hey! i’m looking for a very specific kind of cozy whodunit & i’m hoping someone here can help me out🥹
i only read cozy crime / classic-style whodunits, but i’m picky about the structure. what i’m really looking for is:
• closed circle
• fair play (all clues on the page)
• a really juicy motive
• a hard-to-guess culprit
• something that follows ronald knox’s 10 commandments
basically i want to be able to solve it if i’m clever enough… but i don’t want it to be obvious. i want that satisfying “oh my god it was THERE the whole time” moment.
some context:
my favorite authors are agatha christie and anthony horowitz. i’ve read all of agatha christie and all of anthony horowitz’s mystery books. my favorite murder mystery right now is the word is murder by anthony horowitz, that’s honestly a perfect example of what i’m looking for in terms of structure, clues, motive, and payoff.
i’ve genuinely been searching high & low, left & right, all over the la libraries trying to find something that scratches this exact itch, and i just haven’t found it yet.
one more thing: i’m gen z, so while i love golden age structure, i struggle with really heavy 1930s dialect. i tried getting into dorothy l. sayers an just couldn’t get through it. agatha christie works for me, but anything more linguistically dense than that is tough.
so please, me your best recommendations. reading is genuinely my favorite thing in the world, especially when it’s a really good murder mystery. and yes, it absolutely has to be murder.
thank you!!🔎✨
by Professional-Cup6284