(How I Handle In-Person Research as a Thriller Writer.)

I’d always viewed romance as a stopgap to what I really wanted to write—crime. And my first historical crime thriller felt like stepping into a completely different country where the weather, the language, and the cultural rules were all new. I became so determined to “fit in” that I left my suitcase of romance skills at the border. I thought thrillers had no place for tenderness, that crime and history demanded grit and shadows and perpetual danger. I was, to put it mildly, wrong.

The book in question was my debut historical thriller, The Thief Taker, and at its center were two characters who, to me, shared a deep undercurrent of attraction. I wanted to weave their chemistry slowly through the danger and mystery of the plot. Unfortunately, what I actually wrote was something far less elegant. Readers were quick to tell me the romantic thread felt… clunky. Forced. Like I’d taken two paper dolls and made them kiss.

At first, I was baffled. How could I get romance wrong? I’d written entire series built on emotional connection, believable conflict, and will-they/won’t-they tension. Romance came so easily to me. But the truth was simple: I’d treated the new book as if it belonged to a completely different universe. One where the rules of attraction didn’t apply. One where my romance instincts were somehow irrelevant.

The truth, which took me far too long to see, was this: Romance isn’t tied to genre. Romance is tied to character. And when you switch genres, you don’t leave behind your ability to write people wanting things—especially each other. But I was so focused on authenticity—on researching historical details down to the type of linen they wrapped corpses in—that I forgot the one universal element that spans every era: human connection.

Worse, I fell into the classic trap of thinking that because crime and thriller fiction are often described as “gritty,” the emotional parts had to be compressed, minimal, almost shyly tucked into the background. As if having a killer on the loose automatically meant no one could have a crush. I’d convinced myself romance couldn’t be overt, or warm, or messy. It had to be quiet, subtle. A hint of longing in a cold room. I am now thankful to the readers who immediately called out the throttled romance because if it weren’t for them, I don’t think I would have noticed that what should have been a simmer, barely became a spark.

Recovering from that mistake took time, a bit of pride-swallowing, and a return to what I actually knew. Romance isn’t a set of rules, it’s a rhythm. It’s pacing, tension, conflict, release. It’s characters revealing who they are not just through action, but through how they reach for each other, pull away, and try again. I went back to my favorite crime novels and saw that they all had embedded the romance much more deeply than I’d first assumed. It was integral, not an afterthought.

Once I understood that, I stopped trying to write “thriller romance” and simply wrote romance within a thriller.

Which brings me to The Bridesmaid, my newest novel—a dark, twisting thriller about secrets, survival, and the danger lurking beneath loyalty. This time, I wove the emotional threads through the plot with full awareness of what I bring from my romance past. I didn’t hold back on the character connections. I let people be messy, yearning, hopeful. I let them want things they shouldn’t. Because romance shines not in perfection, but in conflict.

I was surprised with how much richer the thriller became when I allowed the emotional stakes to breathe. Suddenly danger felt sharper because characters had so much more to lose. Their choices carried weight. The suspense grew teeth. Crime fiction isn’t separate from emotion; it thrives on it. And romance—done well—makes the danger feel intimate.

Looking back, I’m genuinely grateful for that early misstep. It forced me to re-evaluate what I thought I knew about genre and to stop partitioning parts of my writing self. All writing, whether romance or crime or historical mystery, relies on the same core skill: making the reader care. About the outcome, yes—but most importantly, about the people.

So now, I’m no longer hiding my romance background when I write thrillers. I’ve realized it’s a strength, not a secret. And if my earlier attempt involved a little clunkiness, well… clunkiness is survivable. It’s also fixable. And—if you’re lucky—it becomes a good story for other writers to think about one day.

Check out Cate Quinn’s The Bridesmaid here:

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The post It’s a Bad Romance: How I Got Romance Wrong in My Crime Novel (And How I Fixed It) appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(Find more Killer Writers conversations here.)

“Otto, after reading and editing thousands of mysteries over your career, what do you think most writers still misunderstand about what actually makes a mystery work?”

“I think a lot of unpublished writers still believe that all mysteries are plot-driven, when in fact the same elements that elevate literary fiction are essential in mystery writing too. The first priority isn’t plot; it’s character. You need people readers want to know. Even if readers hate them, they still have to care what happens. That’s what drives a story forward. If you don’t care about the people on the page, no twist or revelation will save it. Developing believable, memorable characters is the first job of any novelist. Always.”

“When you first start reading a manuscript, what tells you within a few pages whether the writer truly understands suspense?”

“What I learn in the first five or 10 pages isn’t usually about plot or suspense; it’s about whether the writer can write. Does the prose have rhythm? Does the voice make me want to turn the page? Suspense can come in many forms: Sometimes it’s immediate, a body on page one, but sometimes it builds layer by layer. Either approach can work if the writing itself is alive. In those first pages, I’m looking to see if I’m in the hands of someone who knows how to use language, how to build a scene, how to create a sense of curiosity. If I feel that pull, the suspense will take care of itself.”

“How do you define the difference between a story that merely surprises you and one that truly satisfies?”

“It’s the difference between a trick and a truth. A surprise can make you jump, but satisfaction comes from understanding why it happened. That’s character. If I’m interested in the person, almost anything that happens to them will matter. You can fill a book with shocks, but if the people are cardboard, it’s empty noise. Real suspense is emotional, not mechanical. I want to care who the bullet hits, not just see the bullet fired.”

“What’s the single most common craft mistake you see writers make when they’re building a mystery?”

“They rush the ending. They’re so eager to reach the big reveal that they don’t give it time to breathe. A strong mystery builds to a conclusion that feels inevitable when you get there, but that inevitability comes from structure and patience. New writers often tie everything up in the final five pages or dump a flood of explanations that feel forced. The best writers earn their endings. They let the story unfold naturally. You never want to feel the author pushing you toward a solution; you want to feel the story leading you there.”

