the footsteps of Encyclopedia Brown, his favorite childhood detective. When the Pennysaver misprints his new job title, adding an extra “s” to his listing, Winston becomes a “Seniors Sleuth.” He gets an easy first case, confirming the natural death of a ninety-year-old man. However, under the surface of the bingo-loving senior home is a seedier world where a genuine homicide actually occurred. Winston finds himself surrounded by suspects on all sides: a slacker administrator, a kind-hearted nurse, and a motley crew of eccentric residents. To validate his new career choice (and maybe win the girl), he must unravel the truth from a tangle of lies.

What I liked

Winston is smart, slightly pudgy, and fun to spend time with.  As he picks up clues, he lets the reader in on his deductions, which I enjoyed better than the last mystery I read, The Cuckoo’s Calling.  In that book, the protagonist detective withheld most information until the end of the book, where he spelled it all out in ten pages of dialogue.  I liked Jennifer’s style of giving hints to the puzzle throughout the story.

But just because Winston keeps the reader in the loop, don’t think that you’ll guess the ending.  The guilty character completely surprised me.

There’s plenty of diversity in the novel, including characters with Asian and African-American ethnicity.

What I didn’t like

Some of the eccentric characters felt one-dimensional or predictable- there’s a belligerent Vietnam Vet and also an African-American who plays the piano and calls himself Jazz Man. I would have liked to learn more about their personalities “under the surface”.  Also, at times, the dialogue felt stiff or formal and not how real people talk to each other.

Caveat

I’m brand new to “cozies”, and perhaps the characters in the genre are typically simple sketches.  Wikipedia says this about characters in cozies:

The supporting characters in cozy mysteries are often very broadly drawn and used as comic relief. The accumulation of such characters in long-running cozy mystery series, such as those of Charlotte MacLeod, frequently creates a stock company of eccentrics, among whom the detective stands out as the most (perhaps only) truly sane person.

A-ha! That fits Seniors Sleuth.

To learn more about Seniors Sleuth, visit Amazon and Goodreads.  To learn more about its author, Jennifer Chow, visit her website at JenniferJChow.com.

Have you read any cozy mysteries that you can recommend?

Thanks for stopping by!

Julia 

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