Larry Beinhart - How to Write a Mystery

More praise for
HOW TO WRITE A MYSTERY

Larry Beinhart is a righteous Oxford Don. In this book is a post, post, post graduate course in writing great crime fiction. Anyone aspiring to write has to bring a native intelligence and talent to the placebut beyond that they have got to know the fundamental mystery writing formLarry The Don Beinhart elucidates that form with great wit, precision and bedrock sensibility.

James Ellroy

Larry Beinhart is a wonderful writer. When he gives advice on writing mysteries, people would do well to listen.

Sharyn McCrumb
New York Times bestselling author of She Walks These Hills

Larry Beinhart is a fine teacher, as his students at Oxford know. He is also a fine mystery writer, as his many happy readers know. Now hes combined his talents in a book that teaches you how to write the mystery. Whether you want to learn or just to read for pleasure, have I got a book for you.

Donald Westlake

How to Write a Mystery is an in-depth study of classical story structure and storytelling by one of the masters of the craft. Perceptive, detailed, and thorough, it belongs on every writers bookshelf. If you want to write mystery novels and you want a leg up on everybody else, start here. I wish Id had this book twenty years ago.

Steven Womack
Edgar Award-winning author of Chain of Fools

For the professional writer, How to Write a Mystery is peppered with Oh yeahs, and Thats rights! and Ive always wondered about thats. Anyone who enjoys thinking and talking about the process is in for a real treat. Its sort of like hoisting a few with an old friend who happens to be a writer you admire.

Justin Scott
Bestselling author of the The Ship Killer and Normandie Triangle

Few people understand more intimately how to write a mystery novel than Larry Beinhart. An Edgar Award-winning and wonderful writer, Beinhart now brings us this terrifically readable book, How to Write a Mystery. Now readers can see for themselves why other writers consider Beinhart to be top of the game.

Bob Leuci
Author of Fence Jumpers

American Hero

Foreign Exchange

No One Rides for Free

You Get What You Pay For

Copyright 1996 by Larry Beinhart
Cartoons copyright 1996 by Debra Solomon

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Friends of New Mystery: Excerpts by Leslie Alan Horvitz from Reviews, New Mystery, Spring 1995, Vol. III, No. 2. Copyright 1995 Reprinted by permission of Friends of New Mystery

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.: Excerpts from The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. Copyright 1939 by Raymond Chandler and renewed 1967 by Helga Greene, Executrix of the Estate of Raymond Chandler. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A Knopf, Inc.

The New York Times: Excerpt from Books of The Times: Mysteries that Reveal More than Just Whodunit by Herbert Mitgang, August 7, 1992. Copyright 1992 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission of The New York Times.

Oxford University Press: Excerpts from Concise Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry by Michael Gelder, Dennis Gath, and Richard Mayou, 1994 Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.

Pocket Books and Lantz-Harris Literary Agency: Excerpt from Alibi for an Actress by Gillian B Farrell Copyright 1992 by Gillian B Farrell. Reprinted by permission of Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, and Lantz-Harris Literary Agency

The Putnam Publishing Group: Excerpts from The Godfather by Mario Puzo
Copyright 1969 by Mario Puzo. Reprinted by permission of The Putnam Publishing Group

The Putnam Publishing Group and John Johnson (Authors Agent) Limited: Excerpts from Reflex by Dick Francis, published by Putnam and Michael Joseph, London Copyright 1980 by Dick Francis Reprinted by permission of The Putnam Publishing Group and John Johnson Limited.

http://www.randomhouse.com

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Beinhart, Larry
How to write a mystery / Larry Beinhart.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-77605-1
1. Detective and mystery storiesAuthorship. I. Title.
PN3377.5.D4B397 1996
808 3872dc20 96-3516

v3.1

This is dedicated to
Betty Glass (nee Loss)
and Jen Mendelsohn (nee Beinhart),
one my mothers sister,
the other my fathers sister.
Strong, intelligent, articulate, and literate
women of great character.

First, a general nod of gratitude and respect to all the mystery, crime, and thriller writers that I read growing up and continue to read and expect to read every time I get on an airplane, need a mental vacation, or want a second-hand thrill or a trip to someplace thats a little too far to go at the moment. There are some really, really great writers out there.

Specifically, I need to thank Joy Harris for selling it. Clare Ferraro for buying it. Cathy Repetti for making remarkably useful comments considering she is an editor. Also Joe Brady, J. Madison Davies, Justin Scott, Steve Womack, John DeSantis, Tim Binyon, Gillian Farrell, all of whom read earlier drafts and were kind enough to point out exactly how lacking they were. This version is vastly improved by their vile, unrelenting, virtually unendurable honesty. I thank them with more sincerity than I could ever speak with a straight face.

Gallagher Gray, Jeff Abbott, Steve Womack, Bill Bernhardt, Gillian Farrell, and Justin Scott were kind enough to share their writing ideas and experiences with me and allow me to use their opinions.

Genre is a gaudy, tawdry Muse, but the favors she brings the writer are gifts of genuine gold.

The first and most important gift isan Audience. It is from them that all the other gifts flow.

Like news, or for that matter, pornography, the audience is insatiable. Who could imagine that there could be more news programming? But there is. Or more skin magazines? But there are. Why are all those books in the mystery section and how come there are new ones every week? There are people who read a mystery a week, a day, or more. Personally, I never get on a plane, a train, a bus, or a subway without one.

That means that there is a Market.

Publishers need product, and quite a lot of it, to fill that market. If you can produce the material, almost regardless of qualityit does not have to be the great American novelyou can sell it.