“You’ve said again and again that character drives everything. How can writers make sure their characters create the mystery rather than simply walk through it?”

“The characters must be active participants in their own story. Their decisions, flaws, and blind spots should generate the mystery’s complications. In a detective story, for example, you don’t want a flawless genius who solves everything by deduction alone. That might have worked a century ago, but readers today expect complexity. They want to see intelligence mixed with vulnerability. You need a detective who’s human: curious, sometimes wrong, maybe a little arrogant, maybe broken. The villain or culprit must be equally smart, setting traps that the detective doesn’t immediately see through. That’s how you create tension: two intelligent forces, each with blind spots, moving against one another. The story grows out of their humanity, not the author’s cleverness.”

Check out Otto Penzler’s The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2025 here:

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“What makes atmosphere feel authentic in a mystery instead of decorative?”

“The key is knowing your world. Research deeply, then use restraint. Dick Francis was brilliant at this. He and his wife explored new subjects for every book—wineries, photography, horse racing—and he always used just enough detail to make it real without showing off his homework. Many writers, especially in historical mysteries, feel they have to prove what they’ve learned. They fill the story with facts about the year 1815 in Athens or what kind of buttons were on a soldier’s coat. That kind of information belongs in the writer’s notebook, not on the page. What makes atmosphere believable is suggestion. A few precise details do more than a paragraph of description. It’s about creating a sensory truth, not a catalog of facts. You want the reader to feel the world, not study it.”

“What gives a mystery its pulse from the first page?”

“Character, again. If I’m interested in the person from the first few lines, I’m already invested. The pulse of a mystery isn’t always action; it’s empathy, or fascination, or a spark of curiosity about who this person is and what’s about to happen to them. And of course, it’s style. I want to see poetry in prose. Writing should have a rhythm, a turn of phrase that catches the ear. I remember once telling Shel Silverstein I’d never heard anyone phrase something quite the way he did. He smiled and said, ‘That’s why they call me a poet.’ That’s what I want on the page, that freshness of language that makes you stop and say, yes, that’s it.”

“Across the many subgenres—cozy, hard-boiled, procedural—what are the universal elements that make a story great?”

“Style, always. Even in a fast-paced police procedural or an international thriller, there’s room for elegance. Not every line can sing, but there should be moments that do. Thomas H. Cook does that beautifully. You’ll be reading along and suddenly there’s a paragraph so lyrical you have to stop and reread it. James Lee Burke can do it. James Crumley could do it. Those are writers whose sentences you want to share out loud. It’s not about making every word ornate; it’s about caring how it sounds.”

“How can writers make their work feel both original and classic without falling into formula?”

“Find what’s unexpected: an unusual murder method, a distinctive setting, a fresh perspective. A mystery doesn’t need to reinvent the genre, but it does need to offer readers a reason to care again. You can set a story in a familiar city but show it from a new angle. You can give us a detective who feels familiar but makes us see the world differently through their eyes. And sometimes originality comes down to voice. James Ellroy is a good example. When I first edited him, his manuscript was wild, L.A. Death Trip, which became Blood on the Moon. It was relentless violence, page after page. But his style, his energy, his rhythm, was unmistakable. We cut about two-thirds of the gore, and suddenly his storytelling had space to breathe. That style gave the book life. It’s what carried him forward as a writer.”

“What storytelling instincts or elements do you think are timeless?”

“Books with good characters. Always. Without them, it’s not a story; it’s a puzzle. That was the flaw in many Golden Age mysteries. They were intricate, clever, and cold. You can admire the puzzle, but you don’t feel anything. Most of those books are forgotten now. They were too mechanical, too dependent on plot alone. A story lasts when the reader is emotionally involved. That’s what carries across generations. Readers will forgive almost anything—structure, pacing, even an imperfect ending—if they love the people in the book. That’s what lasts.”

“If a new writer came to you and said, ‘Otto, I want to move from competent to unforgettable,’ what would you tell them?”

“Create a character no one can forget. That’s number one. Then develop your style. Read constantly. Read the best writers you can find. Read Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Charles McCarry, Robert B. Parker, James Lee Burke, Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane. Every one of them wrote mysteries, but they also wrote literature. You follow their characters, you care about the plot, and then you find these moments—maybe one sentence, maybe a paragraph—where the writing itself takes your breath away. That’s what separates an ordinary writer from a memorable one. It’s not about tricks or formulas; it’s about artistry.”

“Do you think writers can learn that kind of artistry, or is it innate?”

“You can learn to recognize it, but you have to want it. It comes from reading widely and writing constantly. You start hearing what works. You start noticing the music in language. You stop imitating and start listening to yourself, to your characters, to the rhythm of your story. Craft can be taught, but voice must be found. That’s the hard truth, and it’s what keeps the work alive. The thing is: Mystery writers sometimes think they’re in a lesser form of art. They’re not. The best crime fiction stands alongside the best literary work. It’s not about the crime, it’s about how human beings respond to the crime, what it reveals about them. If a writer can capture that truth, they’ll never have to worry about being forgotten.”

_________________________

Otto Penzler is the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop and the president and CEO of Penzler Publishers. He has won a Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, two Edgars, and lifetime achievement awards from Noircon and The Strand Magazine. He has edited more than 80 anthologies and written extensively about mystery fiction. https://penzlerpublishers.com/

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Jaime Parker Stickle is a writer, podcaster, and professor of film and television at Montclair State University. She is the author of the gripping thriller, “Vicious Cycle: A Corey in Los Angeles Mystery,” and is the creator and host of the true crime investigative podcast, The Girl with the Same Name as well as the hilarious podcast about side-hustles, Make That Paper. Jaime lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son, and fur babies.

