Cozy Mystery Corner discussion

Member's choice for April '25 is The Country Club Murders by Julie Mulhern. Set in the mid-1970s in Kansas City, Missouri. Ellison Russell is an artist and member of the country club with a teenage daughter, an unruly dog, a philandering husband and an interfering mother. What could go wrong?

The first book in the series is The Deep End.


Other books in the series:


These are novellas:
Only the Good Die Young
Diamond Girl &
Somewhere in the Night

Discuss any book in the series on this thread.

I listened to The Deep End and Guaranteed to Bleed. I loved them both but I can't call them cozies because the plots involve heavy, adult topics(view spoiler)[ (s & m and child molestation) (hide spoiler)]. But I love the sense of humor, the characters and the settings. Also both had great mysteries.

I love this series. I love the audio versions so much that it's the only way I 'read' the books. I, too, questioned them being categorized as cozy, yet they are in their own way. I have the latest one in my tbr, but I'm holding off reading it until the audio is released. I recommend the series as it is well-written, smart, and compelling.

I also don't really consider this a cozy series. But it is a fun series. I really need to get more read. I'm so far behind.

And yet Cozy Mystery is the second tag (right after Mystery) on the main page of the first book. I think there are as many different ways to define 'cozy' as there are cozy readers :)

Barb wrote: "And yet Cozy Mystery is the second tag (right after Mystery) on the main page of the first book. I think there are as many different ways to define 'cozy' as there are cozy readers :)"

I agree. This is a favorite series of mine. Some of the scenes are ROFL especially with her dog and her neighbor. The stories do include adult topics and have more depth than lighter cozies. It's the absence of in-the-scene violence that classifies it as a cozy. The sub-genres are loosely defined; sometimes they're called traditional or soft-boiled mysteries.

Actually finished one of the featured series during the month for which it was chosen!

This is book #8 in the series, and its 'grown-up' theme is harassment in the workplace, before the #metoo movement existed. There are a lot of other things going on too, and I'll admit that I laughed out loud more than once.

Back Stabbers (Country Club #8), by Julie Mulhern, finished 4/19/25 ★★★★
My review

I did finally finish this even though I didn’t finish until May. I didn’t like the detail of the dominatrix world. But I liked the writing and reading about the 70’s so I will try book number two. It’s fun to find new series that I wouldn’t have tried myself. I don’t typically read historical mysteries.