Murder Most Cozy

UH lecturer Robert Cremins discusses our paradoxical appetite for murder mysteries—while devouring them nightly.

By Annie Wiles

Who among us hasn’t binged a true crime podcast on a rainy road trip? Taken shelter in an Agatha Christie book with hot cocoa when it’s frozen outside, or shivered deliciously over a Stephen King in the summer, lost in suspense while your popsicle melts? Told ghost stories at slumber parties, your friends’ faces eerily backlit by flashlight so they look unrecognizable? Walked up to the haunted house? Or played Clue?

The strange juxtaposition of these experiences can be summed up succinctly by a streaming service category Robert Cremins came across while flipping to find his next show: Cozy Murders.

Cozy murders? The phrase—its wrongness, its aptness—stuck out to Cremins, an Irish writer and lecturer of 13 years at the University of Houston’s Honors College.

Abstractly, the phrase makes no sense, and yet we instinctively know what it means—know that feeling of peeking at the darkness from the safety of our bubble. And while Cremins was looking for the next cozy murder to watch, he was far from alone. The murder mystery genre is back with a vengeance—and there are plenty of interpretations as to why. “Who brought the classic whodunnit back from the dead?” GameRant asks. The Guardian calls it a “Killer Comeback,” Collider a “renaissance,” the Daily Beast “a sign of our times.” All agree: Our appetite for murder is alive and well. What that says about us is open for interpretation. But the genre has always been a lodestone for playing out social anxieties, subverting norms and unraveling uncomfortable truths.

Coincidentally, maybe, we stand at the centennial of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction—a period that spanned the 1920s and 1930s, went from roaring to ravaged almost overnight and became defined as the interwar period between World Wars I and II. While Golden Age detective fiction may have tangled with the macabre, it is largely recognizable by one common trait: It is primarily, atmospherically, paradoxically, cozy. Why would reading about death, particularly in a time haunted by it on such a vast scale, be comforting? And does this echo across the intervening century now, as we

What to Read

emerge from three years of a global pandemic; watching a virus strike, seemingly at random, seemingly with no one to solve it; unable to say goodbyes; being locked inside and wishing we were somewhere else?

In fiction, the murderer has a motive. They are apprehended. Questions are answered. Life isn’t so simple. Whatever the reason, there’s no shortage of mysteries to enjoy this summer. Cremins recently hosted a discussion about the phenomenon at UH Honors College’s annual event The Great Conversation, an intimate, open-forum seminar held over dinner in April. We talked to him about the genre, its prevailing popularity and (of course) what he’s been watching.

YOU RECENTLY SPOKE ABOUT OUR STRANGE FASCINATION WITH MURDER MYSTERY. WHERE DOES YOUR OWN INTEREST IN IT COME FROM?

My wife and I are empty nesters right now, and we’ve been watching murder mysteries at night. We enjoy them with a bit of ironic detachment. We gleefully ran through the British shows—“Inspector Morse,” “Inspector Lewis,” Inspector this and that—which all have the same 30 British actors. We had this running joke that if we ran out of things to watch, we could always fall back on “Midsomer Murders.” Then the pandemic happened—and suddenly we had burned through about 20 seasons of it. It was a comfort, an escape.

Although we were being a bit meta, watching these shows, I did become fascinated with the appeal of this genre. I once saw on one of the streaming services the category Cozy Murders. Two things struck me: Firstly, that’s a weird paradox, even an oxymoron. And second, I consume this like ice cream. So what is the appeal? Like any good professor, I started to over-intellectualize this.

MUCH HAS BEEN THEORIZED ABOUT THE GOLDEN AGE OF DETECTIVE FICTION AND THE APPEAL, DURING THE INTERWAR PERIOD, OF A NEATLY TIED UP MURDER MYSTERY—BODIES THAT ARE FOUND, DEATHS THAT “MAKE SENSE”—AFTER THE SENSELESS AND UNPRECEDENTED SCALE OF DEATH IN WWI. IS SOMETHING SIMILAR HAPPENING NOW?

One thing that strikes me that people find so appealing about “cozy mystery” is that you take a step back. In the Golden Age, with [Agatha Christie’s beloved amateur spinster detective] Miss Marple, you’ve got a cozy, quaint setting where there would be little serious crime. When there is a crime, it’s a rupture in the social fabric. The detective solves it and reestablishes the status quo.

George Orwell helped define this in “Decline of the English Murder,” which crystallised after WWII. The twist, the interesting thing, is that now, good, old-fashioned murder has been brought back by popular shows that recapture this era. And it’s still puzzling why you’ve got this juxtaposition of “murder most foul” in a beautiful, quaint setting.

WHY ARE WE COMFORTED BY MURDER?

I taught an aesthetics class five years ago, and I set an assignment to connect a major idea from the class to a cultural product. Edmund Burke’s conception of the beautiful and the sublime was a popular choice. As consumers, we are drawn to the sublime— an aesthetic emotion Burke conceives as a fearful fascination with a vast, overwhelming force that could destroy us.

Standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon is a sublime experience; you don’t want to get too close to the edge, but you’re drawn to it. Contemplating the ocean, outer space, looking into the abyss is the sublime. Looking at daisies, wildflowers, is beautiful; it’s small, delicate, fragile; we want to protect that. We’re drawn to both of those experiences. Even better is watching other people do those things. This can explain the attraction to horror. Cozy mystery activates both of those aesthetic emotions, the sublime and the beautiful. This is what’s occurred to me; I don’t know if it’s deeply original, and I haven’t turned it into an essay, but I think it is a good theoretical framework.

WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF THE TRUE CRIME OBSESSION?

“ATTRACTION TO HORROR” SEEMS APT HERE. THERE’S KIND OF A PREVAILING JOKE ABOUT THE PREOCCUPATION OF TODAY’S FEMALE AUDIENCES WITH SERIAL KILLER DOCUMENTARIES AND COLD-CASE PODCASTS. I WONDER WHY WE WOULD BE FASCINATED WITH STORIES OF VIOLENT MEN WHO HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT? OF WOMEN WHOSE STORIES ARE NEVER TOLD?

I worked with a student, Naomi Zidon (’21), on her research as a Mellon Scholar at UH. She’s now doing an MFA in documentary filmmaking at Northwestern University. We’re proud of all our young alums, but she is a real rising star. I want to give her credit for helping to advance my thinking, because she gave a memorable presentation, for that aesthetics assignment, considering the true crime podcast phenomenon—this would have been around the time the podcast “Serial” was a big deal—through the lens of Burke’s influential beautiful/sublime theory, and that was excellent. That was a really cool classroom experience.

IF WE IMAGINE THE SOCIAL FORCES THAT SHAPED GOLDEN AGE NARRATIVES—THE SAFETY OF THE VILLAGE VERSUS THE ENCROACHMENT OF THE OUTSIDE; URBANIZATION AND THE LOSS OF A WAY OF LIFE—WHAT WOULD DEFINE OUR ERA?

WHAT DO THE TRENDS OR TROPES OF THE GENRE TODAY SAY ABOUT OUR SOCIETY?

In the cozy mystery, there’s only a limited amount of information: a few set characters, a few red herrings, the “tiny unforeseeable detail” Orwell writes of in “Decline of the English Murder.” All of that is going to synthesize into a solution. Today, there are so many things beyond our control. In the tsunami of information, very little of it resolves into truth, insight. I think in the past few years, we’ve given up the illusion of control. There’s also been a movement to recenter the victim. There’s a yearning there for justice.

We discussed some of these ideas at The Great Conversation too, which was a really wonderful experience. You’re always learning when you’re teaching or giving a talk. People were really responsive and really enriched my thinking, just like in the classroom. One of the guests, Jodie Koszegi—a former assistant dean of the Honors College—was saying how it was interesting that the detectives in these cozy murders, if you go back to the Golden Age, are amateurs. They’re not from the police. They’re from the community, so it’s the community helping to restore the status quo.

WHAT BROUGHT YOU TO THE U.S.? DO YOU ENJOY THIS (VERY NON-THATCHED-ROOF) SETTING?

I moved to Houston 30 years ago with my wife, then my fiancée, who is from here. We met in England, at the University of East Anglia’s creative writing program. Voltaire said “one must cultivate one’s own garden.” That is a return to the beautiful. Here in Texas, you’ve got limited options. One thing that really helped people in Britain and Ireland during the pandemic was the idyllic weather, and a lot of people rediscovered their gardens—literally. I rediscovered mine as well, until the summer kicked in. But I do try to cultivate my little corner of Houston. There are beautiful places in Houston—but you have to drive to them. Once you know Houston, you can navigate to them.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What to Watch

“Inspector Morse:” This is the starting point for murder mystery TV. And you can’t go wrong with the setting in Oxford.

“Granchester:” You’ve got the best of both worlds: a Miss Marple England—the idyllic English village, the vicar, the thatched roofs—plus the collegiate setting, as it’s only a mile from Cambridge.

“Murder in Provence:” This has to be the ultimate British murder mystery fantasy. Murder plus romance. Fun fact: I brought a group of Honors College students on a study abroad trip to Shakespeare’s Globe to see Roger Allam, the show’s lead, as Prospero in “The Tempest.” This is common of the people who show up in those programs.

“Endeavour:” Allam also plays Inspector Thursday in this spinoff of “Inspector Morse.”

Robert Cremins is a member of UHʼs Honors College faculty specializing in Irish and American fiction and nonfiction. He is the director of the pre-professional program Creative Work and the author of “A Sort of Homecoming” and “Send in the Devils.” He earned his Bachelor of Arts from Trinity College Dublin and his Master of Arts in creative writing from the University of East Anglia.