In the course of my life, I’ve shared my home with four dogs, eight cats, and one dog in a cat’s body. I don’t know if that makes me a dog person or a cat person, all I know is that I live in the country where coyotes, mountain lions, and other dangers mean that to have a pet now I would need to take supervised outdoor walks with them which my knees no longer let me do. And it’s even questionable if that would be enough to ensure my fur-babies safety; one of the cats was taken in broad daylight in a lightning-fast snatch as she preceded my husband out to the back patio where he routinely enjoyed morning coffee while she enjoyed napping on warm sunlit bricks.

It’s not bad living petless in the country as I do, though. I share my country home with scurrying bluebelly lizards, hummingbirds that sip water as I sprinkle my garden, foxes who bring their babies to visit, ravens who recognize me and perform arial shows as synchronized as the Blue Angels, and even a bobcat who is so friendly she lets me sit outside with her while she baths. Those creatures are special, certainly, but I do still miss my dogs and cats and I have many deep recollections of their quirks, foibles, and some of the adventures we shared.

To honor them, I have found a way to keep those memories alive by introducing lost pets in my books. In my Regan McHenry Real Estate Mysteries series, Sophie and Granite are mentioned regularly and some of the other cats make cameo appearances.

But I decided that wasn’t enough for me, so when I began to write the PIP Inc. Mysteries series, I made my Dalmatian Freckles (she was part of a long line of show dogs and her official registered name was Dama Pecosa) my protagonist Pat Pirard’s Dalmatian Dot while my real ginger cat Lord Peter Wimsey became ginger cat Lord Peter Wimsey in the books.

Those of you who have shared your lives with furry critters know they all have distinctive personalities; it didn’t take much for me to use my pets as characters in the books. Freckles came to my rescue more than once. In my younger years, I worked in a small library that, except for one two-hour overlap, was staffed by one librarian. We were open nights and I often worked alone until 9:00. A man started coming into the library whenever there weren’t any patrons inside complaining about the heat. He would start to disrobe and suggest that I should, too.

I was told if I was ever in trouble I was to call the main library, identify where I was and tell the person on the other end, “Tell Mercedes her book is here.” That was code for call the sheriff and send help immediately. Unfortunately, when I tried it, all I got in response was, “Who is Mercades and which book do you mean?”

My two-hour job share person was married to a deputy sheriff who tried to stake out the library, but the disrober remained elusive. Finally, in desperation, I decided to take Freckles to work with me. The librarian on duty sat behind a high counter on a bar-height chair. I looped Freckles’ leash handle under one of the legs of the chair and told her to lay down. She behaved perfectly, mostly napping as patrons came and left. That is until the man came in.

I still don’t know if she picked up on a vibe from him or sensed my fear, but within seconds, she was on top of the counter, teeth bared, snarling at him, and tugging at the leash. He never came back.

Usually, she was a sweet dog. Neighborhood kids would ask if she could come out to play. I knew what she was capable of, though, and wrote her into “The Funeral Murder” as the hero/defender she was under her spotted coat.

Wimsey gets his due in the books as well. The live Wimsey was a defender of his harem and took care of and older, smaller male, too. I never doubted he would defend me should he need to, never mind how aloof he might seem most days. He got his chance to defend my protagonist in “The Funeral Murder,” too.

 So live on, my furry friends, as I get to remember you in more of the PIP Inc. Mysteries series.

    All the chapters of 2025 have closed and The End has been typed on the year, but you know what that means? It means we have a new year filled with mystery in front of us. What will it bring? I know it will bring a new adventure for private investigator Pat because I have an outline ready to be brought to the pages of the next book in my PIP Inc. Mysteries series, but that’s the only thing I know about 2026. The rest of the year is a mystery.

   Oh, there is some foreshadowing I can see already and some clues, too …unless they turn out to be red herrings placed in my mind to make me think I know what’s happening when I really don’t. I’ve been promising myself and others to record books in audio form and 2026 is the year it’s going to happen. I told myself I was going to do this in 2025, but managed to find a million excuses not to, which is why I’m putting audio books in the foreshadowing category.

   I certainly hope 2026 progresses like a good cozy mystery which, of course, means there has to be a murder by the end of chapter two, aka February, but I hope it will simply be the murder of crows noisily taking over the trees by my house and not a real one. Unfortunately, 2025 resulted in the loss of a couple of friends; I hope 2026 doesn’t.

   There will need to be an amateur sleuth to investigate the happenings. I guess that would be me, finding my way through the new year one day at a time without any idea what the next day will bring.

   There will need to be sidekicks, interesting characters who pop into the year to add humor and intrigue and to share the adventures the year will bring. I have many of those characters around me. They turn up with snacks to share at my house on Mondays, weather permitting, to sit outside snacking and sipping margaritas. On Thursdays, I meet others for coffee in the kirk house of the sole church in the community where I live. It’s not a church sponsored event so local gossip, politics, and costumes near Halloween are all encouraged. Some of the people who turn up there are so quirky that they have been known to inspire characters in my books.

