THECrime fiction is a genre full of witty and decidedly unconventional protagonists. Their most famous ancestor is Miss Jane Marple, the old lady figment of Agatha Christie’s imagination, dedicated to knitting and apparently harmless. With her, the sleepy English village of St. Mary Mead turns into a labyrinth of passions, envies and obsessions of all kinds. A cult setting that still continues to fascinate crowds of readers all over the world.
New detective books and a bit of a rom-com: who are the detective protagonists
They are fallible women with ordinary, often messy lives, but they have a strong intuition and an irresistible ironic streak on their side. Detectives in rom-com crime novels stumble and get up again, whip up delicacies while spying on neighbors, make sarcastic jokes and solve crimes better than the police.
What is “cozy crime” and why is it so popular
In English, cozy means intimate, comfortable, everything you expect from reading these soft detective novels. In cozy crimes, in fact, there are no bloody crimes or splatter scenes. The story focuses on the resolution of the enigma, the atmosphere and the originality of the characters. The settings are often reassuring: small towns, bookshops, provincial guesthouses, tea rooms, neighborhoods where everyone knows each other and where the balance is suddenly shattered by a murder.
In these cases there is always someone, usually a woman, who is at the scene of the crime and has a more or less direct involvement with the victim. From that moment on, our heroine will demonstrate incredible logical skills that she will use to catch the murderer red-handed.
The writer Agatha Christie (1890 – 1976) in a photo from 1946, while writing in her home in Devon
Miss Marple & Co.: unlikely but gifted humint
The success of cozy crime novels consists in a narrative where the crime is intertwined with daily life and relationships within small provincial towns. The protagonists are equipped with what, in espionage, is called Humint (acronym for Human Intelligence), a term that connotes the oldest form of information gathering, based on interpersonal contacts and the observation of details invisible to most. They do not have cutting-edge scientific laboratories or sophisticated investigative algorithms, but they know how to interpret silences, grasp the nuances in dialogues and gestures, such as a hesitation or an object left there by chance. It is precisely this ability to move within the fabric of social relationships that makes them effective, albeit unlikely, investigators: librarians, retired teachers, bistro owners, florists or elderly ladies with a reassuring air who, behind kind ways and ordinary lives, hide a formidable deductive talent.
Angela Brigid Lansbury played Miss Marple in The Mirror Crack’d. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images)
Pedra Delicado and Imma Tataranni: heroines beyond clichés
Alongside Miss Marple, increasingly unconventional figures have arrived over the years. Like Petra Delicado, created by Alicia Giménez-Bartlett: a sarcastic policewoman, intolerant of the rules, very far from the impeccable heroines of traditional crime.
Vanessa Scalera as Imma Tataranni while looking at Matera, her city
Petra smokes, makes mistakes, makes fun of her male colleagues and approaches cases with a very clear eye on human relationships. Even Imma Tataranni, born from the pen of Mariolina Venezia, escapes every cliché: scruffy, abrupt and with a questionable idea of elegance, she is endowed with an extraordinary investigative intelligence. His investigations are not limited to unmasking the culprits, they delve into the human frailties and secrets of the province of Matera, bringing to light illicit trafficking and ancient resentments. The charm of these protagonists lies entirely in their humanity: they don’t want to be perfect and solve cases thanks to empathy and a spirit of observation.
The boom in crime novels written by women, 6 new releases in bookstores
In recent years, female crime fiction has become one of the most vital sectors of publishing. The authors have expanded the genre, transforming the crime into a tool to talk about contemporary issues such as hardship, loneliness, aging and power relations in the workplace. Also this is why detective stories written by women speak to a huge audience. They not only offer suspense, but build recognizable worlds and complex characters that are easy to identify with. In the gallery, we recommend 6 books hot off the press where they conduct the investigations, women who observe the world with freedom of gaze, intelligence and irony.
Esotericism and magic in Debora Camilli’s new adventure
The sudden death of her father forced her to give up her dream of joining the police. Yet, Debora Camilli, driving her taxi, solved murders and intricate mysteries. When, finally, the opportunity to participate in the competition for deputy inspector presents itself, Debora should be happy, but instead she panics. Leaving the taxi means changing your life, risking everything, disappointing the people who count on you. As always, Debora finds herself choosing between desires and a sense of duty. Jessica, her lifelong friend, convinces her to look for a sign and drags her to Veronica, a fortune teller with a huge following on social media. The cards seem to speak clearly to her: the time has come for Debora to stop being afraid and follow her heart. Much more disturbing, however, is what happens next. The following morning the fortune teller contacts Debora. He is in a state of agitation and asks to meet her urgently. Debora accepts, but when she arrives at the appointment she finds the woman dead. What at first appears like an unexplained crime drags Debora into an investigation full of secrets, hidden identities and truths that someone wanted to keep buried. And while she tries to understand who killed Veronica, Debora will also have to face the chaos of her own love life, starting with the unresolved relationship with Commissioner Edoardo Raggio. Because Debora Camilli is very good at solving other people’s mysteries, much less those of her heart.
