A brozy?
What’s that?
Brozy is a new mystery subgenre that is gaining momentum. You may have heard of a cozy mystery, a light entertaining mystery in the tradition of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple or Murder She Wrote. Usually a female protagonist, no gore, no swearing or sex on the page. The amateur sleuth usually has another job, hobby, or interest, and maybe pets.
But what if you are looking for a clean, entertaining mystery with a broader audience? Enter the brozy, or broader cozy. Maybe a male sleuth, not so much focus on knitting or baking, and a bit more action.
The first thing that I thought of when I heard about this subgenre was my Zachary Goldman Mysteries. Like good deals? Pick up the first four books for one low price:
Zachary Goldman Private Investigator Cases 1-4
Zachary Goldman, Private Investigator, is flawed with a capital F.
Shattered by the tragedies of his own life, he will somehow still manage to pick himself up and dig just a little bit deeper than anyone else to find the vital clues.
Maybe being broken makes it easier for others who have faced tragedy to trust him. Walk with Zachary as he solves four cases that will stretch his abilities to the limit.
Even with his own life in shambles, Zachary Goldman is still the one you want on the case.
A case is only unsolvable as long as it remains unsolved.
I also have some standalones that would fall into this genre:
In the Tick of Time
Things creep and crawl in the woods. Things that can wreak havoc with your life.
Things that can be deadly.
As an infectious disease expert for the DOH’s vector-borne disease division, Matt Malloy knows this. What he doesn’t know is who, or why, someone would want to deliberately infect innocent people. Adding insult to injury, his co-workers think he’s either paranoid or losing his mind because of erratic behavior and disordered sleep habits.
Behavior he can’t help. A traumatic head wound can have that effect on a man. He was clocked hard while interviewing a patient with Lyme disease weeks ago, and he’s still suffering from it.
But he’s definitely not crazy.
Or paranoid.
Someone is deliberately infecting people. Maybe even someone he knows. Very soon, that someone will know Matt’s on to him.
Can he prove his suspicions before he’s targeted, too?
Looking Over Your Shoulder
Things were going well for Abe.
Despite all of his past struggles with mental illness, he was happily married, had three wonderful children, a nice home, and a fantastic consulting business that satisfied his creativity and brought in a good income.
But you can never get too comfortable. When Abe becomes a prime suspect in a jewel heist – one of the largest successful jewel heists in history – his schizophrenia becomes unmanageable and everything begins to spiral out of control.
Abe’s own investigation into the heist has the jewel thieves hot on his tail… but are they really, or is he just losing the battle against his inner demons?
And more…
Check out a few of the other authors whose books have been classified as brozies:
The Framed Father
Forbidden love, murder, and explosive secrets engulf Father Tom Greer in this second entry in the Father Tom Mysteries.
When the Archbishop receives an anonymous letter accusing Saint Clare’s pastor Father Leonard McCoy of inappropriate behavior with the young parish secretary, he sends Father Tom back to Myerton from the quiet of the monastery to look into the charges.
When the secretary is found dead and Father McCoy is charged with her murder, he must work against his ex-fiancee Detective Helen Parr and the State Attorney–who is also her boyfriend–to prevent a miscarriage of justice.
But everything is not as it seems…
Dead Men Don’t Smile
Henry Walsh is back to solve a puzzling mystery in Fernandina Beach when a lifelong friend confesses to a murder…
He refuses to believe Charlie Senecal is a killer. But the circumstances surrounding the crime raise far too many questions.
And if the man Henry’s known since the third grade is innocent, then why would he confess to a murder he didn’t commit?
It just doesn’t add up.
But Henry knows Charlie hasn’t been himself since he lost his job as police chief. And with his wife now gone, his state-of-mind has to be questioned
The Reluctant Coroner
Blood is thicker than oil–until murder is involved.
Fenway Stevenson doesn’t want to return to the coastal town where her estranged father is practically king. But the death of her mother draws her back home–and the murder of the county coroner draws her into a deepening conspiracy. As the body count rises and all signs seem to point toward her father’s oil company, will Fenway uncover the truth before family bonds become deadly?
Port Starbird
Friends help you move; best friends help you move the body!
Storm ‘Ketch’ Ketchum, a damaged emigre to the coastal town of Avon on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, likes to mind his own business and isn’t any kind of detective – until he’s forced to become one by extraordinary circumstances.
On the verge of losing his modest waterfront home to an unscrupulous developer, Ketch stumbles onto the scene of a crime that might expose the perpetrator of an unsolved murder and enable him to save not only his own home, but also the similarly threatened Bohemian boatyard community he’s inexorably drawn into. And in case Plan A fails, he’s hard at work on a Plan B that’s both laudable and pitiable.
Together with his loyal dog, a salty charter boat captain, the sketchy denizens of the boatyard, and an alluring scuba diving instructor who may or may not have a hidden agenda, Ketch struggles to make sense of his new reality, while trying to save some of the things that really matter along the way.
Paradise Down
Welcome to the island of Kaua`i where things under the water could make you rich or get you killed!
Lucia Santerez puts her education on hold and returns home to help her brother Nicholás run his new dive shop. When she arrives, he’s nowhere to be found. She’s told he’s run off with his girlfriend without a word to her.
Befriended by a vacationing firefighter and twin elderly sisters who run the C’Mon Inn B&B, together they try to unravel the mystery of her brother’s disappearance. They soon learn someone doesn’t want him found.
Aloha Nicholás! But will this be a hello or a goodbye?
A Murder in Concord
Meet the Mahoney’s, one of the richest families in the state of North Carolina. Owners of the wildly successful Mahoney’s line of restaurants, they are a picture-perfect family and pillars of the community of Concord—until the morning the owner, Trent, is found dead in the middle of the highly secure Mahoney’s, Inc. parking lot.
There are no witnesses and no suspects. Trent seemingly had no enemies, leaving the police baffled. The only person who appears on the police’s radar is Trent’s assistant, Lucas Caine—the person who found Trent and the last person to see Trent alive.
When Lucas finds himself in the crosshairs as a potential suspect, he launches his own investigation using his intimate knowledge of the Fitzgerald family to try to clear his name. He finds a dark side to this family no one knew about, and what he finds could lead to his death.
Death Warmed Over
Death takes a (working) holiday!
Becca Cole is a big fish in a small pond. The former big-city homicide detective is now the Chief of Police in Summer Haven, a sleepy Florida beach town where nothing ever happens. But all that changes when she is summoned to the scene of a grisly murder. A naked young woman lies dead on the beach, a knife sticking out of her back, and the supposed killer stands over the body. It looks like an open-and-shut case, but not all is as it seems.
The victim, who was tangled up in Santeria and drug-trafficking, didn’t die from a stab wound. In fact, an autopsy can’t determine what killed her. The chief suspect turns out to be Silas Mot, an enigma in his own right. In fact, as Becca digs deeper into Silas’s identity, she discovers the startling truth. He’s the Grim Reaper. The personification of Death. The guy who decides who dies and when. It seems he’s in town in order to determine why unsanctioned deaths have been occurring in and around Summer Haven, and he can’t leave until he’s cracked the case.
Becca and Silas will have to team up to discover who killed the young woman if they are to put a stop to the unscheduled departures, but for Silas, confined to a body of flesh and blood for the first time in his existence, the distractions of the world of the living may be the Death of him!
