When life gets tough, I tend to disappear into books. I had a rather difficult childhood and adolescence, during which I consumed literally thousands of books. As a teenager, I attended a private girls’ boarding school. I wasn’t happy with it, but I think I recognized it was a better alternative to living at home with my father, who was going through a really destructive phase of rage-drinking. During the summers I lived at home and I developed a safety schedule. I would start reading as soon as I got up, around noon. By this time, my father was out of the house and at work. I read, sequestered in my room, until around 4:00 in the morning. The primal danger was dinner time. My father would be home and drinking, and I was expected to attend a sit-down dinner with the family and assist with chores. I managed to stay out of the line of fire for the most part—reading was the one thing my father did not like to interrupt.

I still read lots of books as an adult, but since the election in November, I’ve been doing about a book and a half per day—far less than my adolescent average of four books daily, but it’s literally all that is keeping me from insanity at this point. My drug of choice? Cozy mysteries. I think it’s partly that in murder mysteries, justice is served and the wrong is righted. This is exactly what is missing from real life right now. 

The problem is that I have already read a huge number of cozy mysteries and I worked through much of my favorite authors’ work. Some are now dead, and I am not expecting much from them, but others—come ON, people, get working! G.M. Malliet, I am talking to you!

I started using Libby, the free library app for eBooks and audiobooks, and picked a few authors at random. I am overjoyed to share with you that I have discovered two authors entirely new to me that are highly binge-worthy. I am still working through their offerings and I am as happy as a pig in shit—as long as I keep reading and ignoring the world at large.

First, let’s talk about Elly Griffiths and her Ruth Galloway series. So far, I have read seven out of the seventeen books in the series. The stories are set in the north of England, in Norfolk, which makes a nice change from London, the Cotswolds, and Cornwall, which are favorite venues for murder mysteries. Ruth is a forensic archeologist who teaches at a fictional university. Because of her expertise, she is frequently called in by the local police to determine the age, gender, etc. of human remains. Ruth lives in a cottage on the Salt Marsh—another fictional location—an isolated, windswept, and bird-haunted area. Which is how Ruth likes it.

Ruth reminds me of Agatha Raisin. She isn’t like Agatha in any way other than being middle-aged, but she is an interesting and original character. She’s a bit overweight and usually prefers frumpy clothes because they are practical for digging. She’s introverted and likes her alone time out on the marshes. She’s passionate about her profession but wary of romance, although there is this one DCI who is special… One of her best friends is Cathbad the Druid. His real name is Michael Malone, but everyone calls him Cathbad, and often he turns up out of nowhere when most needed.

There is a touch of the supernatural that wends its way through these stories. It is done with a light hand and never spirals into ghost story territory. There is a tendency to use threats to children as the plot engine, but not every book is about children in danger. The sub-plots about who is sleeping with whom and who is the father of which little moppet create interesting complications that affect the main story. Who knew that Norfolk was such a hotbed of erotic passions?

Ruth is a likable protagonist because she feels real. She’s a introvert, but she cares deeply about people. She is far from perfect, but in relatable ways, like not wanting to go to a party or being annoyed with her boss. I’d love to have a glass of wine with Ruth and talk about bronze-age culture. Or murder.

The second author I discovered is Sujata Massey with her Perveen Mistry mystery series. (I love that the protagonist’s name is Mistry!) Perveen is a young Parsi (Zoroasterian) woman living in Bombay during the 1920s, while the British Raj still ruled India. Against many obstacles, Perveen has trained as a lawyer and works with her father, a well-known barrister. Under British law at the time, she could neither take her exams at Oxford, nor could she speak in court. She is allowed to work as a lawyer outside of the courts, writing contracts and so forth. Her one advantage is that she can deal directly with women in purdah for whom contact with men outside their family is forbidden. As Perveen is one of only two women lawyers in India at the time, there is a need for her services in that arena.

Perveen also must deal with the incredible complexity of the legal system in India in the 1920s. Different religious laws applied to Hindus, Muslims, Parsis, Jews, and Christians, while British law held sway over all. Despite Perveen’s family’s wealth and standing, as a woman, there is much she is unable to do professionally without jeopardizing her own reputation or that of her family or her father’s law firm. Perveen herself has a backstory that makes her life even more complicated, as she believes she can never marry or have children of her own.

The complexity of her society is part of the fascination of these stories. The caste system, the strict delineations between ethnicities and religions, the low status of women, and the divide between British and “native” all contribute to the colorful and complex tapestry of these mysteries. The stories are richly atmospheric, allowing the reader to experience second-hand the heat, the smell of spices, the texture of saris, the sounds of monkeys and birds that the author conjures up from an India of the past.

Perveen is an appealing protagonist, but not because she is “bucking the system.” I get annoyed by historical fiction depicting women living in the past but with modern sensibilities around women’s rights and behavior. Perveen is no rebel. As an Oxford-trained lawyer, she is in a peculiar situation for a young Parsi woman, but she got there in a traditional manner: by marrying the wrong man. She is just trying to make the best she can of her life without causing further problems or scandal. Her intelligence allows her to devise unusual solutions to desperate problems. 

If, like me, you need to dive into other worlds to escape the unpleasantness of this one, I highly recommend these two mystery series. (I also read a stand-alone mystery by Elly Griffiths, “The Stranger Diaries,” and could not put it down.) Here are the series book titles, in order:

Ruth Galloway Mysteries:

The Crossing Places

The Janus Stone

The House at Sea’s End

A Room Full of Bones

Ruth’s First Christmas Tree

A Dying Fall

The Outcast Dead

The Ghost Fields

The Woman in Blue

The Chalk Pit

The Dark Angel

The Stone Circle

The Lantern Men

The Man in Black

The Night Hawks

The Black Room

The Last Remains

Perveen Mistry Mysteries:

The Widows of Malabar Hill

The Satapur Moonstone

The Bombay Prince

The Mistress of Bhatia House

Ooops. Looks like I just ran out of Perveen Mistry books. Please, Ms. Massey—write more!