Here’s Jaime’s original query:

Hi Dara,

Thank you, again, for reading my manuscript. I definitely have appreciated the time I’ve gotten to know you through the UCR low residency program and the authors (and books) you represent. I appreciated the notes you gave me during our one on one last June and honestly, your approach to working with your writers – giving feedback, enthusiasm, and being a partner – is, well, it’s awesome. 

Corey Tracey-Lieberman is a former television news journalist, new mom, and part-time spin instructor living in North East Los Angeles. But when two teenage girls are found hanged at her local hiking trail, Corey must delve back into the world of investigation and wrestle with her internal demon—Postpartum Panic Disorder—to solve a murder.

#NELA is an 81,800-word work of crime fiction. This is my first novel.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

All my best,

Jaime Parker Stickle

(PS – I hope you are flattered by my diligent note-taking of your query letter lecture. The above is the Mad Lib version, because why mess with the best.)

Check out Jaime Parker Stickle’s Vicious Cycle here:

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Thoughts From Dara on Jaime’s Query and the Process:

It was short but to the point and other than no bio, it was a great succinct pitch. And she followed some of the tips from a query workshop of mine she attended!

My path to working with Jaime started months before her official query. There are many paths to connecting with an agent, from cold queries, to referrals, to meeting an agent at a workshop or conference. With Jaime it was the latter.

I first met with Jaime at the UCR Palm Desert MFA residency as part of their 15-minute sit down with an industry professional program. She was a new student and full of energy and a bit nervous! But she had this idea she was working on turning into a novel at the program and ran it past me. It was about a new mom who was investigating a murder in Los Angeles, but due to her postpartum anxiety disorder she couldn’t leave her baby with anyone, so she was out there with a baby strapped to her chest, looking at crime scenes. I got chills.

And that image stayed with me. Not just the high concept, which was great, but Jaime’s voice telling it. I knew there was something there. Since I usually come out to the UCRPD program once a year, I got to see Jaime and even read about 50 pages of her novel in progress when she was graduating. I gave her feedback and let her know I definitely wanted to see it when she was ready to query agents. I really did think about it a bunch before she sent it, hoping it would be as good as I thought it might be.

The thrill when she sent it to me and I loved it! The voice of her protagonist, Corey Tracey-Liberman jumped off the page for me. This was a novel with a sense of urgency, and one only Jaime could write. We then talked about what her vision was for the book and her career, and my thoughts on how to get there, and offered her representation. It’s been such a fantastic journey so far and I can’t wait for the world to read Jaime’s debut VICIOUS CYCLE and get the same chills I got when I first heard about this story.

*****

Dara Hyde is Senior Agent at the Hill Nadell Literary Agency in Los Angeles and represents a wide range of award winning and bestselling fiction and nonfiction, including literary and genre fiction, graphic novels, narrative nonfiction, memoir, young adult, and children’s literature. Her clients include writers such as Angie Cruz, Jamie Harrison, David McGlynn, Samuel Sattin, Jaime Parker Stickle, and Lilah Sturges, and writer/artists such as Paige Braddock, Marco Finnegan, Soo Lee.

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(The Secret of the 25 Chapters in Nancy Drew Books.)

Jane Marple is the sort of woman that society, particularly at the time, would see as invisible and inconsequential. Yet, her appearance in 1927 in the short story The Tuesday Night Club which would later become part of The Thirteen Problems flew in the face of societal expectations of a woman of her status. Amongst a gathering of characters including an ex-head of Scotland Yard, a solicitor and a vicar, all pillars of society who at the time would be expected to solve the crime, this little old Victorian lady outwits them at every turn, solving every crime with her unfailing intuition and observations of life. She has become the archetype for the female sleuth who without any training or specialist skills, can from the comfort of her parlor solve the crime single-handedly. She is the template.

That is in spite of the fact that 30 years before that, a woman was writing crime fiction with an elderly spinster as the central protagonist solving the crimes. Anna Katharine Green is largely unknown outside of the sphere of crime fiction fans and yet, in her time, she was a bestselling novelist and one of the first writers of detective fiction in America. She is known as the Mother of the Detective Novel. In 1897, her first novel, The Leavenworth Case, featured an elderly spinster sleuth, Amelia Butterworth, who goes on to feature in two more of her novels. She is not an expert, but a keen observer of human nature. Nosy and intelligent, a woman who is seen by some as irrelevant, or remains unseen by most of society, her role is very familiar to readers of detective fiction, shining a light on those women who are merely expected to hide away at home.

At a time when women were not expected to take on the important jobs in the workplace, these ladies challenged societal norms. Women could remain in their homes and write these groundbreaking stories about female protagonists who were head and shoulders above everyone else.

It’s not just elderly women who featured in early crime fiction. Anna Katharine Green also wrote one of the first novels to feature a very young female sleuth. One of the pioneers of what has become known as the ‘girl detective’ genre of crime fiction, these novels have teenage women solving crimes as a hobby. In The Golden Slipper and other problems, Green introduced Violet Strange, a young debutant who solves crimes whilst being part of New York society. Again, another protagonist who comes from a world where women are expected to play a very defined role, not one involving keen intellect.

L. Frank Baum, he of The Wizard of Oz fame, also wrote in the ‘girl detective’ genre with novels featuring Phoebe Daring and Mary Louise Burrows, both of whom work to exonerate family members of crimes they have been accused of. Interestingly, Baum wrote this Bluebird book series under a female pseudonym, Edith Van Dyne.

These were of course the prototype for the most famous sleuth of the girl detective genre—Nancy Drew. Familiar to millions of readers, she became hugely popular in a mystery series that has run for decades with various authors writing under the pseudonym of Carolyn Keene.

