Profile of a sociopath

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most of the two million psychopaths in North America aren't murderers. They're our friends, lovers and co-workers. They're outgo...

Profile of the Sociopath

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Glibness and Superficial Charm Manipulative and Conning They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as pe...

Revenge and the people who seek it

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Historically, there are two schools of thought on revenge. The Bible, in Exodus 21:23, instructs us to "give life for life, eye for eye...

plotting and character

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How do you plot an entire mystery novel? How I craft plot has changed radically over the last four books. With BIG RED TEQUILA, I did very l...

Plotting

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Even more than writing in other genres, mystery writing tends to follow standard rules. This is because readers of mysteries seek a particul...

Mystery Novel formula

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The following outline serves the modern mystery novel, as defined by editors and publishers. A typical story will contain 60,000 to 65,000 w...

WHODUNIT

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A killer will disguise himself or herself as a different character, only to appear as themselves in the next scene. Impostors are handled we...

Agatha code

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Agatha Christie believed that economy of wording was particularly important in detective stories; that the reader did not want to heard the ...

Tropes in Agatha Christie's novels

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Agatha Christie ’s reputation as The Queen of Crime was built by the large number of classic tropes that she introduced, or for which she p...