Product Review

Emerson, author of the Lady Appleton and Diana Spaulding mystery series, turns her hand to how it’s done in this useful guide to writing historical crime fiction. Drawing on her own works and those of her fellow historical-mystery writers (Kerry Greenwood, Alan Gordon, Carola Dunn, and others), she lays out, in commonsense sequence, the stages of planning and writing a historical mystery. Chapters on choosing setting and character, research, crafting a plot, and selling your book offer much of the same information as similar chapters in other how-to books for mystery writers, but the information is nicely tailored for this particular genre.

The core of the book is Emerson’s personal take on writing and selling historical mysteries, but it also includes contributions from over forty other historical mystery writers ―practical advice, anecdotes, and suggestions for research―and input from assorted editors, booksellers, and reviewers. For both historical mystery writers and readers.