In October 2015, my job was outsourced. Because I prefer to read the “heavy” stuff while working/commuting, I’ve turned to the cyber-stack of cozy mysteries that have accumulated over the years.
For those who are interested, you should subscribe to the daily newsletter Pixel of Ink: Free and Bargain Kindle Books. The other way to find books is to go to Amazon, choose the sub-sub-genre of cozy mystery you want (in my case, cats), sort by price and you have a bunch of books at no cost to you. Many authors (even the pros) will offer a book in their series for at no cost in hopes to get you hooked on their series and yes, in more than a few cases, I’ve gotten hooked!
Below are the mysteries that I read during my time off from work in reverse order (earliest read on the bottom). In those cases where I’ve read a series, I gathered them together even though, that’s not exactly the order I read them.
Since my favorite cozy mysteries feature cats, I’ve rated them in Paws: 1 Paw (yuck! – so far, I’ve been lucky, haven’t read something that bad [uhm… that changed in April 2017]) to 5 Paws (you gotta read it!).
Note: Because I am not reading the books in the order they are presented here, any new reviews will be post-fixed with the date that I finished the book.
[04/18/2017] Note, Part Deux: My job at Frontier Communications only lasted 10 months because the company decided that they wanted to consolidate, so I’m back looking for a new job and reading mysteries.
[06/25/2017] Note, Part Tres: I am now working at Yahoo! and continuing to read mysteries, however, I am starting a new non-fiction medical book as my next read, so I won’t be reading any mysteries for the time being except for those that I requested from the library that become available.
[01/01/2018] Note, Part Quatre: My New Year’s Resolution for 2018 is to write up my reviews in a more timely manner; within days of completion not weeks or months. We’ll see how that goes.
[05/24/2018] Note, Part Six: Originally, I wasn’t going to review individual books from a series, but somehow, that’s not working out. So you’ll see a listing for a series, keep an eye out for possible additions to the series as individual reviews.
[05/26/2019] Note, Part Seven: It’s been a while since I posted a review. It’s not that I haven’t read books, it’s just that I had two months where the medication I was taking left me dead-tired at night and uninterested in doing some stuff. I managed to keep up with the science book reviews, but mystery reviews got the short end of the stick. I will attempt to remedy that.
Note, Part Eight: The Great COVID-19 crisis. I, along with a myriad of folks, am working from home (was working from home; I was laid off in September 2020). For some reason, I just couldn’t bestir myself to write reviews and they have piled up. Rather than put the reviews here, I created a separate page for them, Mysteries in the Time of COVID-19
Note, Part Nine: The Great COVID-19 crisis is more or less over, so new mystery reviews continue on a new page: Mysteries in the Time of Post COVID-19 and Post COVID-19 Redux
- A separate page of reviews read and written during the 2020-2023 COVID crisis.
- Another separate page of reviews read and written post COVID crisis (from April 2023 to 18 March 2026 as the file got too large).
- The Second separate page of reviews read and written post COVID crisis (from 18 March 2026 until 03 April 2026).
Last Note: [04/03/2026] I messed up and deleted all my reviews prior to COVID. As a result, I’ve decided not to continue to cross post reviews. You can keep up with my most current mystery reviews here on Good Reads!