Back to the Regency

I'm trying to keep focused. Really! It's difficult for me right now because I'm revising my old Regencies to put them up for sale in the Kindle store. I sure used to write long books. I mean, here are these "little" Regencies and they're 400 pages long. But boy, do I like them. I mean, I don't mean to brag, but I still love them and the characters.

But I'm working a bit on the Regency mystery series. I got seduced into working on the second book in the series. But I realized, yes, finally, that the first book should come first! So I'm going back to that. I have to do some research on Regency-era medicine (the hero is a physician), which is good, because I agreed to write an article about that!

But right now, I'm skating over all the details (like whether they understood about blood circulation and no bleeding after death back then) and figuring I can fill that in later. What I want to do is go back and make room in the first chapter for some suspects. The hero thinks the heroine probably did the murder (she has the motive), but of course she didn't. So I have to insert some other possible murderers. This is a country inn, but on the road to Brighton, so some likelies can be there. Oh, I made a storm happen too, so they're sort of trapped there. But it's really, really hard for the hero to notice anyone else because he's so focused on the heroine (who has suddenly kissed him). I'm not really sure how I can get the other suspects in there.

What I might do is have two or three in the first chapter (the night before the murder), and introduce a few more in the morning when they discover the body. I think I need to make this inn a lot bigger! And I have invented a reason they're all in the vicinity-- they're all headed to a ball being given in Brighton by the Prince Regent.

I find the most problematic task in a mystery is just that-- getting several plausible suspects nearby. I know the ending (where the murder is explained somehow, preferably gracefully) can be difficult too.

I just read a mystery where the ending is just a series of people explaining the mystery, and I don't want to do that. I want, by the time we get to the end, most of the "how" is clear-- how the murderer did the killing-- and all that's really left is the "why"-- the motivation.