Quote

Writing a mystery is like drawing a picture and then cutting it into little pieces that you offer to your readers one piece at a time, thus allowing them the chance to put the jigsaw puzzle together by the end of the book.

If the book is a mystery to its author as she's writing, inevitably it's going to be a mystery to the reader as he or she reads it.

The thing about being a mystery writer, what marks a mystery writer out from a chick lit author or historical fiction writer, is that you always find a mystery in every situation.

What I do is write, and I try to write as closely as I can into what I call 'the mystery.'

I don't think the problem is that people don't read enough mystery books, but that people don't read.

The mystery form was very helpful for me as a beginning writer because mystery novels and suspense novels have a beginning, a middle and an end.

I would say that all short stories have mystery naturally built into them.

How do you solve a mystery? How do you write a book? The techniques for starting both are surprisingly similar. Find an intriguing question and, pen and dagger tucked under cloak, search for clues.

Trying to solve the mystery is what I enjoy most about writing.

To write a good mystery you have to know where it will end before you can decide where it will begin... and I've always known where it will end.