How to Write a Mystery [Paperback]

WHODUNIT? YOUDUNIT!
So you want to write a mystery. There's more to it than just a detective, a dead body, and Colonel Mustard in the drawing room with the candlestick. Fortunately, Larry Beinhart--Edgar Award-winning author of You Get What You Pay For, Foreign Exchange, and American Hero--has taken a break from writing smart, suspenseful thrillers to act as your guide through all the twists and turns of creating the twists and turns of a good mystery.
Drawing on advice and examples from a host of the best names in mystery writing--from Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane to Scott Turow and Thomas Harris--plus some of his own prime plots, Larry Beinhart introduces you to your most indispensable partners in crime:
*Character, plot, and procedure
* The secrets to creating heroes, heroines, and villains ("All writers draw upon themselves and their experience. While the whole of yourself might not be capable of being either a serial killer or an FBI agent, there are parts in each of us that are capable of almost anything.")
* The fine art of scripting the sex scene
*The low-down on violence ("A crime novel without violence is like smoking pot without inhaling, sex without orgasm, or a hug without a squeeze." )
*And much more!
From the opening hook to the final denouement, Larry Beinhart takes the mystery out of being a mystery writer.Larry Beinhartis the Edgar Award-winning author of No One Rides for Free, How to Write a Mystery,You Get What You Pay For, and Foreign Exchange. His bookAmerican Hero was adapted into the movieWag the Dog.INTRODUCTION
The Joy of Genre
 
Genre is a gaudy, tawdry Muse, but the favors she brings the writer are gifts of genuine gold.
 
The first and most important gift is—an Audience. It is from them that all the other gifts flow.
 
Like news, or for that matter, pornography, the audience is insatilc4