You know, I've often enjoyed watching, listening to, and perhaps reading mystery stories of one form or another.

That being the case, I've often been intrigued at how exactly they manage to write them up. The best ones as far as I can tell have a moderately engaging plot, excellent dialogue, rich scenery and just the right amount of twists.

I'm curious what you lot think comprises the anatomy of the best mysteries and what stuff you particularly like to see. What'cha got?

Hey Timbo - welcome to WC!

I love reading mysteries. I like engaging characters - people that are enjoyable to know. I also like enough of the clues to be able to make some guesses . . . but I like it when something insignificant turns out to be important and solves the crime.

I love being fooled by a well-written mystery. I believe the secret lies mainly in how much information to expose to whom by what means and when. I admire tremendously the author who can get everything on the table somewhere and still catch the reader by surprise. At the moment I am reading "Christine Falls" by "Benjamin Black," a pen-name of the fine literary author John Banion. I am interested to see whether it will be true to the genre form or rather more like a novel.

Part of the appeal of genre fiction (my tastes in which tend towards science fiction) is the familiarity of the style, plot, and characterizations. Good authors can also write against these commonplaces and thus enhance their stories. Because genre fiction is codified and formulaic, the writing can be quite terse, leading to the phenomenon of the page turner. I see genre as a kind of popular constrained (link) writing or potential literature (link). (NB, none of my musings is meant as a disparagement of genre fiction of any sort.)

I saw a programme recently on Agatha Christie who, according to the Guinness Book of Records, is the best selling writer of all time - not excluding Shakespeare.

The interesting thing about her works is that they are all very similar - but all very engaging - and this, the programme's producers suggested, was the reason for the huge success of her books. Wikipedia, predictably, has a substantial entry for her. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie

Come to think of it, the last two books I've read are both some famous author's twist on genre fiction. I'll post something to our "WoBoGro" forum.

You know, out of curiosity, I've often wondered what the conventions in the publishing industry are for the lengths of various novels. As in, how many words are typical to compose the lengths of books of the various genres. Any thoughts?