OK, so the hiatus has gone on a bit longer than expected, but I am planning to be SOLIDLY back. The good news is, I’ve been doing so much reading in the interim, and so I’m very very excited to share some great new reads with all of you.

This week, we’re going full entrepreneurial cozy, with mysteries featuring store owners or other proprietors. Reading a couple of these in a row has me ruminating on why we love these types of stories so much. There’s a particular joy in reading about a store manager or owner solving mysteries on the side. So – this week – what makes them tick?

We’ll start the exploration with Color Me Murder by Krista Davis. I was intrigued by the idea of a coloring book cover – and whether this niche of book could hold its own as a story. In fact, the cover is a bit misleading: the main character, Florrie Fox, draws coloring books, but they barely feature in the story. Instead, the story centers on her role as the manager of a bookstore and the improper arrest of its owner. This was a pretty typical example of the small business cozy, from the store community to the cute local scenery and the exploration of local subcultures. A great place, then, to start our investigation.

Validating the Small Business dream

The first part of the small business cozy fantasy starts with the main character. Usually, these folks are clever, adaptable, resourceful, and intelligent. Florrie of Color Me Murder has effectively free rein over the store and its management. She’s a prime example of the way these stories sell us on the freedom and flexibility of joining a small business.

In her role as store manager, Florrie gets a fair degree of control over her life. She sets her hours and the shifts of her employees. When her sister needs a job, Florrie can hire her without any approvals or oversight. She gets to decide how to use her time, whether it’s arranging book drop-offs or solving a series of crimes. And when she decides to pursue an investigation, she’s ultimately successful, where even the professionals can’t be.

In many ways, then, the small business cozy mystery is a defense of the small business proprietor. At times, it feels like the world is dismissive of local enterprise. We laud CEOs of global corporations, lapping up their best practices and their life stories. Small business owners, instead, feature on shows where celebrities give them advice. It’s like we assume that, because small businesses are common, it’s easy to start or run one,

But these cozy mysteries inject a sense of mystique and admiration into the role of small business proprietor. Because generally, we accept that solving a mystery is hard, something only the intelligent and persistent and creative can do. And so, by associating small businesses with mysteries, we can refresh that narrative and emphasize the freedom and flexibility that small businesses can afford. Where else, after all, can you be a productive employee in the morning and rush off to solve a case in the afternoon?

Florrie Fox in Color Me Murder is a prime example. She’s creative – she draws her own coloring books – and entrepreneurial. She’s got great people skills, as evidenced by her management of the store staff, and adaptable. But instead of highlighting these skills in her bookstore life, the narrative focuses on how they transfer into her investigation. Her creativity and people smarts allow her to surface clues and piece them together. Her entrepreneurial attitude and adaptability mean that she continues to investigate, even as the shape of the mystery changes. The same skills that make her a great manager transfer well to investigations.

Many of these small business stories don’t feature a protagonist that’s particularly into mysteries. They’re not true-crime podcast fanatics or Sherlock Holmes fiends. Like Florrie in Color Me Murder, they’re just going about their day when crime happens around them. And then they transfer all they’ve learned or all they use in their small business to this new investigative context, proving they have unusual intelligence and great character. This flavor of cozy, by its very structure, establishes the small business proprietor as a hero in her own right. It validates these small businesses and highlights that small business is still mighty – something too easy to forget.

Class conundra

Small business cozy mysteries tend to have two flavors – a small business owner or family, or a highly empowered employee. Color Me Murder is the latter, with Florrie relying entirely on her boss for authority and freedom. It’s the professor, after all, who has the money to own a store and the command over a butler and legal support. To the extent that Florrie has resources, she accesses them via Prof. Maxwell. She earns them by being responsible and trustworthy, and Prof. Maxwell rewards her efforts with trust and independence.

Professor Maxwell, then, is the ultimate boss – someone who can observe and reward effort and outcomes. He sees Florrie for who she is – trustworthy, a hard worker, intelligent. He sees her as a person, not just a source or labor or (heaven forbid) a potential affair partner). And he sees others, including his sister and nephew, for who they are – lazy, scrounging, and generally unworthy. Professor Maxwell, in short, differentiates between wealth and worth, separating the “good” characters from the questionable ones.

This gives Color Me Murder a pretty interesting relationship with class and status. The story wants to valorize Florrie and her independence. It wants to ensure that its audience (presumably not .1%-ers) can relate to her and her life. Florrie’s life and family are decidedly middle-class – she falls in love with a police sergeant, her sister works in social media, and her parents live in the suburbs. And yet… wealth sure does make life convenient, especially when you’re solving a crime.

And so, Professor Maxwell enters the equation. He allows Florrie to live in his D.C. carriage house, neatly solving any housing issues. He empowers Florrie to serve as a legal representative, allowing her access to professional nursing and private security. And he asks his family butler to trust her, eventually letting her draw on his knowledge of the house and the family. It’s Maxwell’s reputation that endears her to the other professor customers, who also dig up clues. While Florrie certainly does some leg-work in the story, it feels easier to find clues when armed guards who report to you stand right outside the potential crime scene. I kept reading the story and imagining how nice life must be with a sponsor like Maxwell.

In many ways, then, Color Me Murder is an old-fashioned capitalist cozy. It combines the best aspects of small business independence with all the resources of wealth, embodied in a middle-class protagonist. It’s a very fine line to walk , and Davis must balance these tense ideals of wealth, independence and middle-class security. Ultimately, she ends up equating wealth and independence – but not wealth and virtue. Virtue or values are their own axis, with both the wealthy and the middle class characters failing in different ways. But wealth affords greater peaks and troughs, with Professor Maxwell and Delbert achieving ideals of munificence and depravity that the middle-class characters could never access.

The cozy capitalist mystery

So why do small business cozies feel so good to read? Reading Color Me Murder allows an escape into a life of independence and fulfillment, with access to exceptional wealth. The story updates the American Dream from the farmstead to the small business, romanticizing the notion of participating in commerce. And it validates the positive qualities needed to take on the role, reframing them in a new context. Color Me Murder reflects a hopeful capitalism, one in which values earn independence and respect.

Yet Color Me Murder misses some of the other hallmarks of the cozy small business mystery subgenre. Florrie doesn’t own the business, and the small business community is relatively absent. And because of the sponsorship from professor Maxwell, Florrie fails to face real small-business challenges.

But other cozy mysteries dive deeper into these themes, and we’ll be exploring one such mystery soon. Until then – stay cozy, and stay curious!