Dyslexia and intuition: Margherita Fiori’s strong points
Margherita Fiori is sixty years old and has always worked in court, in one of those offices where files, reports and ruined lives pass by. Colleagues consider her a strange woman: she gets names wrong, confuses dates, reads slowly, but no one knows she is dyslexic. If the written words betray her, however, Margherita knows how to grasp details that others miss. A tone of voice or a minimal inconsistency in the stories opens up unexpected scenarios. His is an instinct refined over the years, almost an instinct. When a famous university professor is found murdered in his study, the investigation is entrusted to magistrate Pietro Pecorari. For Margherita that name means reopening the past: Pietro was her great love of youth, lost many years before. Forced to work together, the two find themselves immersed in a university environment full of rivalries, ambitions and secrets. Pietro follows the rehearsals, Margherita the discordances. And while the magistrate discovers how different the woman is from how she appears, a bond that has never really faded slowly resurfaces between them. It will be Margherita herself, thanks to her unique way of observing the world, who understands that the murderer has made a mistake invisible to everyone else.
Nikita, grumpy and solitary, irreplaceable in investigations
Nikita is the protagonist of The pain of the goose by Giuliana Salvi, debut in detective fiction by the author of Clementina (Einaudi). She is a young policewoman with a rough and solitary manner, who lives with her cat in the villa inherited from her beloved grandmother Viola on the Roman coast. Apart from her mother and ex-boyfriend she doesn’t hang out with anyone, her life is all home and paperwork. One morning, while he is racing in his car so as not to be late for work, he notices a girl on an overpass ready to commit suicide. Nikita tries to dissuade her and the girl, whose name is Fresia, at first seems to cooperate. But then he confides in her that he hears voices and throws himself. Nikita begins to investigate and discovers some uncomfortable truths.
The Washerwomen. 6 policewomen shed light on feminicides
Their official name is Special Squad F: F like Ferrara, the city where the unit was born, but also like femicide, the crime on which they focus their investigations. They call them the Washerwomen because, many years before, in the building that now houses their headquarters, the nuns were responsible for washing wool. Coordinating them in the field is Commissioner Emma Mastrangeli: ironic, intolerant of compromises and determined to shed light on her sister’s death, archived as an unsolved case. Working alongside him are Miranda, Viola, Nausica, Lila and Phoebe, very different women, each with their own baggage of experiences and scars. Together they tackle gender violence with an original, tenacious and often uncomfortable perspective. Their first investigation concerns the murder of Marina Palazzi, owner of a tavern in the centre, found dead in circumstances that suggest a degenerate robbery. But digging deeper, the Washerwomen discover a network of ambiguous relationships, family secrets and hidden power games, which even involve the police environment.
Widowed, Ginny has just moved to Lancashire, where she is ready to start a new life in a new house, and thanks to a job as a part-time librarian, but on the second day of work she finds the hateful library manager dead under a pile of Lee Child volumes. Ginny knows how to recognize certain signs, such as streaks on the nails that indicate poisoning, and together with the other widows in the town she is determined to discover the killer.
Teresa Papavero, a period of relaxation and a murder in the pool
Teresa Papavero is spending some time at the Rifugio dei Cinque Sensi, an isolated resort where time does not exist. It was Gigia, her faithful friend, who convinced her, strong in the belief that moving away from everything can help her forget the recent tragedies: her mafia grandfather who ended up in prison, the new clan leader who wants to kill her and Leonardo Serra, the policeman with whom she has an on-and-off relationship, who seems to have disappeared into the void after saving her life. But the tranquility of the resort is short-lived. During a night spent looking for something tastier than detox herbal teas and healthy meals, Teresa and Gigia find the body of the tabloid journalist Guendalina Corazza floating in the resort swimming pool. Between secrets, lies and old accounts that have never been closed, Teresa will also have to face the mystery linked to her mother’s death, risking her life once again to discover the truth.
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