In an earlier post for mystery writers, I talked a little bit about the value of resisting the urge to lecture your readers on what you might have learned in the course of researching your story or what you might know from your own in-the-trenches experiences.  The premise behind this advice is that readers--fans of mystery/suspense in particular--generally read in hopes of being entertained rather than educated. A little insider’s insight can be great, vital even, for credibility. But many writers make the mistake of giving their readers far more information than is needed or desirable. This is especially problematic when the information takes the shape of straight narration, which can grind the story to a screeching halt and leave readers feeling lectured to instead of entertained.

For its enduring popularity as a genre, mystery is a surprisingly tough genre to break into for new writers, and in some respects one of the hardest genres to write. This is in part due to the procedural know-how a writer must have to write convincingly about investigating crime. But it’s also because of how inherently predictable the mystery formula ultimately is and the challenge of keeping readers entertained, engaged, and surprised through the grind of case when the one aspect of the outcome--the survival of the protagonist (when the book is in a series or written in the first person)--is almost a guaranteed given and the odds are (usually) pretty good that the bad guy(s) will be caught.

But anyone who loves mysteries knows how absorbing a good mystery can be despite all this. And from a writer’s standpoint, the better you understand the inherent challenges posed by the genre and the mistakes many writers make in connection to them until they know better, the better the odds of writing a book that can complete in the popular but very competitive genre.

So I thought I’d look back over some of the dozen of mysteries I’ve worked on over the years with an eye to the most challenging aspects of mystery writing and some of the standards to keep in mind if you’re going to write a good one. And the most daunting of these may be the vast amount that may need to be learned and distilled for readers on a wide array of topics.

It's been a busy week on our blog thanks to Mystery Writers Appreciation Month, and so today we're taking a time-out from contemplating mystery craft to pass along some information about agents and agencies who as of this June 2011 posting are actively looking for mysteries. 

Please pay close attention to submission instructions and areas of interest within the mystery genre, where relevant.

1. FinePrint Literary Management
agent-Janet Reid
send a query letter via e-mail that includes the first 30 pages of the novel, the pages should be in the body of the e-mail(not as an attachment. the subject line should read: Query for (insert title of your project)-in the query letter you must address her personally
e-mail to janet@fineprintlit.com
prefers-thrillers, mysteries and crime fiction of all kinds but no horror 

2. Ann Rittenberg Literary Agency, Inc
agent-Ann Rittenberg
prefers snail mail query letter with the first three chapters and a SASE
to:  15 Maiden Lane, Suite 206
New York, NY 10038
has sold a lot of mysteries, likes upmarket suspense,thrillers, and mysteries

Mysteries are more popular today than ever, hogging bestseller lists year after year—taking up about half the spots unless you include pure thrillers (I don’t), in which case the percentage is higher. The variety of today’s mysteries is mind-boggling, ranging from the manor-house murder committed and solved over a weekend to the urban mystery in which the detective, amateur or professional, most solve a horrific crime or crimes and suffer horrific consequences in the process.  A mystery—of any type—is easier to find a literary agent for, and agents I talk to tell me mystery/suspense is easier to place, particularly if it has “crossover potential.” Which translates to its being really, really good.

''These novels are always popular in ages of great anxiety,'' says P.D. James, whose mysteries always hit the bestseller lists. ''It's a very reassuring form. It affirms the hope that we live in a rational and beneficent universe. Real-life murder is arbitrary, sordid, pathetic, and ugly. Fictional murder is not. The mystery is a kind of modern morality play. But it is a fantasy.''

A mystery or crime novel, like almost any other, is built of plot, characters, dialogue, setting, and authorial style and voice.  The mystery in such a novel—the baffling situation that requires solving, often a crime—is regarded as the basis of the plot and is usually strongly linked to the characters’ motivations.  All very true.  But the mystery itself can also rise above mere plot device and coalesce into something resembling a character, with a distinct feel, mood, and smell, a presence that begs to be solved, left alone, or brought to justice—or doesn’t beg for anything at all and instead seems to take sadistic pleasure from the misery it brings to those who presume to poke at it.  Such a distinct mystery, aside from its relationship to plot and character, can in itself impart much depth, excitement, and allure to your novel.

If I wrote a mystery—haven’t done it yet, but I might—it would be known in the trade as a “cozy.” The sleuth in a cozy won’t be an assistant coroner, an officer of the law, or a private eye. She—in a cozy it’s usually a she, though a male associate is permissible—will be a fairly ordinary person, if nosier than most, with a keen mind, active intuition, and ability to put two and two together. If her first sum happens to be three, she’ll stay the course till she makes it four. No worry if things in a cozy seem unusually coincidental, for life is full of coincidences. In a cozy, as in every other novel, plot and style and characterization matter—and especially the character at center stage.

I’d probably shape my own cozy around a book editor who rents a holiday cottage for two weeks in the English countryside, taking her widowed mother along. On their second day there, the editor (call her Amelia), venturing out to explore the neighborhood, stumbles over a corpse in an abandoned dovecote. And then the plot begins to thicken.

The cozy heroine is someone I understand, someone not unlike you or me. She could be a schoolteacher, a retired civil servant or airline attendant, but she won’t be an honest-to-God detective. She may hire a car so she and Mother can get about, but she won’t undertake a car chase, have a shootout, or search the national database for suspects. She won’t have sex during the novel either, not with Mother along. She may think about it, dream of it, get an email or mobile call from her stateside beau, but on this outing sex will not happen.

Now that Fall is here, it's the perfect time for a fire in the fireplace and a good book in your hands. For many people, nothing is better than curling up with an engrossing whodunnit. While there is no shortage of mystery and thriller titles on bookstore shelves, there is always room for the next great police procedural or crime-solving grandmother. When you're done with the latest bestseller and ready to tackle writing your own, the following resources (compiled by our wonderful intern Deb Signorli) will help you bring the right amount of mystery or grit to your story.