Hodder lands new cosy crime series from Mosse

Hodder & Stoughton has acquired four books in a new cosy crime series by Greg Mosse. 

Senior commissioning editor Beth Wickington acquired world English-language rights in the Maisie Cooper mystery series from Luigi Bonomi at LBA Books. 

The first in the series, Murder at Church Lodge, publishes as a paperback original in July, followed by Murder at Bunting Manor in November 2023. Books three and four will publish in 2024. 

The synopsis reads: “The Maisie Cooper mystery series is set in the Sussex countryside in the ’70s, where the villages are picturesque but secrets and murders abound. In Murder at Church Lodge, Maisie Cooper returns to her childhood home to visit the brother she hasn’t seen in years but when she arrives, she discovers he’s been murdered. Determined not to leave all the investigating up to the police—and trying not to be distracted by the handsome lead detective—Maisie does some digging of her own and starts to uncover a sinister mystery at the heart of the perfect village. And when another death rocks the community, Maisie must race to find the clues and solve the case before the killer strikes again.”

Wickington described the series as a “fresh take on Midsomer Murders with a dynamic and unexpected heroine”. Bonomi praised the “mastery" of the prose and characterisation. 

Mosse said: “The first crime novel I ever read was Ngaio Marsh’s Clutch of Constables (HarperCollins), set on a meandering, looping canal voyage with a tight-knit cast of characters and a set of plausible, interconnected reasons for committing murder. I loved it and, since then, I have read hundreds of classical whodunnits. So, when Hodder’s Beth Wickington snapped up my Maisie Cooper quartet, beginning with Murder at Church Lodge, I was over the moon. Beth has been the most wonderful editor, with exceptional wisdom and creative insight. My hero, Maisie Cooper, is a character very close to my heart—enterprising and athletic, ‘noticing’ like Marple, reflective like Poirot, relentless like Maigret.”

Mosse, who calls himself an "encourager of writers", is the husband of international bestselling author Kate Mosse. He has lived and worked in Paris, New York, Los Angeles and Madrid as an interpreter and translator, but grew up in rural south-west Sussex. In 2014, he founded the Criterion New Writing playwriting programme and has produced more than 25 of his own plays and musicals. His previous novel, The Coming Darkness, was published by Moonflower Publishing in 2022.