There were also the slightly older teenagers. Feisty ‘It Girl,’ Lady Eileen Brent, or Bundle to her friends, was the creation of Agatha Christie. One of my favourite sleuths, and one that has influenced my latest character, she appears in both The Secret of Chimneys (1925) and The Seven Dials Mystery (1929). She’s attractive, fun, and clever, a trait that went over into Dorothy L. Sayers’ lady sleuth, Harriet Vane.

Vane is one of those female protagonists who is the assistant, feisty and intelligent that provide a foil for their male counterpart. An Oxford educated mystery writer, often compared to Sayers herself who was Oxford educated, she helps Lord Peter Wimsey in his cases and ultimately agrees to be Lady Wimsey.

These creations moved the genre away from women being solely the victim or femme fatale. However, all of these female protagonists had one thing in common, they were amateurs. Changes in societal roles for women in the mid-to-late 20th century allowed for professional investigators to arise in crime fiction. These women now had a place in professional law enforcement.

PD James was a front runner in this with her aptly titled An Unsuitable Job for a Woman in 1972. Her character, Cordelia Gray, is one of the first female professional private investigators in crime fiction. This brings in a whole new level of psychology to the drama. She is facing not only the mystery itself but all those complexities and difficulties she faces as a woman in a largely male dominated world. Again, crime fiction is holding a mirror to societal issues. Her vulnerabilities and her professionalism add another dimension to the narrative.

This was the case in the groundbreaking Prime Suspect series created by Lynda La Plante in 1990 featuring the tough and troubled DI Jane Tennison. She’s a woman in a man’s world, constantly having to prove herself, something that spoke to a generation of women entering the workplace with their ambitions on the top job but still challenged by societal pressures.

Television has often provided these groundbreaking female detectives who, although struggling to live so-called normal domestic lives, are fighting the worst of villains. Happy Valley (2014) shows Catherine Cawood struggling with the issues that face many women at home—divorce, juggling her work with raising children, and all those attendant problems. At the same time she is hunting a vicious criminal who has damaged her own family. She is tough, brave and yet conflicted and, at times, vulnerable because of the overwhelming responsibilities she faces. It is a role many women can relate to. She is strong and capable, whilst also being very human in her flaws. This is not the perfect image of a woman the media often presents us with.

The authentic woman protagonist is one of the reasons Ann Cleaves’ character Vera is so deeply loved. She is not the usual female detective model. Her grit and strength avoid the stereotypes and presents us with a deeply human woman, sometimes lonely, incredibly sharp minded, one we admire and respect. One we trust.

Resilience and complexity are traits that women so often bring to crime fiction, most notably in recent times with books such as Girl on a Train (2015), by Paula Hawkins. A young woman struggling to be seen in society, facing all the doubts and traumas that modern life hurls at her, turns to alcohol. Her dependence on drink clouds her mind and hampers her ability to use her analytical skills. She questions herself, doubts herself constantly, and succumbs to the manipulation of a man. This vulnerable protagonist is one the reader begins to doubt and one who also shines a light again on those overlooked individuals in society who are not listened to. Or, in this instance, one who listens to the voices of those who do not have their best interests at heart, exploring those psychological depths of gaslighting and coercive control.

The blurring of moral lines is also at the heart of Oyinkan Braithwaite My Sister the Serial Killer (2018), which looks at the complex relationship of sisters in Nigeria. Not only are the themes of family rivalry, beauty and love exposed but the morality of total loyalty between women. Where can that devotion to sisterhood take us? Is it always a good place?

Female protagonists not only reflect shifts in society, holding a mirror to our expected roles, but they bring a rich psychological depth to crime fiction. These women are resilient, riddled with the self-doubt life has created, they are intelligent and conflicted. The brilliance of female protagonists is they have the ability to take the crime fiction genre in entirely new and unexpected directions. It’s exciting to see which woman will wear the next tarnished, battered, or heavy crown.

Check out Victoria Dowd’s Death in the Aviary here:

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(5 Reasons Why Writers Need Privacy.)

I first left Shanghai when I was five. Before the eighth grade, I attended eight schools across New York, Toronto, and my birth city. When you move around so much, you learn not to trust your environment, appreciating that it could change in an instant. Every time that happens, you internalize the fear that you may be behind the other kids, that you have to hustle in order to catch up. Often that fear was not unwarranted, when you’re growing up with fewer resources than anyone else in your class. Except as children, none of us could truly comprehend what it meant that one of our parents served as the president of University of Toronto, Canada’s equivalent to Harvard College.

I won’t pretend that it was healthy to hold onto all my childhood ideologies, but I do think that they contributed to the resilience and relentless drive that motivates many first-generation immigrants and their children. I still hold memories of my parents sacrificing their careers as university lecturers in Shanghai in order to move to New York and then Toronto, where they had to work in Chinese restaurants.

Unsurprisingly, I would bring all those scars and insecurities to writing as well.

*

My debut novel These Memories Do Not Belong to Us is set in a future where memories are bought and sold, and a renamed China has taken over—but at its heart, it’s a book about survival and resistance. The novel is structured as a collection of eleven banned memories which an unnamed narrator receives as inheritance from his deceased mother. Whether before or after the War when the Qin empire conquers the world, every character grapples with their morality, often in conflict with their own survival or that of their loved ones.

As an immigrant, I grew up believing that I did not have the privilege to resist against any individuals or institutions that represented authority. In a way, I wrote this book partly to explore what small resistances I could imagine mustering under the most frightening scenarios—whether confronting Artificial General Intelligence, or memory surveillance, or the brutal life of a sumo wrestler—in the hope that it might resonate with others who feel similarly powerless amid overwhelming odds.

