This article was originally written for Crime Reads.
Mysteries or Suspense
Publishers, booksellers, and many readers like to know the genre of a novel. Where will it sit on the bookstore shelf? How to categorise it online? Which types of readers will it appeal to?
Sometimes it’s easy to slot a book into a category or genre: romance, crime, or indeed, mystery. But there are lots of novels which are too slippery for that. They have plenty of suspense and often a good dose of secrets and the unexplained to propel the story forward, even though their premise is not built around a central mystery which follows a trail to a satisfying conclusion.
My novels have often been categorised as mysteries and although I’m okay with that, I don’t write them with that genre in mind. But I do try to use suspense in a number of ways. In my fourth novel, Unsettled Ground, a close reader might see some clearly placed clues in the first chapter, but whether a reader does spot them or not, the suspense which builds and the revelations that are scattered throughout the novel are more about the protagonist, Jeanie, discovering these surprises, rather than the reader.
One way a skilled writer can create suspense is to make us – the readers – develop it in our own minds. Leave just enough unsaid, and we will fill in the gaps. And the images in our heads are always worse than the reality. That’s why a writer or a screenwriter should never actually show the monster.
Another way to create suspense is to not allow the reader inside the head of the character who is able to provide the answers, and instead show us only glimpses through the eyes of others. Or alternatively, have the reader so close inside the protagonist’s head we experience their confusion and are kept in the dark for as long as they are.
Sometimes writers will show us the “terrible thing” right at the start of the book, and then circle back in time, as with The Secret History by Donna Tartt. There’s no mystery about what was done or who did it, but the suspense is created by making us guess when it is going to come and why the terrible thing was done.
Whichever suspense techniques I might use, when a reader contacts me after they’ve read one of my books to tell me that the suspense kept them reading long into the night, I know I’ve done my job.
Here are seven recommended novels which aren’t mysteries but are full of suspense. Click on the images to purchase on Bookshop.org where available:
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