Detection, Mid-Century Style: The Rise of the Cozy Mystery Genre

“My first case,” says Father Brown in The Mask of Midas, “was just a small private affair about a man’s head being cut off.”

It’s not surprising that G.K. Chesterton’s sleuth begins with a paradox; a great many books belonging to the genre known as cozy mysteries have, in fact, a paradox at their heart. Death, especially murder, tends to be violent and…