Cozy Mysteries

In preparation for a trip to Colorado Springs for my grandmother's 100th birthday party, I decided to read some mysteries set in that town. It seems as though all those mysteries were cozy, leading to other cozies as well. So in the last month, I've read a few of these non-literary mysteries. Those set smack in Colorado Springs were Throw Darts at a Cheesecake by Denise Dietz and A Real Basket Case by Beth Groundwater. The former is set in a diet club and the latter in a health club, and both really could have been anywhere. Glancing references to places in Colorado Springs were all that set these books there -- the sense of place was decidely lacking in both books. A book with a little more sense of place, although that place is a fictional town outside of the Springs, is Irrational Numbers by Robert Spiller. At least this one felt like it was "out west," and I have to admit I was partial to the math teacher sleuth. Another cozy set in Colorado was really a romance novel, once again one with such a generic setting that it could have been anywhere: A Dying Art by Nageeb Davis. This one had an art teacher as the sleuth and, of course, she fell in love with the policeman just as the diet group leader in Dietz's book did. One more cozy I read during this binge of mediocre mysteries was L. C. Hayden's Why
Casey Had to Die. That one made my list because of a geocaching connection, and indeed, at around page 200 there was a geocache involved. The improbable turns of events in this book brought it down a couple of notches, though. At this point, I'm really looking forward to reading something with a little more depth.