It’s not surprising that I wrote the majority of Memory Epics during the COVID-19 pandemic, although Swimmer of Yangtze was completed more than seven years ago. Seeing my first story win the Guardian 4th Estate BAME Story Prize gave me confidence when I had none before. After all, my first career was in finance and impact investing; I had just graduated with an MBA from Stanford after working with affordable schools in Africa. Back then, I could only imagine a world under capitalism, because as an immigrant, I was taught to accept systems unconditionally rather than question their merits. When I wrote my book, I aspired for the stories to offer hope, while remaining grounded in the cruel truth that resistance does not guarantee anything. Although when a government begins to threaten democratic institutions and eviscerate migrant rights, resistance may well prove necessary, regardless of whether the power systems can be overthrown.

Click to continue.

I believe that Western literature needs more immigrant voices, despite the best efforts of publishers and book media to elevate writers of color. The truth is that the majority of AAPI authors are second or third generation Americans/Canadians. Almost always, the media groups us together, but I usually relate more to the perspective of a first-generation immigrant from Eastern Europe than a fellow Asian born in Idaho. Beyond the challenge of writing in a second language, people of a lower socioeconomic class can rarely afford to explore careers stereotyped in the category of “starving artists.” Writing is simply not a pragmatic financial decision, especially in the face of AI. As much as I believe that the pen is powerful, I know that my wife and I would be anxious if our child one day followed my literary path.

A year ago, over a coffee with the Egyptian-Canadian author Omar El-Akkad, I remarked offhandedly how interesting it was that both of our debuts were dystopian novels (his first novel American War is set in a future America ravaged by climate challenge following a Second Civil War). He responded that he didn’t think it was a coincidence, since both of us had landed in the West from elsewhere. For the first time, I understood why it felt so hard for me to imagine writing a novel set in present-day America, because subconsciously I knew that world did not belong to me. As an immigrant I did not believe myself deserving of such authority, so I had to invent an alternate future instead.

Maybe that will change one day. Certainly, I believe that my next generation won’t have the same hang-ups as their immigrant parents. But I also recognize that if they were ever to write, their voices would inevitably sound different from mine, as bittersweet as that would feel on the page.

Check out Yiming Ma’s These Memories Do Not Belong To Us here:

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As a journalist, I was out in the world—asking questions, chasing facts. On some days, I stood outside courtrooms, furiously scribbling quotes. Other days, I knocked on doors hoping the next of kin would give me a comment. I once trailed a probation officer making surprise home visits. Sometimes I went to the city morgue, and sometimes the state prison. I listened to victims, suspects, cops, attorneys, and mothers who would never again see their sons. And always—always—the job was to get the facts. A reporter, especially on the crime beat, lives by verification. No speculation. No filling in emotional blanks. It wasn’t my job to interpret a suspect’s expression or wonder what a mother whispered at her child’s grave. If I didn’t hear it, see it, or record it, it didn’t go in the story.

(9 Clues for Killing It in Crime Fiction.)

As a novelist, the work is very different. I am free to focus on the inner life—and to use my imagination. Instead of seeking only the facts, instead of asking for a quote to capture what a person feels, I can step directly into another’s point of view and imagine what this person might be feeling right now. This power of the imagination—which makes empathy possible—is exhilarating, and deeply humanizing. In a certain sense, the craft of writing fiction is similar to what many actors say about their craft: The goal isn’t to perform a character but to inhabit them—to discover what it feels like to live inside another skin. That’s what fiction allows. It’s not about impersonation; it’s about immersion. And when it works, you’re no longer inventing a life—you’re listening to it.

I still recall the moment many years ago in my journalism career when this distinction between the factual world of the journalist and the imaginative world of the novelist became painfully clear. I was interviewing Richard M. Daley, then mayor of Chicago, about his approach to crime. His father, who had served as mayor for 21 consecutive years, had been a famous “machine politician” known for his blatant practice of patronage and exchange of favors. As if to distance himself from his father’s legacy, the younger Daley had recently hired a team of squeaky-clean lawyers from elite schools to serve as city attorneys. The interview generated a successful article, but one detail that intrigued me never made it into print. The entire time we talked, the mayor was compulsively chewing gum—one piece after another, discarding each after only a minute or two. He went through an entire pack during our conversation. I never asked him about it because it wasn’t relevant to the article. But I couldn’t stop wondering—was this gum-chewing a nervous habit? A coping mechanism? Something entirely mundane like a bad taste in your mouth? That’s the kind of question journalism doesn’t always have room for, but fiction does.

The novelist can embrace ambiguity, follow an emotional thread even when it leads somewhere uncomfortable. But this is important: The gears shift in both directions. I’ve been writing fiction now for many years, and the more time I spend in the inner world, the more fascinated I am with the outer realities of life—the forces beyond our control that shape how we feel and what we do. Ultimately, the interplay between inner and outer is what fuels a story.

For me, the switch from “crime journalist” to “crime novelist” also contains an important common thread: moral inquiry. What happened, who’s innocent, who’s guilty? Answering these questions is the heart of the crime reporter’s task. Similarly, the novelist can ask: to what extent does a crime stain not just the perpetrator, but the whole of society? In this way, I see crime fiction as a genre not just of suspense, but of moral inquiry. Many crime novels focus on the procedural—the forensics, the clues, the pursuit of justice as a linear path. But, for me, crime fiction is not merely about solving a mystery; it is about reckoning with what crime does to the human soul. A crime is a rupture, a wound in the moral order. I want to push the genre’s boundaries, to tell stories where crime is not only a puzzle to be solved, but a crucible that reshapes those who encounter it. Rather than focusing primarily on solving crimes, I want to confront the psychological and moral consequences of those crimes. To me, crime fiction is not only about bringing wrongdoers to justice but about understanding the cost of justice itself and the ways it changes those who seek it.

