When I started researching genre books with Jewish main characters, a cozy mystery featuring a Jewish main character was, if you'll excuse a decidedly non-Jewish turn of phrase, my holy grail. I'm not a huge mystery reader, and I've probably only read a handful of cozies, though their often food-based punny titles do delight me. But as I started to hunt for lesser known Jewish genre books that might be out there, I was really, really hoping to find a Jewish cozy mystery.
After talking it over with fellow Jewish readers, I think I now understand why "Jewish cozy mystery" was the one of first search terms I googled as I started on my path towards what ultimately became the Jewish Genre Challenge. When I think about the archetypes for the amateur detectives who show up in cozy mysteries - the friendly baker who wants to feed everyone, the clergyperson who has to balance morality with mystery solving, the nosy granny who's sharper than she looks, the bookstore owner who never imagined they'd find more drama outside their books than in - these roles seem made for Jewish characters.
While some folks may still have a tough time imagining a Jewish romance hero or space warrior (and that's exactly what the Jewish Genre Challenge is here to challenge!), cozy mysteries seem like a perfect fit without even having to step outside more modest expectations of who Jewish characters "can be." So I think I was actually a little worried. Concerned that, since none of the more well known cozies I'd encountered had JMCs, what if there were none out there? And if there were no sleuthing rabbis or crime-fighting bubbes, what would that mean? About authors, about readers, about publishers, about Jews?
I won't keep you in suspense, it turns out there are in fact cozy mysteries featuring Jewish main characters. In the classic tradition of cozies, most have delightful wordplay titles. In keeping with another cozy mystery trait, many of them lead to long series of 7, 12, or even 18 books!
Here's the complete list of cozy mysteries featuring Jewish main characters that we've found so far. The research went deep on this one - at one point we stumbled onto an ancient, archived Library Thing post that turned out to be a goldmine of out of print and lesser known Jewish mystery titles.
A Brisket, a Casket by Delia Rosen (Deadly Deli series, 6 books)
Chanukah Guilt by Rabbi Ilene Schneider (Rabbi Aviva Cohen series, 3 books)
Fax Me a Bagel by Sharon Kahn (Ruby, the Rabbi's Wife series, 6 books)
Friday the Rabbi Slept Late by Harry Kemelman (Rabbi Smalls series, 12 books)
Getting Old is Murder by Rita Lakin (Gladdy Gold series, 9 books)
In Dog We Trust by Neil S. Plakcy (Golden Retriever Mystery series, 18 books)
Murder on Ice by Alina Adams (Figure Skating Mystery series, 5 books)
Nursery Crimes by Ayelet Waldman (Mommy Track Mystery series, 7 books)
Permed to Death by Nancy J. Cohen (Bad Hair Day series, 18 books)
Tempest in the Tea Room by Libi Astaire (Jewish Regency Mystery series, 4 books)
The Case of the Missing Books by Ian Sansom (Mobile Library series, 4 books)
Unorthodox Practices by Marissa Piesman (Nina Fischman series, 6 books)
I have some Jewish cozy mystery statistics here just for interest. They're very unofficial, but I was curious and thought you might be, too. Turns out you can't just google, "How many cozy mysteries have been published ever," but list-makers on Goodreads get pretty comprehensive so that's where I'm getting my stats for the general cozy mystery numbers.
What percentage of cozy mystery series have Jewish main characters? It looks like about 1.1%, based on the12 we know of here out of 1075 "first books in cozy mystery series."
What percentage of cozy mysteries published in 2023 had Jewish main characters? Around 1.5%, based on 2 books (that would be book 17 of the Golden Retriever series and book 18 of the Bad Hair Day series) out of 138 new cozy mystery books published in 2023.
Have you ever read a cozy mystery? Have you read any of these? If you know of other cozies with Jewish MCs, let us know in the comments!
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