What was your first cozy?

Flipping through some of the group conversations made me wonder: what was the first cozy mystery that hooked you on the genre? And the follow-up: do cozies get dated after a while, or are there good'uns that hold up decades later?

The first cozy I recall stumbling across was "The Cooking School Murders" by Virginia Rich; looks to be out of print now.

Depends on how you define the genre, but maybe the Mrs Pargeter books by Simon Brett. They date back to the 1980s.

It's been a long time since I read a Sneaky Pie! I've sampled some of Rita Mae Brown's other series, but never liked them quite as well.

>3 Barbs2017: >4 gmathis: Now you're reminding me of Lilian Jackson Braun's "The Cat Who..." books. :)

Nancy Drew! Started reading those books as a child -- beginning with The Secret of the Old Clock -- hooked on mysteries ever since!

>6 rhinemaiden: I didn't even think about my chapter-book years! Fourth grade: got all 14 Trixie Belden books (the whole series at the time) in a crate for Christmas. I didn't come out from behind my bed (secret reading place) until New Year's!

>5 MHThaung: I found a couple Cat Who's on the please-take-it-for-a-quarter shelf not long ago and enjoyed them both. They were from earlier in the series, which die-hards usually say are far better.

>9 Barbs2017: Secrets of the Shopping Mall - oh-h hadn't heard of that one! A book to look for!

To paraphrase a speech from the movie You've Got Mail... it's the books we read as children that shape us. Here's an article from The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/03/philip-pullman-his-dark-materials-...