My new novel, The Meaning of the Murder, takes up this goal. The novel’s title comes from Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl, who survived Auschwitz, published the book in 1946. I first read it in college, returned to it after 9/11, and again during the pandemic. Each time, it struck a deeper chord. The popular takeaway is that meaning can be found even in the face of suffering. But what moves me most is Frankl’s more subtle insight: We shouldn’t ask what the meaning of life is—we should recognize that life is asking us. Meaning isn’t something abstract to be discovered; it’s something we answer for. It’s personal, situational, and inescapably moral. Our lives, Frankl writes, are questions to which we must respond.

Click to continue.

The Meaning of the Murder tells the story of ordinary people who get unwittingly caught up in the global war on terror. The father of a modern orthodox Jewish family works as a compliance officer at a bank in New York. When he discovers that his bank is violating OFAC laws and funding terrorists in the Middle East, he alerts the bank’s top brass. They ignore him. After struggling with the conflict between his position as a fully assimilated member of his professional community and his moral obligations as a man and a Jew, he turns whistle-blower and goes to the DOJ. The night before his deposition he disappears, leaving behind a wife and three daughters.

Writing this book very much combined being a “journalist” and a “novelist,” because the story delves deeply into the external world of fighting terror in its current geopolitical backdrop. But the novel is ultimately intimate. It’s an exploration of love: between a father and a daughter, between sisters bound together by loss, and between a husband and wife trying to hold on to each other in the face of fear and doubt. As these people struggle to make sense of what happened, they are each, in their own way, trying to make meaning. For each, the meaning of the murder is different. That, for me, is the core of the book: Meaning is shaped not only by what happens, but by who we are and how we respond.

Journalists, of course, can explore these questions of meaning, and good journalists do. So I don’t want to overstate the difference between being a crime reporter and writing crime fiction. In the end, it doesn’t matter whether you’re chasing facts or following your imagination. What matters is the seriousness with which you take the craft—and the quiet, persistent struggle to write something that’s honest and well made.

Check out Walter B. Levis’ The Meaning of the Murder here:

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Crime fiction thrives on cold, hard logic—the meticulous detective connecting clues, the satisfaction of justice served. It’s a genre built on answering specific questions: Who did it? How? Why? But introduce a whisper of the supernatural, and suddenly the game changes. Now we’re not just asking who or why—we’re questioning reality itself and wondering whether the rules of logic even apply. Add a family curse into the mix, and the stakes become intensely personal.

(7 Tips for Writing Supernatural Horror.)

This delicious collision of genres takes everything we love about crime stories and gives it an electric jolt. That’s the magic of supernatural crime fiction (books and film)—it transforms the familiar into something wonderfully strange. Supernatural crime fiction commonly employs otherworldly beings, ghosts, cursed objects, psychic abilities, and phenomena beyond scientific understandings of the natural world. Recently, more and more stories have broken away from the single-genre confines, incorporating elements from crime, fantasy, horror, gothic, supernatural fiction. The lines between genres have blurred, and the results are thrilling.

Edgar Allan Poe, who helped define modern crime fiction, also pioneered Gothic tales. In The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe explores the decaying legacy of an aristocratic family. Their mansion, with its Gothic archway and crumbling walls, symbolizes both physical and moral deterioration. Poe vividly portrays emotions essential to Gothic fiction, like fear, impending doom, and guilt. Roderick Usher suffers from “a constitutional and a family evil,” mirrored by the mansion’s grim state, whose gray walls have directly affected the “morale” of Usher’s “existence.” Poe weaves tension and suspense by fusing the psychological weight of a curse with an eerie ancestral home.

Modern authors have continued this tradition. For example, in Ruth Ware’s The Death of Mrs. Westaway, Hal, aware that an inheritance isn’t rightfully hers, travels to the family’s estate, only to find herself entangled in the crumbling walls of dark family secrets and in a blood tie she didn’t expect.

Successful supernatural crime fiction reimagines classic detective tropes. Take Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles. It begins as a classic Sherlock Holmes mystery, rooted in deductive reasoning. But the stakes intensify dramatically once the reader realizes that the legendary hound haunting Dartmoor is tied to the Baskerville family—a curse! Similarly, Agatha Christie’s exploration of the supernatural emerges in The Pale Horse, a seemingly rational mystery that veers into the world of black magic, hexes, and curses. Some believe this to be Christie’s best work. Christie’s The Sittaford Mystery opens with a séance eerily predicting the murder of Captain Trevelyan, effectively making the séance a curse in itself. These stories resonate because they take the solid foundation of detective fiction and tilt it just enough to make us question everything.

More recently, consider the movie Ghost, where Sam Wheat knows his death wasn’t accidental. Trapped between worlds, Sam desperately seeks justice and protection for his beloved, Molly Jensen. He enlists Oda Mae Brown, a con-artist psychic who gets the shock of her life when she discovers she genuinely can communicate with the dead. Their unlikely partnership elevates a straightforward murder plot into something profound—a narrative illustrating how justice might transcend death itself. The supernatural element doesn’t diminish, but rather amplifies the gravity of the crime, compelling us to consider justice beyond mortality.

Many contemporary thriller and mystery writers are embracing supernatural elements to heighten suspense. Riley Sager’s mystery-thriller The House Across the Lake follows a widow retreating to her family’s lake house, where she becomes obsessed with the glamorous neighbors across the water. When the neighbor’s wife disappears, the widow’s curiosity plunges her into a dark mystery, intensified by surprising supernatural twists. Sager utilizes props—binoculars that are more than they seem—and a lake setting shrouded in unsettling mystery to enhance the suspense. Most assuredly, there’s been something amiss about that lake for quite some time.

