Edgar Allan Poe Award winner, Pulitzer Prize nominee, and best-selling author John McAleer, Ph.D. (Harvard), taught crime fiction at Boston College for nearly four decades, nurturing authors like George V. Higgins (The Friends of Eddie Coyle), Chuck Hogan (The Standoff), Margaret McLean (Under Oath), James Devlin (Elmore Leonard), and Ted Murphy (the "Belltown Mysteries"). Now he and his son, Andrew McAleer-also a mystery author and Professor of Crime Fiction at Boston College-share the secrets, techniques and art of crafting the mystery novel. Mystery Writing in a Nutshell is an invaluable resource which, step-by-step, takes the writer through the mystery-writing process from creating suspense and strategizing plot twists to hiding clues and enriching character development and much more. With this guide to mystery writing at your side, it is only a matter of time before your novel is afoot! ABOUT THE AUTHORS John McAleer is the Edgar Allan Poe Award-winning author of Rex Stout: A Majesty's Life and a best-selling author of fifteen other books including the critically-acclaimed mystery, Coign of Vantage. A Professor of English Literature at Harvard and, later, Boston College for more than half a century, Professor McAleer also worked as an editor of The Armchair Detective, served as a vice president of the Mystery Writers of America and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Andrew McAleer is the author of three mystery novels and serves as the president of America's oldest continuing literary society, the Boston Authors Club. He teaches Crime Fiction at Boston College, is a member of the Private Eye Writers of America, the editor of the award-winning Crimestalker Casebook and a recipient of the Sherlock Holmes Revere Bowl Award. Mr. McAleer practices law privately in Massachusetts. Edward D. Hoch is a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, an Edgar Allan Poe Award-winning author and one of the most prolific writers in the crime fiction genre. A tireless contributor to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Mr. Hoch served as president of the MWA and was the 1991 guest of honor at Bouchercon.
Book Description
Special Offers and Product Promotions
- This item is eligible for our 4-for-3 promotion. Eligible products include select Books and Home & Garden items. Buy any 4 eligible items and get the lowest-priced item free. Here's how (restrictions apply)
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Short and Sweet Guide to Mystery Writing,
By LA Noir (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Mystery Writing in a Nutshell (Paperback)
The title of "Mystery Writing in a Nutshell - The World's Most Concise Guide to Mystery and Suspense Writing" says it all. A short, sweet guide to mystery writing that covers the bases from creating suspense to how to hook the reader, through character development and pretty much anything and everything else you might need to know to write a mystery. What sets this volume apart from many others is its brevity and, as the title says, its conciseness. It does all of this in a mere 90 or so pages. Consequently you don't have to wade through pages and pages of minutia to get to the point of each subject.
This is an excellent overview of the subject of mystery writing, but also of writing fiction in general because, after all, most stories are mysteries one way or another. And John and Andrew McAleer give you what you need to know the way a good mystery does with a few quick shots. There's no room here for excess baggage, as there shouldn't be in your mystery. I could cite examples from the book, but it's so short and accessible it would be just as well to pick it up and give it a read.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another Classic Is Born,
By Russ Heitz (Sarasota, Florida, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Mystery Writing in a Nutshell (Paperback)
This book is destined to become a classic writing text, much like that other perennial favorite, THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE by Strunk and White. Instead of focusing on grammar and sentence structure, however, this book concentrates on how to assemble a suspense or mystery novel, from the first, throat-grabbing word, to a final denouement that is both surprising and inevitable.
It tells the writer how to create an atmosphere of suspense and mystery. It discusses narrative hooks and back stories. It opens the eyes and the mind to a myriad of ideas that surround a writer every day; the kind of ideas that are certain to hook the reader and reel him in. It covers the details of reality that are absolutely essential for any story. It stresses the importance of those critical components that are required for all genre: credibility and plausibility. Clues, voice, point of view, plot, character development; all are spelled out in a clear and concise writing style that is almost impossible to misinterpret or misunderstand. Indirectly, this book also tells the writer, by example, how to edit, how to hone, and how to polish the words and make them shine by their own inner light. And it does all this in less than seventy pages! The rest of the book includes the authors' insightful interviews with Rex Stout, Robert Parker, Margaret McLean and William Tapply. If I could give this book a ten-star rating, I would quickly do it. Alas, five is the upper limit here so I will have to accept that. But if you are interested in writing at all, regardless of genre, it is my pleasure to highly recommend MYSTERY WRITING IN A NUTSHELL. It is a joy to read and will surely become one of the writing community's "desert island" choices for many years to come. Russ Heitz russheitz.com
17 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
100-Page List of Cliches,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Mystery Writing in a Nutshell (Paperback)
Although previous reviews suggest otherwise, this book does not contain any substantial guidance on structuring a plot, creating suspense, developing characters, or, really, writing a mystery at all. It is a rambling list of to-dos and to-don'ts, nearly all of which are either basic common sense (hide clues, be accurate, don't cheat the ending) or cringe-inducing (incorporate advertising copy into dialogue, give your protagonist a hat, and transcribe detailed driving directions). The filler interviews tacked on to the end of the book just add insult to injury. At 100 pages, the book still felt too long - a complete waste of time and $10.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
