It's never been more important to start your crime novel with high-stakes. Doesn't matter if it's life-or-death type peril, or if someone's marriage is about to go down the toilet. Maybe he's hanging from his fingernails from a cliff. Maybe she just arrived home from meeting up with her boyfriend, and hubby's sitting there in the dark kitchen waiting for her, his eyes full of dreadful knowing. Read more
Crime-writing

'Never use a metaphor and then explain it'
'For God's sake, never use a metaphor and then explain it...
You can assume a world from so little and readers will. So I'm more interested economy than encyclopaedism, in how little you can get away with rather than how much you can cram in...
I don't want to write puzzle stories that can be decoded to the correct answer... Read more