Craft Books

  • Review: Talking About Detective Fiction

    Having read my fair share of craft books, several of them devoted to the mystery genre, I wasn’t sure how much new advice P. D. James’ classic would offer. So I was surprised to find that in eight succinct and highly readable chapters James adumbrates the history of the genre and its challenges as well

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  • Learning from the Masters: How to Write a Mystery

    The collection is edited by Lee Child with help from Laurie R. King. The essays are broken into four sections: The Rules and Genres; Other Mysteries; The Writing; and After the Writing. Rather than give an overview of these, I thought I would just offer some gems I found in each section.

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