Some Cozy Tropes: Catherine Mack on Every Time I Go On Vacation, Someone Dies

I’ve been writing thrillers for years and let’s be honest—thrillers take place in a dark space. While there’s room for some levity and dark humor, it’s, well, dark. That’s part of the thrill, after all. Exploring things that go bump in the night and, for an author, making your reader’s heart race as they turn the pages.

I decided a couple of years ago that I wanted to move on from that if I could. I still wanted to write mysteries, because I love puzzles and decoding them (like Taylor, see: The Tortured Poet’s Department et al.).  But I wanted to explore other things too, like romance, a nice setting that wasn’t terrifying, and jokes. I wanted to tell jokes.  I wanted to make myself laugh while I was writing and if the reader laughed too, all the better.

This thought process naturally led to cozy mysteries. All the tropes in that genre seemed to line up perfectly. A mystery? Check. An amateur sleuth? Check. A beautiful, contained setting? Check. A romance (with a light spice level)? Check. A professional detective who is annoyed by the amateur sleuth? Check. A light, airy tone? Check, check, check.

Let me unpack that like a suitcase after a vacation. “Tropes” are like signposts in genre fiction. They let the reader know that the author is going to stick to the rules that they expect in that type of novel. Like the HEA in romance (“Happily Ever After”) and in rom-coms, it’s a promise between the writer and the reader. Once you know the tropes you can play around with them, but you need to lay the foundation with the rules in mind or your structure is going to crumble.

Think about your favorite Agatha Christie novel. Whether it’s Poirot or Marple, the detective is not a member of the police force. They visit a house or a resort or a hotel and something bad happens like a murder (every time they go on vacation, someone dies … ha! Okay, it’s where I got the title for my book from, see below). When the murders occur, they aren’t bloody and they happen off-stage. The suspects are all present and assembled, and even though the characters are afraid, the reader isn’t. You know that everything is going to be resolved in the end. And there’s often a romance between two of the supporting players. The books move at a fast clip and are a light read—beautifully executed but they aren’t going to break your brain reading them. In short, you can curl up with one of them in a cozy nook and read it in a day.

Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies is now entering the chat. Meet Eleanor Dash—a best-selling author of cozy mysteries—natch, because of course she is! She’s on a book tour in Italy for the 10^th anniversary of her semi-autobiographical smash hit, When in Rome. She’s there with her sister, some other authors, and Connor Smith, the protagonist of her novels and antagonist of her life. Like Agatha was with Poirot, she’s sick of him. So she’s going to kill him. In her next novel, of course. A literary murder, not a literal murder. But then he tells her that someone’s trying to kill him because of course they are. He is very killable as we’ve just established.  Oh and are you surprised to learn that everyone on the tour has a motive to kill him? No, right? It’s that kind of book. I’ve made a promise to you and I keep my promises. 1) There will be murders, but they won’t be gruesome. 2) There will be romance, but it won’t be explicit. 3) Everything will work out in the end.

Until the epilogue, that is. But don’t worry. I’ll be with you through all of it. Cracking jokes and dropping clues. That’s part of the trope, too.

About Every Time I Go On Vacation, Someone Dies by Catherine Mack:

All that bestselling author Eleanor Dash wants is to get through her book tour in Italy and kill off her main character, Connor Smith, in the next in her Vacation Mysteries series―is that too much to ask?

Clearly, because when an attempt is made on the real Connor’s life―the handsome but infuriating con man she got mixed up with ten years ago and now can’t get out of her life―Eleanor’s enlisted to help solve the case.

Contending with literary competitors, rabid fans, a stalker―and even her ex, Oliver, who turns up unexpectedly―theories are bandied about, and rivalries, rifts, and broken hearts are revealed. But who’s really trying to get away with murder?