I just finished reading Murder at an Irish Wedding, the second in the Village Mystery series by Carlene O’Connor. I enjoyed it almost as much as I did the first book. The occurrence of a celebrity wedding taking place in the village at Castle Kilbane gives the opportunity for a whole new cast of suspects in the death of the best man, with exciting red herrings. But…I’m wondering if O’Connor knows the “rules” for cozy mysteries.

See, although there are other common characteristics (small town setting, quirky cast, violence taking place off the page), the one thing central to them is that the person who is solving the murders is doing so by accident, or because she is nosy and gains access to information she shouldn’t have, or she thinks of it as a hobby. So with a cozy you get, not a detective, private or otherwise, as your protagonist, but an amateur—a gardener, a yoga instructor, a baker, a priest; you get Jessica Fletcher!

But in the synopsis for the third book in this series, O’Connor has revealed (not really a spoiler, it’s in the Goodreads summary) that Siobhán O’Sullivan, eldest of six siblings, manager of Naomi’s Bistro in Kilbane, County Cork, Ireland, and the solver of two murders, is about to become part of Garda Síochána, the Irish police force.

So…does this series remain categorized as cozy?