Lisa Unger delves into supernatural dread in The New Couple in 5B. A financially strapped couple inherits his uncle’s luxury apartment building. Little did they suspect that the place had such a dark history. Crimes, deaths, suicides, and now another murder compel the wife to discover the truth lurking within the walls of the place, even if it means seeing and talking to ghosts. The setting is again cursed!

Robert Gwaltney’s Southern Gothic novel, The Cicada Tree, introduces a cicada plague unleashing darkness in a small Georgia town. Dark family secrets of the wealthy Mayfields and supernatural awakenings in young piano prodigy Analeise Newell threaten her very existence. Gwaltney masterfully weaves Gothic horror, family curses, and the supernatural into a haunting tapestry.

Our literary world is evolving rapidly, expanding possibilities for both writers and readers—an exciting development.

Which brings us to my latest thriller, The Medici Curse, and those wiggling bones. Anna de’ Medici Rossi returns to her ancestral Tuscan villa, the place where her mother suffered a violent death when Anna was just 12 years old. Anna isn’t merely confronting a decades-old cold case; she’s wrestling with a rumored family curse, a missing heirloom necklace, and the haunting possibility that her own recurring night terrors might hold the key to her mother’s death. What if there’s no curse at all, only a daughter chasing shadows through empty halls, where every creak is grief playing cruel tricks, and the only ghosts are the ones she conjures herself? What if generations of deaths in her family are merely tragic coincidences, and her visions during night terrors are symptoms of unresolved trauma rather than supernatural warnings? Whatever the truth, the weight of her family’s dark legacy is overwhelming.

The supernatural elements in The Medici Curse don’t detract from its essence as a crime thriller. Instead, they transform every revelation into a question: Is this real or imagined? That’s the brilliant alchemy of combining supernatural elements with crime fiction—it takes our fascination with logical puzzles and adds the thrilling shiver of the unknown. Next time you pick up a mystery, ask yourself: Could this story use a ghost? A curse? Perhaps even a time-traveling detective? Because when done right, supernatural elements don’t weaken crime fiction—they make it infinitely richer.

Dead men do tell tales—especially in crime fiction.

Check out Daco S. Auffenorde’s The Medici Curse here:

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In this interview, Antony discusses the complexities of writing his new interactive crime novel, Can You Solve the Murder?, his advice for other writers, and more.

Name: Antony Johnston 
Literary agent: Sarah Such, Sarah Such Literary Agency, London
Book title: Can You Solve the Murder?
Publisher: Penguin Books
Release date: July 1, 2025
Genre/category: Crime & Thriller
Previous titles: Atomic Blonde, The Dog Sitter Detective, The Exphoria Code, The Organised Writer (nonfiction)
Elevator pitch: A choose-your-own-story interactive crime novel where YOU become the detective. There’s been a murder at Elysium, a wellness clinic set in an English manor house. YOU decide which suspects to interview, what evidence to gather… and who to accuse. Do you have what it takes to solve the murder?

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What prompted you to write this book?

It felt like the right time. I’m an award-winning crime and mystery author, with series like The Dog Sitter Detective and the Brigitte Sharp thrillers to my credit—as well as the film Atomic Blonde, which was based on my graphic novel.

I’ve also loved interactive novels since reading series like Choose Your Own Adventure and Fighting Fantasy as a child, and over the past 20 years I’ve written and consulted on many hit videogames such as Shadow of Mordor and Resident Evil Village. 

So, I have a lot of experience with both crime fiction and interactive stories. Combining the two felt natural—especially now, when readers are more enthusiastic than ever about pitting their wits against authors and trying to solve fictional crimes themselves.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

The idea evolved in several stages. I conceived of writing a mystery story in the interactive book format more than a decade ago, but at that time couldn’t quite figure out the best way to approach important elements like finding clues and collecting evidence. 

In early 2023 I solved those problems and wrote several short “prototype” interactive crime stories to get a handle on the format. Those worked very well, so I pitched a full-length book version to my agent in December 2023, and in the new year we took it to market. It quickly went to a five-way auction in the U.K. where it was acquired by Transworld, then by Penguin Random House in the U.S. and Canada, with other auctions taking place around the world for foreign rights deals.

The original idea didn’t change at all, though. I knew from the start how I wanted to do this, and the story I wanted to tell.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

I think the biggest learning moment for me was working with three editors at once, as the U.K., U.S., and Canada all worked on the book together. It was a challenge I relished, especially as we were all learning new skills along the way.For example, we had to do structural edits—where significant changes to the plot, characters, and scenes are made—at the flowchart stage, before I’d actually written the book itself. That’s a very unusual way to go about things, but necessary with this format. Trying to do large-scale edits after writing the various numbered sections would take months and be very painful.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

The main surprise was one that I probably should have predicted: the sheer complexity involved in writing an interactive book of this length. 

With a regular novel, you can plot ahead or not as you choose; it doesn’t change how you write the book per se. But with an interactive book, not only do you have to plot ahead in some detail, you also have to design its structure, as you would with a board game or videogame.

My experience in that area helped enormously, but I also made things more difficult for myself with the “Clue Number” format, which is the mechanism I use to track what evidence the reader has gathered, whom they’ve interrogated, and so on. Designing and keeping track of that turned out to be terrifically complex.

Suffice to say, I knew I’d have to build a flowchart in order to write this book … but I didn’t expect it would take two whole weeks to build!

What do you hope readers will get out of your book? 

First and foremost, Can You Solve the Murder? is a crime novel with all the great characters, plot twists, and suspense you’d expect from that, so I want readers to enjoy the story whether or not they also solve the murder.

