Once the dead body is conveniently onstage, unraveling the next piece of the cozy mystery puzzle will require our detective to divine the answer to a deceptively simple question:

What horrific thing had the victim said or done to deserve such an undignified sending off?

Surely, it was something more egregious than being a boor at last month’s country club gathering, or getting caught cheating at the weekly bridge game.

At the beginning of this series, mention was made of the importance of the closed setting for the cozy mystery genre. A major part of establishing this closed setting entails defining the context for the play. That is, revealing the common experience enjoyed by most—if not all—of the major characters in the play. How did their individual life circumstances all happen to converge here on the pages of this particular story?

So too, that singularly fateful act performed by the victim—the one misstep in his past which eventually leads to his untimely demise—needs to be framed in this same context: The complex interaction between the victim, the suspects, the setting, and the timing of the victim’s murder.

The motive for the crime is often the defining thread that stitches together all the seemingly disparate characters in the cozy mystery, giving the reader that satisfying Aha! moment late in Act III when she suddenly discovers the hidden connection.

In the cozy mystery, motive is born of context. A furtive, longing stare at a young blushing bride, dressed all in white—the harmless, natural culmination of an innocent fantasy on the part of an invited guest at a posh wedding reception—becomes an unforgivable act of betrayal when it is noticed by that bride’s father-in-law to be returned in kind by her to the best friend of the groom, the same man the father-in-law has just made an equal partner in his billion-dollar corporate empire.

We’ll explore more of the complex interaction between characters and setting in a future article.

Plotting the motive offers an excellent opportunity for the author to introduce texture into her play. The motive for the crime is often the defining thread that stitches together all the seemingly disparate characters in the cozy mystery, giving the reader that satisfying Aha! moment late in Act III when she suddenly discovers the hidden connection. Through the methodical unfolding of the mystery, each of the characters’ backstories—however outlandish and improbable they may be in their initial proffering—by the end of the play all seem perfectly reasonable to us.

Cozy Mystery Motives

Though the list of possible motives for murder may at first seem practically endless, they all funnel into the big three: Greed, Revenge, and Fear. These are the reasons why cozy mystery characters kill.

Greed

For perhaps the entirety of civilization, man—and woman, for that matter—invariably has wanted more than what he or she has been given. More food, more love, more money—name the scarce commodity, and we as a society have felt compelled to invent some play, or story, or piece of art to lament our insatiable need for it.

Greed, it turns out, is simply another word for want. In the world of the cozy mystery, this translates into some character—the cozy mystery murderer—wanting to take possession of something. Some people want more of something they’ve already got. Others want a thing simply because it’s something they don’t currently own. Still others may want something merely to ensure that no one else may have it.

Regardless the reasons for their avarice, in the eyes of the cozy mystery murderer, the endgame is the same: So that they may possess that one thing which they must have, the victim in the play must die.

Revenge

Revenge demands some transgression to remedy. In the cozy mystery, the murderer seeks revenge for something very specific. Like a betrayal or a rejection or a loss.

Or being passed over for inheritance in a billion-dollar estate.

Revenge is the most passionate motive for murder in the cozy mystery, thereby making it the most irrational. More times than not, the character acting out of revenge feels justified in their actions, to the point of being incredulous over the other characters’ failure to see the inevitability of—and ultimate vindication in—the victim’s untimely demise.

Regardless the transgression, the result is always the same: The murderer has been slighted, so someone in the play must pay the price. That someone is always the victim, and the price is invariably murder.

Fear

Though often overheard as over my dead body, when the cozy mystery murderer speaks these words he generally means over your dead body. And more often than not, he speaks these words out of fear.

In the cozy mystery, fear translates into some character—the murderer—seeking immediate relief from something, presumably from something inherently bad. Like blackmail, or abuse, or neglect.

Or perhaps from something even worse.

Fear is an exceptional motivator. Fear opens our eyes to possibilities—often morbid—we would otherwise never entertain. Pick your bad situation; in the cozy mystery they all end in murder.

The Common Experience

On the way to exposing the motive for murder, the cozy mystery author needs to answer some fundamental questions from her characters’ point of view:

Why are we all gathered here, in this setting and at this time? How did we all get here in the first place? What is the common experience we all shared that led us here today, to this tragedy before us?

As careful readers, it is our own discovery of this common experience that accounts for the gradual sense of knowing—and perhaps even caring for—the characters in the cozy mystery story who, only a few hours before, were all completely unknown to us.

Thanks for visiting! This is the third in a series of articles that explore the question: What is a cozy mystery?

Up Next: The Opportunity for Murder