Mystery Story Quotes

I have written a few children's books. The first book that I wrote was for children. It was called 'The Package', and it was a mystery story in pictures. It had no words.

You need a crime, a detective, and the solution.

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.

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

Mystery writing involves solving a puzzle, but 'high suspense' writing is a situation whereby the writer thrusts the hero/heroine into high drama.

Maybe I will write a memoir, perhaps I'll do some essays, or maybe I will write a mystery story.

In the early Seventies, I started writing a little autobiographical novel about my childhood - I made it into a mystery story.

The mystery story is two stories in one: the story of what happened and the story of what appeared to happen.

My high school English teacher in junior year, Dr. Robert Parsons, assigned us some Poe stories, including 'The Black Cat' and 'The Purloined Letter.' Being an animal person, I had trouble with 'The Black Cat!' I got hooked instead by 'The Purloined Letter,' a Poe story with detective C. Auguste Dupin.

It is unlike the quintessential thriller where someone is up to something and the audience is speculating. 'Johnny Gaddaar' is the opposite of a thriller. In this case, the audience knows right from the outset what transpires and who the likely culprit is. It is a suspense caper.

I really wanted to write an adventure story, a murder-mystery that was set during the gold-rush years in New Zealand.

I started to write [The Name of the Rose] in March of 1978, moved by a seminal idea. I wanted to poison a monk.

I began writing fiction because it was the only way to tell all the intricacies of a real-life spy story.

That's why I love crime novels so much: When I write a crime novel, the conflict is built in.

I'm really enjoying the character now, but I don't want to just be Philip Marlowe. I wouldn't mind playing him every couple of years, perhaps, as a kind of open franchise - you know?

An important part of any good mystery story like 'Original Sin' is that it's not just a game of 'Clue' with surprise after surprise after surprise, but the goal is to tell a story in the midst of that. Even once you know the solution to the mysteries, it's far from the whole story.

There was an ITV television production of the second novel I wrote, called 'Murder of Quality.' It was a little murder story set in a public school - I'd once taught at Eton, and I used that stuff.

The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote.

A lot of locked-room mysteries take time for you to pay attention and see the setup. They aren't thrillers, and they don't move along. The modern mystery story is really faster-paced, and I think modern readers tend to prefer seeing something happening on every other page.

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 promos with all of the beautiful women probably attracted some men, but the mystery story line is pretty cool. It's got that dark edge, and people will watch anything funny.

Just because it's got a gun doesn't make it a crime novel, and just because there's a horse doesn't make it a western.

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

The fundamental difference between the mystery story and the ghost story is the fact that a mystery demands a solution for its effectiveness; a ghost story is necessarily unsolvable; the reader must be willing to accept the fact that nothing is proved.

The incredible thing happens at the beginning of the story always, you notice, not the end. A Sherlock Holmes story is never a trick story.