    And of course there will be recipes shared in 2026. Like in so many cozy mysteries, food is a big deal in my years. I still love the cookbook I edited where 128 cozy mystery writers shared recipes from their books.

   So happy New Year to all of you. I hope your year is a cozy delight and ends with a great resolution where all mysteries and problems are favorably resolved.

So, it’s not surprising I finally got around to having my newly downsized law librarian and self-proclaimed private investigator, Pat Pirard, get hired to work with an attorney on jury selection in what seems like an open-and -hut murder trial.

I always wanted to be seated on a jury, but during the selection process the question would always come up, “Are there any police officers in your family?” I was an only child, but I had cousins, two identical twins who were raised like my brothers who were both cops. Yes, I loved both of them, probably worshipped them because they were three years older than me, but I would try to explain that one became a police officer because he was a bit of a bully and probably enjoyed the power he had over others when he was in uniform and the other twin was knocked unconscious with his own billie club while trying to reason with a suspect during an arrest. He joined the police force to serve and protect (he was also deathly afraid of spiders.)

I figured knowing such different cops well made me especially qualified to be neutral and listen to the facts in a trial rather than being swayed by police testimony. Unfortunately, I never persuaded the judge and was always dismissed before I was sworn in to a jury.

My degree in behavioral science may have contributed to my fascination with juries, too. I was one of those people who had a professor who hired acting students to rush into the classroom unannounced and do outlandish things before rushing out again and then asking us to write down answers to questions about what we had just seen. In a classroom of thirty students, none of us agreed on everything we had witnessed. That experience taught me that firsthand witness accounts aren’t necessarily a recitation of facts, but can sometimes be influenced by a witnesses’ perception of what was happening.I relished the idea of studying the body language of witnesses during testimony and knew some of the tricks about watching where their eyes went as they recalled what happened to judge whether they were recalling an incident or making it up as they testified. I devoured articles about how to spot a lie. I wanted to use what I learned, but never had a chance.

One time when I was called for jury duty, but not called to the jury box, I returned to the courtroom and took notes about how the attorneys used their preemptory challenges to remove jurors. I was so fascinated by their logic—which struck me as being the reverse of what I thought it should have been—that I came back for the entire trial to see if it made any more sense to me.

What’s the cliché, “if you can’t do, teach?” I think writing about an experience you haven’t had works as well so I always wanted to incorporate jury selection in a mystery I wrote. In “What Lucy Heard,” I finally got my chance.

My protagonist, Pat Pirard, is modeled on a real person also named Pat. Both Pats were the Santa Cruz Law Librarian for many years, both carry a 357 Magnum gun and know how to use it, and both are unlicensed private investigators.  I rely on the real Pat for information about some of the tools she uses in her investigations, not to mention her myriad ideas based on cases she’s worked, but it took me until this year to finally ask her if she’d ever done any jury selection. The response I got was not the one I expected. She said, “Oh, yes, and never again.”

“Why, what happened?” I asked.

“It was a murder case. I wanted to meet the accused and decide if I believed his story before I agreed to work on jury selection. When I met him, I believed him, and went to work. I used every idea I had about jury selection—some of my ideas were unconventional—but they worked and he was acquitted. The only problem was that after the trial, I began to have doubts about his innocence. I didn’t sleep for four months worrying about what I had done until the real killer was caught and confessed. Never again. I can’t take that kind of stress.”

Oh, what fun! I was flooded with ideas about what to look for in a potential juror and Pat shared her secrets for her work about who to fight to seat and who to challenge. The real Pat’s experience took place before the incursion of social media into everyone’s life so I added some research using it. Of course I changed details about the murder, the accused, and the motive for murder, but starting “What Lucy Heard“ with jury selection and the impact Pat’s work had on the trial outcome was a joy for me to write.

Let’s have some fun today. Help me finish this story.

The holidays are fast approaching so I thought we should all take a deep breath and kick back with a cooperative mystery for us to solve before everything gets crazy-busy.

 The best story I ever heard took place in the ladies’ bathroom at Mission Ranch in Carmel, a gorgeous property on the Monterey Bay owned by Clint Earwood. The only thing that has kept me from turning it into a fun short story is that the ending remains a mystery.

There’s a small two-stall bathroom just outside the property restaurant which is as quaint and charming as the setting itself so I was happy to head for it when nature called. When I went inside, both stalls were occupied. The women in the stalls obviously knew one another and were engaged in a conversation. I had to wait for one of them to come out before I could attend to business.

I’m a writer which means I eavesdrop, but even if I weren’t, their conversation would have been enticing.

… “that’s when I realized the door had locked with me inside. I tried but I couldn’t open it. I pounded on the door and called for help, but then I looked at my watch and saw it was after five o’clock. I guessed the building was empty except for me in the bathroom. The worst part was that it was a Friday night and probably no one would find me until Monday morning.”

