New-to-me cozy mystery series: Simon Kirby-Jones Mysteries
A couple of weeks ago I saw a recommendation in a Goodreads group for a mystery called Posted to Death. Naturally, the title made me sit up and take notice! The book is the first in a series, the Simon Kirby-Jones Mysteries. Simon is a gay vampire from Mississippi, a bestselling writer, who has moved to a picturesque village in rural England. In the first book the nasty, blackmailing town postmistress is murdered, and nearly everyone in the village is a suspect. It’s a fun read – a pure cozy mystery.
The author, Dean James, also writes other cozy series under other names. One of them is the Cat in the Stacks mysteries, in which the protagonist is a semi-retired librarian with a Maine Coon cat. A friend had recently loaned me the first of those, and I thought it was refreshing that the��protagonist was male. That’s so rarely seen in cozy mysteries. (I’m still not convinced that my Jamie Brodie books are cozies. Los Angeles is many things, but it’s not a picturesque village.)
The copyright on Posted to Death is 2002, so I think the books were just released for Kindle. When I was searching to make sure that I wasn’t copying anyone else’s title when I wrote Cited to Death, I found no mention of Posted to Death or the others in that series. Fortunately, I haven’t used any of the titles that James did, and the series seems to have stopped after four books. Repeating a title isn’t wrong in any way, but it might create confusion. The “to Death” part of his titles and mine have the potential to create some confusion, I suppose, but the stories and settings are so different, readers would immediately know the difference.
If you like gay cozy mysteries, you should check out the Simon Kirby-Jones series. I’ve only read the first, but it made me want to read the rest. If you don’t like vampires, don’t let that stop you – there’s hardly any vampire action in the first book. There’s hardly any gay action, either, just flirting – so if you’re looking for m/m, you won’t find it here. At least not in the first book.
I’m hoping that will change as the series goes on. :)
