Rach's Reading Club 2024-And Beyond!

Writing Crime Fiction

Writing Crime Fiction by H.R.F. Keating is an interesting book, but only moderately helpful to the aspiring author.

It starts with a chapter on the blueprint novel. By that, Keating means the traditional murder mystery. He talks about the various elements (detective, murder, suspects) and even gives a few writing techniques for hiding the clues from the reader. After that, he gives us not one, but two chapters on various subgenres. (Whydunit, Police Procedural, etc.) He includes some advice for writing each of them, but it really is more interesting as a study of the genres.

Only in the penultimate chapter, does the book talk about how to actually write a novel. The last chapter is a brief bit about getting published.

If you're a writer with an interest in crime fiction, you'll probably like this