Salon | The female dick:
salon.com > Books Oct. 29, 1999
In the early '80s, when women began to refashion the hard-boiled detective novel using female private eyes... The femme fatale of the tradition -- you know, the blond with the diamonds in her eyes and the pearl-handled revolver in the top of her stocking. Chandler and Hammett believed in her absolutely. She usually turns out to be the murderer. Even if she doesn't, she is corrupt, vile, and enthralling. It is in her persona that the form's ambivalence toward evil is lodged, and this ambivalence still gives the form its unshakable power.
Sara Paretsky, one of the earliest and most successful of the refashioners, went looking for a substitute and found a similar inner tension in class anger. ...
Sue Grafton, another early refashioner, has simply shorn the detective novel of anything that doesn't suit a female heroine, and as a result there is something limited about her mysteries. hmm something cozy, maybe.* Millhone's -- and Grafton's -- concerns are not large. But heroine and writer share an underlying decency yeah, and I think their commercial success tells us good things about our society. We really do like to imagine a wiseacre woman doing a competent job in an uncluttered fashion.
In the first several pages of "Lost Daughters," the latest Micky Knight mystery, J.M. Redmann uses the words "love" and "lover" a dozen times. Knight is in a very supportive lesbian relationship, as are most of her friends. ... Redmann's whole reconception is sweet in its own way. Early on she describes sharing things, from spices to drills, with a gay male couple across the street: "Contrary to conventional wisdom, they had the drill and we had the spices." It's as if Micky is so butch she doesn't have to prove herself the way her heterosexual compeers do. (She doesn't wear you out by describing her exercise routine, for instance.) yeah both Millhone and Warshawski go running all the time.

* huh I did not realize 'cozy' was a term used for a subgenre! after typing that comment above -- cozy seeming an improvement on 'homey' which I told dad the kinsey books were, as opposed to cornwall's thirdperson (and gory) thriller -- came across this: Sue Grafton - booksnbytes.com/authors: "Not quite cozies, the Grafton books are generally good reads."

so... google first hit: Cozies -- Definition of Cozies for Mystery Writers: Cozies are mystery novels that feature very little violence, aside for the murder, and few gory details. Agatha Christie's Jane Marple novels typify the subgenre. Hard-boiled detective novels are the opposite of the cozy. huh.

cozy: Definition, synonyms and more from Answers.com:
# Snug, comfortable, and warm. # Marked by friendly intimacy. # informal. Marked by close association for devious purposes: a cozy agreement with the competition. [Probably of Scandinavian origin.]