I turned to “cosy” crime after finishing the fourth gritty police procedural in my series of detective novels set in Norfolk.

At this stage in my fiction writing, I wanted to have more fun and less gore. Having read Richard Osman – who appears to have cornered the market in this subgenre of crime fiction – and studied the tricks of the trade of other “cosy” crime authors, I decided to take the plunge.

It struck me that the experience of my French sister in law, a longtime local councillor who made a living from a smallholding in deepest Brittany, had the potential to be turned into a fictional murderous romp. Set in a small community and focusing on the relationship between Bretons and Britons, there were all the elements for a “cosy” series, it seemed to me. And so amateur sleuths Jennifer and Pippa made their appearance in the fictional village of Louennec.

However, as my publisher can attest, I soon fell foul of the “cosy” conventions, in which murders – while they can be plentiful – are almost secondary to the plot. They’re never of the grisly kind that I’d described in my earlier novels. And they definitely don’t involve animals.

My worst offence was to kill off a dog. I should say that the Collie cross belonging to one of the characters in The Brittany Murders was extremely annoying because he kept on trying to round up visitors. When discussing an early draft with my editor, she gently pointed out that whenever a dog, or a pet, died in a cosy mystery, the publisher received letters of protest from readers. So Captain the Collie had to be resuscitated and the novel restructured around him. (I’m reminded of distressed listeners’ protests to the BBC in August 2023 when a dog was put down by a vet in an episode of The Archers).

But in that same draft I’m afraid to say that I was a repeat offender, because a white-furred rabbit named Lady Gaga on the smallholding was going to be slaughtered. Needless to say, the rabbit escaped the chop in the final version and has so far survived in the first two books of my Brittany murders series, although her babies quietly disappear offstage every so often.

Another aspect of everyday life on the farm had to be toned down for mentioning “too much blood” in a weasel attack on a henhouse. Then there was the adopted daughter of two of the main characters, who reacted to being bullied at school by self-harming. This was deemed “too dark” and disappeared altogether.

Meanwhile though, I was happy that another “cosy” convention involves sex, or the lack of it, because as every writer knows, describing sex is notoriously difficult. In a “cosy” mystery, sexual activity is hinted at, rather than watched from the bottom of the bed.

So there are some of the pitfalls of genre hopping. It can be a steep learning curve, as I discovered myself, but I hope you’ll bear with me and follow me down this new “cosy” track. The next book in my series of Brittany novels, Murder at the Château, is out on June 6, 2024.