Writing Detective Mysteries

Cyrus Shelton has spent the last twenty-three years locked up in the Huntsville State Penitentiary with only one thing on his mind - revenge on the arresting detective, Frank Windom, and his lousy defense attorney, Jonell Simone. Now paroled and having learned Windom had the nerve to die, he sets his sights on Windom's former partner, Jack West.

A brutal murder and the kidnapping of a two-year old boy disrupt the return of Milton PD Detective Steve Marks from his Florida vacation. A homeless man has been savagely murdered behind the Trips Aces Casino and Henry Burnett, the son of the owner of the Burnett Furniture empire, has been kidnapped. Clues in both cases are scarce. As more homeless men become victims of the murderer dubbed The Shadow, and there is nothing pointing to little Henry's return, the pressure on Marks and his young partner, Anders Hedberg, mounts. Milton's mayor wants fast action in both cases while the Burnett ...

"Beneath a Buried House is a wonderful book, full of twists and turns and surprises." –Crime-Spree Magazine Things aren't always what they seem. Tulsa Police Detective, Kenny Elliot's quest to uncover the truth behind the death of a transient, makes him a target—from whom or what, he isn't sure. When he brushes the dirt from the surface of an apparent John Doe overdose case, he finds a labyrinth of misdirection and deception, and a trail, which leads him to an encounter with an aberration in human nature, the likes of which he's not prepared to deal with. Drawing on his strength of ...

Most of us come into this world with an inborn need for religion, a higher power to believe in. However, when fear and misunderstanding are the driving forces behind that desire, the result is rarely a good thing. Eight years ago, Laura Bradford mysteriously disappeared off campus, causing quite a disturbance in the lives of Kenny Elliot and Gerald Reynolds, a journalism student with a fascination with Mesoamerican artifacts. When Gerald calls unexpectedly to tell Elliot he’s recently seen Laura then sets up a meeting only to be a no-show, Elliot tracks him down to get some answers. ...

Cursed by a Native American brave, the Bennet House is one of the most haunted locations in Niagara Falls. This is where Emlyn Goode and all but one member of her writers’ group hunt for ghosts on Halloween. What they find in the house, isn’t a ghost, though. It’s the body of Edward Bennet, the missing group member. A few days earlier, Edward had shown Emlyn a document he’d found in the Bennet House, and told her it would anger people if made public. When Edward is found, the document is missing. Emlyn is certain that document will identify Edward’s killer, but her search for it ...

"Where is my son?" Asher's mother screamed as they loaded her husband's body into the ambulance. Five miles up the trail, Asher was going deeper into the wilderness. His compulsive need for routine, hike to the lake at the same time on the same trail with the same gear, is now amplified by his father's last wish, to find their friend and deliver supplies. In Lincoln, Wyoming, fourteen-year-old Caleb is stunned when the sheriff asks him to urgently bring search dog "Boo" to find Asher. When they find Asher near the lake, the adventure is just beginning.

The discovery of a dead body is nothing new for Detective Simon Grave, but when the body and the murderer are both invisible, well, that's another matter entirely, even in the futuristic town of Crab Cove. The question is whether he and his human and android team are up for the challenge, which also remains to be seen. Making his job even more difficult is the sudden retirement of Captain Henry Morgan, who taps Grave as acting chief.

In the first major history of crime fiction in 50 years, The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators traces the evolution of the genre from the 18th century to the present, offering brand-new perspective on the world’s most popular form of fiction.

What appears to be an easy assignment investigating a plane crash becomes a battle of wits for Jim McCleland and Colin Haltwhistle. Throw in a murder and a beautiful investigator with her own agenda, and the case turns out to be anything but straightforward. As Haltwhistle tries to piece the mystery together, McCleland goes undercover where he must face a ruthless criminal and protect the woman he has fallen for from their nemesis' wrath. But danger lurks behind every blind corner for them all. With the unlikely pairing of McCleland, a jet pilot, and Haltwhistle, a military investigator, ...

Their new life together seems on track: she is happily involved with LA's higher echelon art community while he has returned to hosting his TV interviews of leading artists. However, Nicole's worst fears are confirmed when her ex-husband goes missing in China, as a mysterious disease is killing thousands, when she and lover James are being stalked by a series of mysterious Ninja's. Girlfriend Merra joins in to unraveling the reasons behind the quirky attacks as the trio has no choice but to throw caution to the wind, follow their instincts and go rogue as everything goes off kilter. In this...

