The best cozy mysteries for music and math nerds

I know half of you clicked on my list just to see if The Westing Game was on it. If we’re looking for cozy-nerdy-mathy classics, it’s hard to outdo Ellen Raskin’s masterpiece.

I know she wrote it for youngish adults, but let’s be honest—I re-read this book at least once a year, finding new layers of meaning in sentences I memorized in sixth grade. If you like music, lyrics, puzzles, and personal finance, The Westing Game is a great place to start no matter how old you are.

One of these days I’ll come up with a chess game that matches the moves we see on the board.

This book is essentially The Westing Game meets Black Mirror—and although The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle contains more blood than you might expect in a typical cozy, there’s enough math, mystery, and time-travel mechanics to keep even the most squeamish nerds reading.

Like most stories that mess around with time, you’re probably going to want to read this one twice—because the pieces that don’t fit during your first read will make a lot more sense during the second. There’s also a chess game, although the way the pieces move after the game (or is it before?) is more important.

Imagine a tiny village in Quebec, hidden from both maps and memories, visible only to those who cannot fit in anywhere else.

Imagine the artists, poets, doctors, philosophers, musicians, artisans, and murderers who might gather there—and then imagine the man from Montréal who is tasked, again and again, with uncovering their crimes. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, fallen from grace for reasons of his own, traveling one more time to a secret village of geniuses—or, perhaps, a village of secret geniuses.

Either way, he’ll have to outsmart at least one of them before they kill again.

If you’re reading this list, you probably already know who Phryne Fisher is—but you might not have taken the time to read the novels that inspired the cult classic television series and its crowdfunded feature film.

Kerry Greenwood’s books, believe it or not, are even nerdier than the TV show. If you don’t have a working knowledge of publishing houses, orchestra halls, and circus tents—not to mention anatomy, theology, mathematics, and the fundamentals of good home cooking—you’ll want to read these books with a search engine by your side.

You’ll also want to get yourself a box of Clever Chocolates, so you can reward yourself the same way Phryne rewards her adopted daughters Jane and Ruth every time they correctly solve a puzzle. 

You weren’t expecting me to recommend a Leverage tie-in novel, were you?

From my perspective, a book based on a television series is just as valid as a television series based on a book—and if you don’t share the same view, you might need to adjust one of your mirrors. I love The Con Job because takes the nerdy, cozy world of Leverage and places it in San Diego Comic-Con, giving the characters a real-world experience that many of us will have experienced ourselves.

There’s not a lot of music in this one, which may disappoint those of us who watched Leverage for the Rimsky-Korsakov, but there’s plenty of math and physics and a few inside jokes. It’s a comfort read, in more ways than one—which is probably why I keep reading it.