How To Write A Murder Mystery

Crane perfect author for Hollywood murder mystery

"The Bad Always Die Twice," by Cheryl Crane (Kensington Publishing, $24)

If anybody was born to write a mystery series about a real estate agent from Hollywood who is the daughter of a legendary screen siren, it's Cheryl Crane.

Her life story is an authentic Tinseltown tale: She had a privileged but emotionally chaotic upbringing as the only child of "sweater girl" Lana Turner. Crane became the central figure in one of Old Hollywood's greatest scandals when she was 14.

In her 1998 autobiography, "Detour: a Hollywood Story," Crane recounts how she stabbed Johnny Stompanato, a hoodlum and one of her mother's numerous romantic dalliances.

The actress had stayed with Stompanato through beatings and violent arguments. But on April 4, 1958, Crane overheard him threaten to kill her mother, and she came to her defense.

The blade punctured Stompanato's aorta and a kidney, killing him almost instantly.

A judge ruled the killing was justifiable homicide. But Crane's life fell apart after that: She spent time in a reform school, did drugs, attempted suicide.

Today, Crane is better known as the elegant blonde who sells real estate in Palm Springs. And that pretty well sums up Crane's lead character, Nikki Harper, too.

In "The Bad Always Die Twice," Harper finds herself smack in the middle of the mysterious murder of TV has-been Rex March. He's found dead in bed, stabbed through the eye, in the apartment of Nikki's gal pal and business partner, Jessica Martin.

What's really shocking, though, is that Rex was thought to have died six months earlier when the single-engine plane he was piloting crashed in the California desert.

The case immediately draws Nikki in. She's well-acquainted with the philandering Rex: She's handling the sale of the gaudy mansion where he lived with his long-suffering wife.

Nikki is also the person a panicked Jessica calls when the police suspect the promiscuous beauty of doing the deadly deed.

How To Write A Murder Mystery Novel And Get It Published | Jason ...

Seeing that I’ve written a murder mystery novel ( First Feature ), I thought some folks might be interested in how to write a murder mystery novel and get it published. In this case self published.

Writing a murder mystery novel is in many ways similar to writing any other type of book but there are some differences. The first difference is quite obvious, a murder mystery novel is about a murder first and foremost. The first step to writing a good murder mystery is to have a good murder to solve.

In a previous life, at least it seems that far away, I was a cop so I know a thing or 2 about murder most foul But if you have even a passing interest in human nature or humanity generally you can come up with a good murder mystery.

Let’s give it a try. I’m looking out of my window right now and across at the neighbour. She’s cleaning up something on the floor. Could it be blood? Why yes of course, especially if were wanting to write a murder mystery novel.

Whose blood is it? The babysitter’s. That just popped into my head. Did she kill the babysitter? Maybe, maybe not, could be someone else, but let’s say she did. Why did she kill the babysitter? And it is here at this question where a good murder mystery takes root. You should have several red herrings or people that could have killed the victim.

In this case, we could suggest that the husband could have killed the babysitter because he was having an affair with her and she was going to tell the wife. Perhaps the babysitter’s stepfather killed her. It was known that he was abusive to her.

Maybe a jealous girl friend on the school’s cheerleading squad because our victim had just become head cheerleader and the jealous girl’s boyfriend was flirting with her.

The key ingredient when writing a novel and especially when outlining a murder mystery novel is to have a few good motives for a few people to want to have killed the victim. Before you even get pen to paper you should have a good handle on the who of the whodunit and you should have a few other plausible red herrings to lead your reader astray.

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