Peter Shaffer Quotes

Murder mysteries are puzzles that are fun to resolve.

I read a lot of detective novels.

I'm really into the detective drama genre.

Where there's a will there's a detective story.

I had a publishing history of murder mysteries.

Crime fiction is a way of satisfying that nosy need to know.

The old detective story that's got a really complicated motive doesn't apply to mine.

The detective genre is not easy because you've got to get to a conclusion that is unexpected.

Occasionally, I have written about stories related to crime, but I have never attempted a traditional detective story. So I want to write a true detective story.

The detective story is the normal recreation of noble minds.

What would you have if you didn't have a murder in a mystery? You'd have something for the lower-level readers. When you get up into the upper levels, there's nothing that will engage you or compel you or get your emotions churning like a murder. It's the ultimate stakes.

I spent the first twenty years of my writing career preparing for the mystery genre, which is my favorite literary form.

The thing about being a mystery writer, what marks a mystery writer out from a chick lit author or historical fiction writer, is that you always find a mystery in every situation.

I would love to write a mystery - a romantic, funny mystery.

I am more of a suspense writer. A mystery writer solves mysteries. I am a 'high suspense' writer.

They've also asked me now to start on another series that we're gonna do after this Frontier Earth. But it's not science fiction, it's more in the Mystery and Crime division and that's another area I'm very interested in.

When I was young, I knew William Burroughs really well. And William's secret desire, which he never quite did, was to write a straightforward detective novel.

My crime novels are highly structured. I never start out with a dead body. I start with an impossible scenario. Opening questions should be mysterious, weird, intriguing, and contain the seeds of the solution. The structure has to be meticulous - I'm a structure freak.

For me the Anita series is built like a mystery series, which means that as much as possible each book stands alone, so you have a mystery to solve from the beginning to the end of the book.

A mystery is a whodunit. You know what happened, but not how or who's behind it. A thriller, or a suspense, is a howdunit. You know what happened, and you usually know who did it, but you keep reading because you want to know how they pulled it off.

Mysteries include so many things: the noir novel, espionage novel, private eye novels, thrillers, police procedurals. But the pure detective story is where there's a detective and a criminal who's committed a murder and leaves clues for the detective and the careful reader to find.

Mystery fiction was considered a stepchild of literature.

Because I read so much nonfiction for work, I enjoy fiction most, especially detective novels and mysteries that keep me awake at night.

I liked the idea of a whodunit revolving around a marriage.

I've been surprised that 'Elizabeth is Missing' has been so well received as a crime book. I love mystery stories, and that is what I decided to write.