by Ronald Adams

Created on: May 23, 2008   Last Updated: May 25, 2008

As with everything in life, there are rules to writing a good mystery. They are very good guidelines, but, as they say some rules are made to be broken. Or to paraphrase the Dalai Lama, it is important to understand the rules in order to break them. So, according to people much brighter than I, these are the rules (and my suggestions for working around them):

1) The reader should have the same opportunity as the Hero to solve the crime.

2) No tricks can be played to mislead the reader unless it is also done to the Hero by the criminal. (Let's face it, Gang, we all know some pretty tricky criminals, don't we?)

3) The Hero should not have a love interest. (Here I disagree. I think the Hero/hero could be well served to have a love interest. It brings out another aspect of the character, how they deal with a lover while investigating the crime, and the conflicts that arise as a result of his/her involvement in the case. I immediately think of Spenser and Susan Silverman, Temperance Brennan and Andrew Ryan, and Stephanie Plum andyou get the idea.)

4) Neither the Hero nor one of the official investigators can turn out to be the criminal. (Again, I disagree. I think it can make for a really interesting twist to have one of the chief investigators working with the hero turn out to be hampering the case. It has to be handled carefully, but I believe it can be done.)

5) The villain must be found by logical deduction, not luck, accident, or un-motivated confessions. (Hard and fast commandment here.)

6) It must be a murder mystery. (The murder may not have to happen right away, but someone important has got to die.)

7) The solution must come by "naturalistic means." (This means no divine intervention/inspiration.)

8) There can be only one Hero, not a team. (Where would Spenser be without Hawk? Nick Charles without Nora? Sherlock Holmes without Watson? Teams can work if handled properly, especially when each member has a unique POV.)

9) The villain has to be someone who plays a prominent part of the story. After all, he/she is at least as important as the Hero, right?

10) The culprit can't be a servant. (But then again, a disgruntled employee)

11) There can only be one murderer. The villain could have a helper or "co-plotter," but only one is going to get the ax in the matter. (Consider this: the helper could wind up taking the ax for real murderer. Puts a slightly different twist on the story, and could set up a darker ending.)

12) No secret societies ("mafias, et al"). The murderer,

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