It’s alibi time. Here’s where things can get downright interesting as some cozy mystery characters would rather confess to a murder than disclose their true activities during the time in question. The cozy mystery author, through the careful unfolding of her play, lifts the veil on each of her character’s private lives, exposing the raucous, sometimes unseemly side of our presumably civilized society.

The mechanism for this no-holds-barred view into the fictional histories of her characters—an essential part of the detection process—must be justified by plausible situations, highlighting just one of the deft ploys that need to be flawlessly executed by the author.

How Do I Get You Alone?

So the question then becomes: What natural circumstances grant the detective in the play her license to snoop into the current and past lives of each of the story’s characters?

Perhaps a formal invitation is extended to that detective by one or more of the other characters to investigate the crime at hand or—God forbid!—there should exist the more immediate imperative of the detective suddenly finding herself in the embarrassing situation of needing to clear her own name from the list of suspects.

Whatever her clever means, the author convincingly installs in her detective such authority as may be necessary to move in and out of her characters’ lives at will, exposing all their sordid secrets and humiliations along the way, all the while chronicling each episode to a riveted audience, the reader.

Exactly Who’s on Trial Here?

Regardless the outlandish behavior reluctantly confessed to in a cozy mystery, it is interesting to note that how the other characters in the play react to learning of their fellow actors’ salacious antics may tell us more about their own social mores than those of the confessor.

To wit, does the long-widowed Lord Pemberton’s newly discovered affair with the recently divorced Lady Ashley garnish the same shock and astonishment from his lordship’s peers as the further revelation that his lordship’s second cousin once removed, the 11th Earl of Cardiff, was this very morning caught topping a housemaid in the upstairs Dorchester Bedroom?

So, dear author, tell us how your characters react to that set of revelations?

Time, Place, and Circumstance

One important factor to consider is the source of all these recent confessions. Were the revelations voluntarily proffered by a character as evidence against his or her having any opportunity to commit the crime? Or do we learn of these scandalous goings-on through the spiteful confession of some other, slighted third party, perhaps one with an axe to grind against the accused?

Here’s where things can get downright interesting as some cozy mystery characters would rather confess to a murder than disclose their true activities during the time in question.

Analyzing the exact circumstances of these expertly extracted confessions, including the attendant locations and timings of those acts confessed to—that is, answering the question: How do the admitted-to deeds correlate with the alleged time and place of the murder?—the detective attempts to piece together, in turn, each character’s opportunity to commit the crime. Or, often enough, the lack of such opportunity. Then there is the matter of the confessions themselves. Sorting out a character’s opportunity to commit the crime can lead to a virtual voyeur’s glimpse into some of life’s more embarrassing moments.

All of this is to say that the reader is meant to take the meaning of Opportunity quite literally: Some unique combination of time, place, and circumstance that makes it possible to do a thing.

That thing, of course, is to commit a murder. Or three.

Opportunity for Deception

Once the investigation is underway, it soon becomes apparent that, rather than being a snare to catch the true perpetrator, ascertaining each of the characters’ opportunity to commit the crime has become a convenient get-out-of-jail-free card for many of the suspects. The initial facts appear to point to them all having been otherwise engaged at the time in question. But in the cozy mystery—just as in real life—facts can be misleading.

It is a forgone conclusion that cozy mystery characters can be a deceitful lot. They often lie. They obfuscate. They falsely alibi one another. Sometimes, everyone—including the police—mistakes the actual time of the crime, instantly invalidating all the previously collected alibis once the proper moment of the victim’s demise is discovered. Then, of course, it’s time to start over again, from the beginning.

After another deliberate round of interrogations, rather than getting to the bottom of things, the mystery only deepens. No one in the play appears to have had any opportunity to commit the crime. The usual suspects may have had the means to—and the motive for—committing the murder, but absent the ability to prove opportunity, no one can be brought to justice. The detective, it seems, has her work cut out for her.

So, Sir or Madam, exactly where were you when the victim met his untimely demise?

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

Up Next: The Cozy Mystery Characters