Genre Guide — Mystery

The fog of Victorian London. Jazz emanating from a Chicago speakeasy. A Benedictine monk rides a mule toward a monastery high in the Italian hills. If you think all these settings are missing is a dead body, allow me to recommend the genre of historical mystery.

When you walk into a casino, is your first thought Where is the cash room? How many security guys are on the floor? Do they look competent?

You might be the right person to write a heist.

If you love mysteries but would rather eat paste than research police procedure, amateur sleuth is right there waiting for you. And it accommodates all kinds of sleuth: cozy sleuths, hard-boiled sleuths, historical sleuths. If they're curious (nosy) and unlicensed, they're welcome here.

The PI. Classically hard-boiled, male, often drunk, and frequently violent. Living on his wits in a rough, tough town, surrounded by crooked cops, corrupt politicians, and organized crime.

For the foundational stuff, you’ll want to acquaint yourself with Dash Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

Cops, being cops. And you have to get those little details right if you are going to write in this field.

However—and this is where the fun begins—the cops understand that these days. Most police departments of any size will frequently hold “Mystery Writer Events,” often as part of Mystery Writers of America (MWA), so you should look at locating and joining your nearest chapter.

Firstly, and possibly most importantly, the entire canon of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is now in the public domain. That means that you can write any Holmes story you want. (Since Winnie-the-Pooh and Cthulhu are also now public domain characters, I have seen some really weird mashups.) There have been anthology collections of Holmes stories published in the last few years.

For this exercise, you should have a document open where you can write. Now copy the text in the box below and paste it into that document. This will be the blueprint  for your story. You'll fill it in as you go through the exercise and end up with a basic outline for your mystery novel. You may want to post your story outline in the forums to get some ideas from other forum members.

Originally, our meta-genre was called crime, with mystery and thriller being two sub-genres underneath it. Very recently (2020+), thriller has been pulled off and become its own top-level BISAC code. Mystery remains, but caper (the Heist category on Amazon) falls into a strange corner case that you need to be aware of.

Please note that there are a number of famous mystery novels that don't follow this blueprint exactly, and most don't follow it perfectly. If your book still keeps readers guessing with a few pieces missing or added, or with some of them done differently or in a different order, feel free to do your own thing. This blueprint is just so that you can understand the basic format that readers expect from a mystery novel.

Remember to read the articles in the Essentials section. These cover all the essential skills you’ll need as a self-published author. They are not just for beginners either. They go in depth on how to successfully write, publish, and market your own books.