A glance at any best-seller list will tell you how popular mystery, crime, and suspense stories are with readers. Most of you will find this perfectly understandable! There's nothing like the thrill of the chase or the intellectual challenge of trying to guess 'whodunit' or 'whydunit' before the sleuth.

If you're the writer, this presents you with a challenge. You have to juggle a lot of balls at once. You need to:

come up with an intriguing mystery (or an edge-of-the-seat thriller) that will keep readers up long past bedtime
keep your sleuth busy tracking down the perpetrator
weave in and bring to life other significant characters
leave a trail of not-too-obvious clues if it's a mystery (trying to pull the wool over the reader's eyes) or building suspense with the hero and the Bad Guy on a collision course (if the reader knows who the villain is!)
walk in the shoes of the villain, ensuring that he is a worthy opponent.

Oh, and did I mention that you have to write tight scenes, build the suspense, create believable conflict, and choose the correct viewpoint as well? Not to mention how to handle research...

Good thing, then, that this is all covered in The Busy Writer's Tips on Writing Mystery, Crime & Suspense!

Readers also get a bonus PDF with resources for Mystery/Crime Writers and a collection of all the reference articles mentioned in the book.

In the words of Kathryn Fox, internationally acclaimed author of medical thrillers (Cold Grave and five others):

"I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Marg McAlister's books to any aspiring or accomplished writers. She shares priceless insights into structure, characters, setting, action, suspense and importantly, emotional punch. I'm working on my eighth and ninth books, and I still go back to Marg's books when writing. I have no doubt that following Marg's advice saves time, energy and rewrites. A necessity in any crime writer's library!"

Sign up now to get the most out of Books2Read

Discover something great at Books2Read.

Thanks for signing up for Books2Read notifications!