Last week, I asked a perfectly reasonable question.
If we’ve got cozy mysteries, cozy fantasy and now cozy science fiction, what gets cozy next?
Then I suggested cozy thrillers.
Which is ridiculous.
Obviously.
A thriller is supposed to make you nervous. It’s supposed to make you wonder what’s around the corner. Someone is in danger. Someone else wants something very badly. There’s usually a clock ticking somewhere, either literally or figuratively, and if our hero doesn’t figure things out soon, Bad Things Will Happen.
Cozy fiction, meanwhile, is supposed to make you feel safe.
So a cozy thriller makes about as much sense as a relaxing panic attack.
Except I’ve been thinking about it.
And now I’m not sure it’s ridiculous at all.
What Does a Thriller Actually Need?
Let’s strip away everything we associate with thrillers and get down to the bones.
Does a thriller need a high body count? No.
Does it need graphic violence? No.
Does it need a psychopath doing horrible things to people? No.
Does it need international conspiracies, intelligence agencies, assassins, terrorists, corrupt governments or nuclear weapons? Nope.
They’re all useful. I’ve employed several of them myself. But they’re not what makes a thriller a thriller. A thriller needs danger. It needs stakes. It needs suspense. Something bad will happen if the protagonist fails, and the reader needs to care whether they succeed. Most importantly, the reader needs to keep turning pages because they desperately want to know what happens next.
None of that says the protagonist has to be miserable. And none of it says he has to be alone. Which is where things get interesting.
Let’s Invent a Cozy Thriller
All right. We’ve got a man in his sixties who lives in a small town. Let’s make him a retired intelligence officer because, well, it’s my hypothetical thriller and I’ll do what I want. He’s lived there for twenty years. He knows everyone.
Every morning, he walks to the same diner and sits in the same booth. The waitress brings his coffee before he orders it. The teenager next door shovels his walk in the winter. He plays cards once a week with a retired police officer, a mechanic and the owner of the local hardware store. He knows the librarian. He knows the pharmacist. He knows who owns the bakery. He knows the woman who runs the flower shop. He’s part of the town.
Then one morning, somebody from his old life appears. Maybe he recognizes a face he hasn’t seen in thirty years. Maybe someone starts asking questions about him. Maybe an old friend sends him a message containing three words that mean absolutely nothing to anyone else and everything to him.
Whatever happens, he knows immediately that he’s in trouble. Real trouble. Somebody is coming for him.
So far, we’ve got ourselves a thriller.
Normally, this would be the point where our protagonist discovers just how isolated he really is. He can’t trust anyone. His phone is compromised. Someone has emptied his bank accounts. The police think he’s paranoid. His former agency denies he ever worked for them. The bad guys are closing in. And he’s on his own.
Except…
This is a cozy thriller. He isn’t on his own at all.
Everybody Knows Everybody
The stranger who’s been sitting in a car across from his house for the last two days thinks he’s being inconspicuous. The neighbours noticed him twenty minutes after he arrived.
The waitress at the diner remembers the woman who came in yesterday asking questions about our hero because she’d never seen her before and she tipped twenty dollars on an eight-dollar breakfast.
The mechanic recognizes the rental sticker on the suspicious car. The librarian knows somebody has been searching the local newspaper archives for our hero’s name. The teenager next door knows every alley, fence and shortcut in town. And his retired-cop poker buddy? He still knows a few people.
Suddenly, one of the standard ingredients of a thriller has been turned upside down. The people hunting our hero have found him. They know exactly where he lives They know his routine. They know where he eats breakfast. They know where he buys his groceries. They know everything about him.
They think that makes him vulnerable.
They don’t understand that they’ve walked into the one place in the world where he is strongest. Because this is his home. And everybody knows everybody.
That’s… Actually a Thriller
Here’s the thing. Nothing about that setup removes the suspense. Our hero can still be in genuine danger. People around him can be threatened. He can still have to figure out who is after him and why. There can still be chases. Secrets. Narrow escapes. Betrayals. Revelations. Someone can even get killed.
This isn’t that cozy.
The difference is what the story believes about people. A lot of thrillers depend upon isolation. You don’t know whom you can trust. The authorities may be compromised. Your closest ally may betray you. The stranger who offers to help probably has an ulterior motive. Trust no one.
A cozy thriller could turn that on its head. Trust is the hero’s greatest weapon. Not blind trust. Not stupidity. The trust that comes from twenty years of living alongside people. He’s fixed someone’s porch. Someone else brought him soup when he had the flu. He helped somebody’s kid get into university. He’s attended weddings and funerals. He’s watched children grow up.
He’s been there for them.
Now something has happened to him. And they’re there for him.
Maybe Cozy Doesn’t Mean Safe
That’s where I think my little thought experiment gets interesting.
Last week, I suggested that cozy might not really be a genre. It might be a promise about how a story will make you feel.
I think I’d modify that slightly now. Cozy doesn’t necessarily promise that you’re safe. It promises that you’re not alone.
That’s a very different thing.
The world can still be dangerous. People can still be cruel. Terrible things can happen. The difference is that when they do, someone notices. Someone knocks on the door. Someone brings dinner. Someone asks where you were yesterday because you always come into the diner on Tuesdays and you didn’t. Someone sees the strange car parked across the street. Someone says, “You look like hell. What’s wrong?”
And when you tell them, they don’t walk away.
Maybe that’s why cozy stories are finding their way into fantasy and science fiction. And maybe it’s why they could find their way into thrillers, too.
Uh-Oh
There’s just one problem with all of this. When I started thinking about cozy thrillers, I was joking. Then I invented this little town. Then I invented the retired intelligence officer. Then the waitress started noticing strangers. Then the mechanic recognized the rental car.
And now I want to know what those three words in the message were. Which is generally how this sort of thing starts.
Damn it…