The beauty of the shapeshifter mythos is that it fits into just about any genre you might want to play with. It’s a natural for urban fantasy, and it’s surprisingly compatible with certain forms of science fiction, especially space opera. It also, believe it or not, finds a quite happy home in cozy mysteries.
Cozies as they’re called are a strong subgenre of the (usually murder) mystery. If you’ve seen any episodes of Murder, She Wrote, you’ve seen a classic of the genre. There are lots and lots of them streaming on Acorn and BritBox, mining the rich lode of British country murders—Midsomer Murders, Father Brown, and of course that great icon of the genre, Miss Marple. They’re generally based on written examples, and those are legion.
The older woman sleuth, based on Miss Marple or Murder, She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher, is a much-loved variation, but at least as popular—and notably so in crossovers into fantasy—is the younger female protagonist. She’s somewhere in her twenties when the series begins, she lives in a quaint and quirky town where she runs some sort of equally quirky business—bakery, flower shop, antique shop—and she has a quirky collection of friends and family. She just can’t help herself when it comes to finding out what happened to the bodies that keep turning up wherever she goes.
In the classic mode of sleuths from Sherlock Holmes onward, she has a somewhat fraught relationship with local law enforcement. There’s usually a hunky guy in the picture, with whom she may butt heads; he’ll come to her rescue, or she’ll come to his, depending on the circumstances. She can be a terrible ditz, and her flaws are legion, but she always wins in the end. That’s the heart of the fantasy.
It’s a natural progression from mainstream mystery to fantasy-mystery, and shifters make it just plain fun. Alyssa Day knows exactly how to make it work. Her protagonist, Tess Callahan, is a native of the tiny town of Dead End, Florida. Just an hour’s drive from the theme parks of Orlando, it’s an enclave of the fantastical with a mixed population of humans and supernaturals. There are vampires, of course. Witches. And a very hunky tiger shifter who shows up to claim his half of the pawn shop Tess inherited from her late employer.
That’s the initial mystery, which takes a while to solve: who shot Jeremiah and dumped him in back of the pawn shop, leaving Tess to pick up the pieces. The sheriff is incompetent and has done nothing to solve the crime. He blames it on a drifter and closes the case.
Jeremiah’s nephew Jack has been off being a hero, fighting vampires and running missions for the rulers of Atlantis (yes, Atlantis). Now he’s back and he’s about to set up shop as a private eye. Tiger’s Eye Investigations, of course.
It’s not clear in the first two volumes of the series how a were-Bengal tiger managed to turn up in the swamps of central Florida. It is clear that Jack was has been shifting since he was quite young, and that he probably was born that way. Now, in adulthood, he’s comfortable with both sides of what he is. It’s not a curse at all; it’s a gift, and he embraces every aspect of it.
In the first volume, Dead Eye, we find out what really happened to Jeremiah. Tess and Jack have other murders to solve as well, and a world to save. There’s a coven of witches, a would-be sacrifice, and an escalating series of family dramas.
Jack isn’t the only supernaturally gifted person in Tess’s world. Tess herself has a peculiar and frightening gift. If she touches someone, or someone touches her, she sees, in mind-ripping detail, how they’re going to die. The first contact is a sort of immunization; after that, she can touch the person without consequences.
Tess has learned to keep a careful distance from anyone outside of immediate friends and family. Her hairdresser wears gloves. The aunt and uncle who raised her, and her best friend, have made it into the hug zone. Jack…well. That’s a story in itself.
Jack is a lovely, and dare I say cozy, example of a tiger shifter. He’s huge, gorgeous, and quite willing to rip a bad guy’s arm off in defense of the weak, the helpless, and/or Tess. He requires massive amounts of provender in both forms. In human form he has exceptional hearing and notable charisma. As a tiger, he doesn’t quite think like his human self, but he’s safe for friends and allies to be around. Tess isn’t at all afraid of him, though she has a healthy respect for fangs, claws, and tiger strength.
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A Season of Monstrous Conceptions
As with shifters in other writers’ universes, Jack has the ability to heal wounds, even deadly ones, through the shift. This served him well during his decade in special forces. It gives him a definite advantage against the various Big Bads who turn up in or around his old home town.
A tiger private eye with a background in dark-ops combat missions is just the thing for a town as unusual as Dead End. He’s a great foil for Tess, with her harrowing visions and her mixed-up, somewhat tragic family history. Parents dead when she was small, raised by aunt and uncle, never made it to college after the visions hit when she turned eighteen. She’s broadly educated even so, an avid reader and an expert in fantastical films and TV.
Jack has the world-traveler thing down, as well as the apex-predator thing. Tess is an authority on all things, and people, in Dead End. Together, as the saying goes, they fight crime.
It’s a lot of fun, and it’s deftly done. I’ll be reading the whole series, now I’ve got it started.
Judith Tarr is a lifelong horse person. She supports her habit by writing works of fantasy and science fiction as well as historical novels, many of which have been published as ebooks. She’s written a primer for writers who want to write about horses: Writing Horses: The Fine Art of Getting It Right. She lives near Tucson, Arizona with a herd of Lipizzans, a clowder of cats, and a blue-eyed dog.
