A Guide to Writing a Murder Mystery Readers Will Love

First, you need some sheep, about 15 different types of tartan (preferably clashing), and an atrocious Scottish accent.

Just us? Okay, never mind. Ignore that bit.

Anyone who spent a childhood watching Mystery on PBS on Sunday nights or set the VCR for Murder She Wrote has a good idea of the classic elements of the murder mystery: no, you don’t have to be Belgian or own a knitting bag or live in a small English village with a conveniently situated vicarage. Although a scone or two never hurts. Also a nice cup of tea. But we digress.

(My 6-Point Character-Building Process.)

Once you boil away the atmospherics, what you’re left with are a handful of core elements that can be applied to just about any place in any time period.

1. It helps to have a suitably loathsome victim. 

You don’t want anyone having pangs of conscience over the character’s death. You want the sort of out and out rotter that might possibly have been bludgeoned—with good reason—by just about anyone. 

Sure, you can have a villain who seems charming and beloved, but half the fun is revealing the monster behind the mask. Team W’s latest book began with the concept of having someone so loathed, he’d be murdered multiple different ways.

Okay, you’ve got your victim and the 15 people lining up to dispose of him? Now all you need is….

2. A closed environment, in which your sleuth can bustle about collecting suspects. 

The classic example of this is an island, preferably an island cut off from the mainland by weather. (Britain is particularly good about providing suitably problematic weather; just ask anyone who’s lived there between the months of October and April.) An isolated country house with the WiFi disconnected will also do, although the ultimate flex is an isolated country house on an island. 

Confession: Team W couldn’t resist. We went for the deluxe package of isolated castle on isolated island cut off by weather. 

But anywhere can be a closed environment, even a busy apartment building in the heart of New York or a resort in the Bahamas at the high season. It’s really all about keeping your roster of suspects in reasonable bounds.

3. Speaking of that roster of suspects…. It’s a tricky balance. 

You need enough dodgy side characters to present a suitable challenge to your reader, but not so many that your reader is scratching his head and paging back, muttering, “Who was that again?” as we suddenly re-encounter on page 226 someone last mentioned on page 11. 

It’s not like the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch; there’s no magic number you must count. The more distinct and well-rounded your side characters are, the more vivid they’ll be, and the easier it is for your reader to keep them all sorted. 

Word to the wise: Do not give anyone similar sounding names. If you’ve got a Rupert and a Robert and a Jane and a Joan, the sound of books hitting the wall will echo through the halls of Goodreads.

4. As you’re pointing the finger of suspicion, misdirection is fair, but concealment is not. 

All clues must be shared with the reader, even if you’re busy whispering, “Never mind that little fabric scrap behind the curtain” while flashing daggers at your reader in an attempt to make him look away from the fabric scrap. 

In 1929, Ronald Knox, a founding member of the legendary Detection Club, propounded a list of 10 rules for the writing of detective fiction, of which the most quoted one is: “The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.” 

In other words, fair play is key. No producing unknown twins (another of Knox’s rules), no hiding key evidence until the last chapter. That’s not just unfair; it’s lazy writing.

5. Really, don’t be lazy. 

The divine Dorothy Sayers of hallowed Harriet Vane memory wrote the oath for the Detection Club, in which the members pledged that their detectives would “well and truly detect the crimes presented to them using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence, or Act of God.” 

Let’s be honest here: If we pulled out all the books on the shelves that included feminine intuition (or male intuition), coincidence, jiggery pokery, or the odd deus ex machina, we’d have very bare bookshelves indeed. The key is to make sure these make sense in the context of the plot. Some coincidences are more coincidental than others and some jiggery more pokery. 

When our sleuths have bursts of intuition, it’s grounded in their backgrounds and experiences. And when our dea ex machina appears, it might be out of the blue sky, but not out of the blue—you’ve been hearing about this character for the whole book.

6. Keep your characters in character. 

Want to peel off layers like excess sweaters in April? Sure. Go for it. Many people aren’t quite what they seem…. (Insert knowing laughter here.) But there’s a big difference between gradually revealing someone’s true nature and contorting a character into uncharacteristic behavior for the sake of the plot. 

Yes, Nancy Drew will go down that creepy old stair. She always does. But would Poirot? Probably not, at least not until he made Hastings dust off the cobwebs for him. Little gray cells are one thing; little gray dust bunnies quite another. 

If your character is going to do something out of character, you’d better give him or her a darned good reason and make it part of their character development.

7. Ah, character development. 

One member of Team W once heard an author at a conference (both to remain nameless) slightingly refer to mystery novels as “cookie cutter books,” bland exercises in puzzle solving in which no real character development occurred. This, as any mystery reader knows, is palpably false. (If you doubt us, read Gaudy Night. Go on. We dare you.) 

The best mystery novels are a wonderful balance between heart and head, an intellectual exercise and an exploration of all the complexities of human nature. Don’t skimp on the complexities. Puzzles are fun, but it’s the people who keep us coming back for re-reads.

8. Do not injure anything small and fuzzy. 

Or large and fuzzy. Except for that guy who refuses to shave; he’s positively begging to be shoved off a parapet. It’s perfectly all right to bump off any number of house party guests, but leave the sheepdog alone. We’re not entirely without conscience. 

Who knows? That sheepdog—or that sheep— might even play a heroic role in the plot, as our furry friends do in The Author’s Guide to Murder.

9. Last but not least, have fun. 

Readers can tell when you’re phoning it in. If you’re not enjoying yourself, your reader probably won’t either. 

Recently, there have been a spate of madcap mysteries, including Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series, Robert Thorogood’s Marlow Murders, Elly Griffiths’s Harbinder Kaur books, and Deanna Raybourn’s Killers of a Certain Age. What makes these books stand out is the sheer glee that vibrates through the pages.

Just because there’s a body in the library doesn’t mean we can’t have a good laugh….

Wait, is that a storm drawing in and the wifi going out? Excuse me, we need to put on our plaid and go check out that strange noise on the battlements. We’ll be back in a moment….

Or will we?

Check out Team W’s The Author’s Guide to Murder here:

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