Mystery and crime writing across the subgenres, from cozy to procedural to comic, and what each one demands of plot, pace, and research.
Crime FictionRaymond Chandler was an oil company vice president until he was fired for drinking at forty-four. He taught himself to write for the pulps, published The Big Sleep at fifty, and gave American crime fiction the voice it still borrows.
Fiction WritingA good plot twist is a surprise the reader could have seen coming and didn't. How to plant small hints, misdirect, avoid the twists that fail, and test yours with beta readers.
1970sThe Pyx (1973) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A Canadian film in which a woman falls from a Montreal balcony and the investigation runs backward through her last days, intercut, with Karen Black singing her own…
2020sAmsterdam (2022) rates 4 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. David O. Russell assembled one of the largest casts of the decade to tell a true story about a 1933 plot against the American government, and buried it under…
2000sThe Matrix sequels rate 5 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Shot back to back and released six months apart, they answer questions the first film was stronger for leaving open, and they contain two of the best action…
1970sKlute (1971) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The film is called Klute and it is not about Klute. Jane Fonda won the Academy Award for a performance built out of therapy sessions and a tape recorder,…
2010sGone Girl (2014) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Gillian Flynn adapted her own novel and took a hammer to her own third act. Fincher shot it mostly in one small Missouri town for sixty-one million dollars,…
1960sL'Avventura (1960) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A woman vanishes on a yacht trip and the film loses interest in finding her. Jeered at Cannes, given a jury prize by the same festival, and on best-of…
1970sDeath on the Nile (1978) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Christie on a paddle steamer with a closed passenger list and a cast of stars. The correct way to film a detective novel, and the only…
2020sGlass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A tech billionaire's private island weekend where the solution is that the clever man has nothing inside. Better as satire than as a puzzle.
Character DevelopmentConan Doyle built the detective story into its permanent shape, killed his own creation because he resented him, was forced by public pressure to bring him back, and spent his later years defending claims his detective would have dismantled in…
MysteryUnlikely Hero started with a single image, a nuclear bomb near Los Angeles, and became a two-character story about a criminal, a cop, and one impossible choice. Here is how it was built.
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