“Weren’t you scared?”

“Not really. I mean I was concerned, but I was in a bathroom so I had water and facilities. I even had half a sandwich in my purse that I saved from lunch and it didn’t have mayo on it so it would be safe to eat whenever I wanted.”

“That’s not much to eat for a weekend.”

“No, it isn’t, and I really didn’t want to spend the weekend locked in a bathroom.”

“Did you try using your phone to call for help?”

“You know how bad I am about keeping that thing charged. It was dead.”

“So, what did you do?”

At that moment I heard a flush. One of the stall doors opened and a tall woman came out and headed to the sink to wash her hands. She smiled at me and nodded her head ever so slightly to indicate I could now use her stall. I went inside and closed the door as their conversation continued.

“Well, I definitely didn’t panic. I noticed there was a small window on an outside wall. I could see it was outside because even though the glass was sort of frosted, I could still make out trees in the distance.”

“Uh huh.”

“I pushed it and the bottom pane slide up.”

“That was lucky.”

“It was. I yelled some more, but it seemed no one heard me. The window opening wasn’t very big and it was at about chest height…anyway, I’m petite and I figured I could just squeeze through it. The only problem was getting up high enough to do that.  I looked around and found a trash can. I upended it and pushed it under the window. Doing that made me up high enough that I could go out of the window, although I’d have to go head first which I didn’t like.”

“Head first?! Where would you land. You might hurt yourself.”

“I looked out. There was a high shrub, a camelia I think, not anything prickly, but a nice soft looking one so I thought I would make a soft landing. The only problem was I was wearing a lovely new outfit—a soft cream-colored cashmere sweater and matching wool pants—and knew I’d ruin my clothing squeezing out the window.”

“What did you do?”

I heard another flush, the second stall door squeak open, and the sink being used again.

“The only thing I could do. I tossed my purse out the window and took off my sweater and pants and tossed them out too, and then I climbed up on the trash can and…”

That’s when the women left the bathroom. What happened next remains a mystery to me. How would you finish the story? There’s a free copy of “What Lucy Heard” in print or for your e-reader for the person who comes up with the best ending. It seems like an appropriate title as a reward since the book is all about hearing something curious, too.

My books meet the criteria for cozy mysteries: body by the second chapter; an amateur sleuth (usually female) who has a police connection like a boyfriend, relative, or friend; gory details, language, and sex implied but takes place off page; tidy ending with justice served; and there’s even a recipe for mysterious chocolate chip cookies associated with one of the series.

The amateur sleuths, a realtor in Regan McHenry Real Estate Mysteries and a downsized law librarian turned self-styled private investigator in PIP Inc. Mysteries do solve the crime before the authorities do and sometimes in spite of the authorities. The stories end with the murderer coming to justice…at least most of the time. Interestingly one of my most popular characters escaped and readers are constantly asking if the character will turn up in a future book, hopeful that they will.

So my books are cozies by definition if sometimes slightly kinky like good British mysteries, my covers and book titles aren’t. No witty play-on-word titles for me. I prefer real estate related titles for the Regan McHenry Real Estate Mysteries or harsh titles like “The Funeral Murder” or “The Corpse’s Secret Life” for the PIP Inc. Mysteries.

Pets are often another element of cozy mysteries and while my protagonists do have pets: cats for Regan McHenry and a dog and cat for Pat Pirard, they are never featured romping across a cover upending a cake or anything like that. Okay, Pat’s ginger cat Lord Peter Wimsey is on a back cover of “Dearly Beloved Departed” feigning innocence in the downing of a Christmas tree, but a reader has to have the book in hand to discover that.

I didn’t consider the idea of a typical cozy cover for the first book I wrote because when I started writing, a series wasn’t in my  mind. I had a good beginning and an ending that I liked and no idea how to connect them, let alone how to follow “The Death Contingency” with other books to make a series. Later I did modify the covers for the first series, but only to add a real estate sign and make them look like they belonged together. They still don’t look like traditional cozies.

I always considered myself a bit of a contrarian and I love British mysteries, besides, I like my edgier covers which work well with my non-cozy titles. Usually, I come up with what the title will be and a basic sketch of what the cover should look like before I start writing, so both title and cover design are an integral part of the story and make perfect sense to the reader by the time they discover who did it.

Nevertheless, I’ve always felt discomfited that I didn’t look like I belonged in the cozy genre and worried readers might skip over my books because they didn’t feel right. All that changed a few months ago when I heard someone say they enjoyed reading cozy-adjacent books. Cozy adjacent. Perfect. Now I have a home and I don’t have to apologize for my covers and titles. I’m free to use a non-cozy title like “What Lucy Heard” for my latest book.

You can see all the covers of my cozy-adjacent books, the other books I’ve written, the cookbook and anthologies I’ve edited, and read the first chapters of the mysteries at my website www.nancylynnjarvis.com or check them out in print and ebook format at Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Nancy-Lynn-Jarvis/e/B002CWX7IQ/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0