The best thing about writing crime fiction (mysteries and thrillers) is the endless font of ideas. Thieves are at work (the Louvre!), scams are abundant, surveillance is creepy, shenanigans run rampant. The damage people can do to each other and themselves seems endless. Writing my new destination thriller She Knew Too Much, I was able to take advantage of a number of societal aberrations: murder, theft, scamming of a high order, kidnapping, fake identity, weaknesses in the law enforcement establishment, and more. It takes place in Rome, which means the mafia can be part of the picture, along with Italy’s Byzantine law enforcement structure.

One of the greatest advantages an author has in putting together a mystery/thriller is that these stories typically deal with people who are at one of the most consequential times of their lives. There’s emotional intensity, fear and frustration. Risk. Drama. People are not necessarily at their best—or maybe they are. They learn things about their community, friends, family, partners, and themselves which sometimes they’d rather not know. It’s a time in their lives when what they do really matters. An important challenge for writers is to make the stakes matter to readers too.

A lot of writers play it safe and rely on worn-out plotlines. I read and review about 50 new crime/mystery/thriller books a year, and many of them still rely on genre clichés. Writers need to come up with something fresher than serial killers, gaslighting spouses, reunions of old friends where the secrets finally come out, and morally weary detectives with a divorce and a drinking problem. The ease with which an author can get sucked into those overdone plots is one of the cons.

Mystery stories are very popular (pro), so writers have to get their facts right—weapons, police procedure, geography and so on—which takes research (a con for some authors). Factual errors make a story lose credibility. At the same time, the author isn’t writing a textbook. No reader enjoys a big indigestible information dump. (The worst example I can think of was an author’s description of a weapon in which he used actual bullet points—not the shooting kind, the PowerPoint kind.) Recognizing the truly necessary details and artfully weaving them into the story is another of the writer’s challenges.

The need for research isn’t a con for me. Research is part of my process, and it always gives me ideas I would never have otherwise. In She Knew Too Much, I identified a small suburban town north of Rome where a gang member could hide. I found out (map research and street camera) that the town I’d chosen has a farmer’s market on Saturdays. Having the gang member visit that market, in full view of the street camera, became part of the story.

Another pro-might-be-con is the ubiquity of cell phones, street cameras (in some places), and information technology. Some stories or TV mysteries could be solved and trouble avoided if characters would just make a phone call. Perhaps this explains the popularity of setting stories a few decades—even centuries—ago. It avoids the technology complication but opens up significant new research challenges. Genie Clarke, the main character in She Knew Too Much, has to go completely off social media to keep the gangsters from tracking her. As a travel blogger with an active online presence, she feels even more disconnected from her usual world.

That’s her environment, and that’s part of the story. You can order it here from:
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