Guide to Writing the Mystery Novel: Part II

Guide to Writing the Mystery Novel was somewhat easy to write, probably because I had been thinking about it for three years. Some chapters took me a day to write, some two or three days. I went at it steadily, so that I would never lose touch with the purpose of the book and the tone of the book.

After I finished, I let a couple of weeks go by, and then I sat down with the manuscript and read it critically, marking it up heavily. From these marked-up pages I wrote the second draft. I showed...