Rules to Follow When Writing a Suspenseful Mystery Novel

By: Gene Grossman

Narrated by: Gene Grossman

Gene Grossman has written more than 45 books, 20 of which are the popular full-length Peter Sharp legal mysteries and Suzi B. mysteries, now being heard all over the world. As an author, Gene reveals all of the things he sees other writers of mystery books and television shows do that makes him immediately either close the book or change the channel.

Every person intending to write a suspenseful mystery novel or television show should avoid doing the things on Gene's list, and instead concentrate on following the rules and tips he lays out in this book.

©2015 Gene Grossman (P)2016 Gene Grossman

Entertaining, with a few good tips.

The book focuses on crime, with detectives or police procedures, and some legal background. If that's not the type of mystery you want to write, it can be less useful. Still, there are some good generic tips.

Left me wanting more

The author narrated and he did a great job with that. The rules themselves, which were the titles of each section, were good and useful but The author’s explanations don’t really provide enough information in each section to be able to apply the rule in a technical way and often he goes on tangents which steer off the path of the main message. My bigger concern however is that based on the title of the book “rules to follow when writing a suspense mystery” I expected it to be in all genres of suspense or mystery. Instead it was focused on crime novel writing only and at times the author referred to the title as being about writing a crime mystery. Makes me wonder if they changed the audible title to appeal to more audiences. Also more than half of the author’s points are based on movies not novels. That doesn’t always apply to writing.