In another thread, the question came up “what is ‘comfort reading’?”  It didn’t occur to me that the idea might not be universal, that some reading is done purely for the pleasure and affirmation of a pleasant visit. I recently finished Margaret Maron’s new novel, The Buzzard Table, which is the 18th entry in her Deborah Knott series of mysteries.  For those unfamiliar with Maron’s work, she writes a solid murder mystery, in the vein commonly referred to as “Cozies.”  Which, I suppose, differentiates them from the harder edged thriller idiom employed by writers like Dennis Lehane or Tess Gerritsen, in which plenty of the details and arcana of death and mayhem are on display along with a much darker examination of the sociopathic or psychopathic criminal mind. Not that the murders in Maron’s work are less gruesome, just that much of the gore is left off-stage or examined with a lighter touch. I scratch my head sometimes at the