But of course, the appeal of an interactive book is also to pit one’s wits against the author, so I trust readers will enjoy doing that too. Solving this crime is no cakewalk, and many will get it wrong the first time. But the clues and answers are there, if you pay attention …

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Write the book you wish you could read for yourself. If it’s not already on the shelf, take that as a sign that you should write it.

The post Antony Johnston: Solving This Crime Is No Cakewalk appeared first on Writer's Digest.

But when you get it right? It’s such a good ride! 

Focus on Obsession, Not Accuracy 

I never like to start with what’s popular, but rather what haunts me. When I’m doing my research, I find a woman that sticks out to me for a reason. When I found Alice Diamond, I couldn’t shake the image of a 19-year-old leading a gang of women thieves in 1920s London. I had to know how. With Virginia Hill, it was the mystery of her death, was it a suicide or a mob hit? That question pulled me in, and once I dove deeper, I knew their stories were waiting for a voice. 

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Research Like a Scavenger 

Don’t be a historian, be a scavenger! Primary sources are gold: letters, trial transcripts, police reports, newspaper clippings. You want to look for the contradictions, or gaps, because that’s where your fiction breathes. For Mob Queen, I researched Virginia, but also every man she was involved with. I even found an old menu from the restaurant where she worked so I’d know exactly what she was serving. And when you hit a wall, start inventing! Historical fiction is about truth, not facts. The reader doesn’t need to know the exact designer shoes she wore, but they do want to know how they clicked against the marble floor. 

Build Characters That Feel Real 

Don’t fall into the trap of over-victimizing, build characters who feel human. Let them make mistakes. Let them be brutal, relentless, even unlikeable at times. They’re shaped by the world they live in and the choices they’re forced to make. I always want the reader to cringe, then pause and think, “Well… I see where she’s coming from.” 

Let the Crime Be a Mirror 

Historical crime fiction isn’t about the crime, but rather, what the crime reveals. The corruption, the desperation, the system that failed. It gives you a chance to ask: What’s changed? What hasn’t? I always aim to draw parallels. You might not see yourself in the main character’s shoes, but you’ll understand what led her to make the choices she did. 

Respect the Dead, Write for the Living 

I want to make sure that while I’m respecting the dead, I’m writing for the living. This means I don’t want to sugarcoat the past or turn real pain into aesthetic. I want to honor the truth of what happened, especially to those who were silenced or erased, but I also shape the story in a way that speaks to the people reading them now. The past already happened, but if I’ve done my job right, it should be loud enough to shake the present. 

So while it’s not always easy, and it takes a lot of digging, once you’ve got the bones to resurrect a story, there’s no going back. I’ll spend months trying to write something else, but somehow, I always get pulled back into these women. They’re all yelling at me from the grave, demanding to be finished. May they haunt me forever, so I can write their stories and haunt my readers, too. 

The post Digging Up the Dead: 5 Steps to Writing Historical Crime Fiction appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, E.C. discusses pulling back the curtain on publishing with her new crime novel, A Novel Murder, the drama at crime fiction festivals that helped inspire the novel, and more.

Name: E.C. Nevin
Literary agent: Hannah Todd at Janklow & Nesbitt 
Book title: A Novel Murder
Publisher: Knopf / PRH
Release date: June 17, 2025
Genre/category: Crime 
Elevator pitch: When struggling author Jane Hepburn attends the Killer Lines Crime Fiction Festival, she expects to make contacts, make friends, and make sales. What she doesn’t expect is to discover the body of her own literary agent in the book tent and to be drawn into solving the murder … 

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What prompted you to write this book?

Before I was a writer, I was an editor of crime fiction, so I know both the genre and the world of publishing inside and out. I’ve been to a fair few crime fiction festivals, and there is always drama—someone gets too drunk, someone says something they shouldn’t. Not quite murder-level drama, but drama nonetheless. They are occasions where editors, readers, writers, agents, publicists, and more come together to talk books and drink a little too much, and so it seemed the perfect setting for a fun crime novel about the publishing industry. 

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

Every year I used to attend the biggest crime fiction festival in the U.K., and we would say “someone should write a crime novel set here!” So, I suppose the idea was a long time coming. But from when me and my agent discussed me writing it, and publishers reading the first chapters it wasn’t really very long at all. Under six months. We sold the book on a partial, meaning that it wasn’t completely finished when it was sold. 

Then there was a long gap between signing the contract and publication—at least 18 months. I had to finish the book and edit it, of course, and then the publishers wanted a good time for run-up marketing. Publishing is a slow process! The base idea—a publishing industry cozy crime set at a fiction festival—stayed the same, but every detail of the plot changed. I try planning, but once I start writing the characters take on a life of their own and it all goes out the window.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

Because it was my job for a long time, I knew what was going to happen. However, it feels very different on the other side. It feels so much slower, and there are long periods where you don’t really hear anything. I knew this from being a publisher, but I just didn’t notice it anywhere near as much. Learnings? Probably just to relax more and let it happen.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

How much plot really is informed by your characters. If you get them right, they will direct you in ways that make much more sense than your carefully plotted outline. 

Also, how difficult it is to sit and write for extended periods of time. I try to keep myself focused by doing things like writing while walking on a treadmill or moving writing spots—kitchen to study to café—every hour or so. 

What do you hope readers will get out of your book? 

A good time! I hope readers will be entertained, that they find something of themselves in the characters, that they’ll be surprised by the twists and turns of the case, and that they learn something about what lies behind the curtain when it comes to the world of books. 

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Put your phone in another room, turn off the internet, and get on with it—though I’m pretty bad at following that advice. But also, all the cliches you’ve probably heard before—done really is better than perfect (when it comes to a first draft anyway), finishing something, anything, is by far the most important and hardest thing to do, and focus on your characters above all else.

The post E.C. Nevin: ‘Done’ Is Better than ‘Perfect’ appeared first on Writer's Digest.