Crafting a killer cozy can be perilous. Fans of the genre expect authors to forego explicit gore and violence while at the same time creating a mind-boggling murder mystery with pulse-pounding tension and a twisty plot. But how is a writer supposed to satisfy such disparate demands? How to Craft a Killer Cozy Mystery tackles this exact problem by providing an actionable roadmap for starting (and completing!) a manuscript that will leave readers dying for more. Packed with charts and questionnaires designed to streamline the writing process, this comprehensive step-by-step guide will help ...

You just came up with a great story for a mystery/crime novel, but there's a problem: You don't know how to plant clues in your story. And after hours upon hours of Googling "how to hide clues in a detective novel", your results end up as zilch, zero, nada!

With her books sporting other people’s names, ghostwriter Jake O’Hara works behind the scenes. But she never expected a séance at a New York apartment to be part of her job. Jake had signed on as a ghostwriter, secretly writing for a grande dame of mystery fiction whose talent died before she did. The author’s East Side residence was impressive. But her entourage—from a Mrs. Danvers-like housekeeper to a lurking hypnotherapist—was creepy. Still, it was all in a day’s work, until a killer started going after ghostwriters, and Jake suspected she was chillingly close to the ...

A #1 Amazon Best Seller Mystery Writing in a Nutshell Edgar Allan Poe Award Winner John McAleer & Andrew McAleer Edgar Allan Poe Award winner, Pulitzer Prize nominee, and best-selling author John McAleer, Ph.D. (Harvard), taught crime fiction at Boston College for nearly four decades, nurturing authors like George V. Higgins (The Friends of Eddie Coyle), Chuck Hogan (The Town), Margaret McLean (Whitey on Trial), Edward Hannibal (Blood Feud), James Devlin (Elmore Leonard), James F. Murphy, Jr. (Quonset) and Ted Murphy (the Belltown mysteries). Now, in Mystery Writing in a Nutshell, he and ...

“Suspenseful and mysterious with humor woven throughout!” –Christine Laforet, author of the Being Bree series A trio of eighth graders are invited to a mysterious school club only to have the faculty sponsor angrily insist it will never be an active club again. Intrigued, Abby, Brett, and Maxine begin investigating and quickly find themselves pulled into an adventure and a mystery unlike anything they could have imagined. Hidden clubhouses, a sentient computer program, and a man who vanishes from sight are just the beginning. In over their heads, struggling to work together and master...

A grumpy author. A fatal book signing. And a witchy amateur sleuth. Magical bookshop owner, Mercy Brew, agrees to host a book signing for a romance writer with more enemies than fans. But when the event takes a murderous turn, Mercy’s dreams of a successful grand reopening crumble like an ancient tome. Now Mercy and her intrepid friends must solve the mystery faster than the killer can write a sequel. And as the plot thickens, the suspects pile up higher than a stack of paperbacks, and a murky chapter in the author’s past is revealed. Amidst swirling rumors and a search for clues, Mercy...

In this crime drama, detective Varg Veum's adventures take him into the world of privileged teenage girls who have been drawn into drugs and prostitution. The situation worsens when the local judge is found dead in a luxury hotel, clad only in women's lingerie. Called in by anxious parents to look for a missing daughter and explain the judge's death, Varg is led deep into Bergen's criminal underworld.

Amanda Lester wouldn't be caught dead going into the family business. Her ancestor, Sherlock Holmes's colleague Inspector G. Lestrade, is a twit. Nevertheless her parents refuse to see his flaws, and she's going to a secret English school for the descendants of famous detectives whether she likes it or not. When Amanda arrives at the dreaded school, she considers running away - until she and her new friends discover blood and weird pink substances in odd places.

Manhattan ghostwriter Jake O’Hara has been meaning to get her so-called love life—and her career—back on track. But lately, it hasn’t been easy. Especially now that her soon-to-be-married mother has witnessed a murder—in a confessional, no less. Shortly after Maura O’Hara arrived at the church, Father Billy Blake—controversy-plagued priest, anti-death penalty activist, and spiritual advisor to a notorious hit man—was shot dead. It’s no secret that Father Blake had a number of enemies—from a scheming drug lord to a dangerous clan on death row. Coming up with a list of ...

A surprise female visitor arrives by helicopter to convince a struggling PI, Birdie Kelley, to find the woman's former husband, a coal baron who went looking for the fountain of youth. The search takes them to Hollywood, CA, where the two are tossed into a caldron fueled by a vengeful CIA agent and a rogue ex-Nazi. In the process, Birdie finds a lab that suspends dead bodies in cold storage for the future, intending to revive aging and dying Nazi war criminals hiding in South America. As Birdie digs deeper, she discovers that her adversary, Shelley, a beautiful South American, carries a ...