Writing a Crime Story

The Crime Writer’s Reference Guide, 1001 Tips for Writing the Perfect Murder (2nd Edition) by the late Martin Roth is not a book that you read for pleasure on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

It is a reference book that rests on your bookshelf. When you are writing a story that needs an accurate portrait of anything that deals with a crime. You reach for it and use it for blood. You'll need to read it, though, so you know why you write with accuracy, and detailing a fictional crime story.

Take a story about a serial killer. You need to create a profile, and you look in the book’s glossary under serial murder. Turn to the pages designate, and discover there is not just one type of serial killer but four. Informing you, “studies reveal that most serial killers are white males between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five and are usually products of working-or-lower-middle-class families.

Serial killers often seek victims from upper-middle-class backgrounds. Many serial killers are charming, selfish, impulsive and ambitious: many come from broken homes or homes where they were abused… Few serial killers express any feelings of guilt or remorse for their crimes.” Wow! A brilliant start for a classic character study. Now that I think about, most of the crime stories I have read or seen in movies fit this profile.

I enjoyed the chapter on language. It is an essential tool for any crime writer with such slang as a "throwaway" - which means gun or clothes were worn and discarded by the mugger to avoid pursuit.

How about "pigeon" - which means victim. This chapter supplies enough dialogue ideas to keep you writing dialogue for twelve CSI spin-offs.

Reading the book filled my head with straightforward ideas for stories and ample characters. What also fascinated me was the character description of cops, what their lives are like and not like, creating a whole scope of ideas. My fingers were itching to click the keys on my keyboard and start writing.

Roth’s book gives you all the information needed to create the crime. You can start with the criminal act, the investigation of the crime scene, prosecution of the criminal, and end with life in prison. He offers plenty of examples of television shows that truthfully illustrate crime stories.

Finally, if the chapter you are reading isn’t enough to fill your creative imagination, which is hard to believe, there is a section called “Where do you go from here.” This chapter holds ample listings of other books written on that subject.

All things considered, Crime Writer’s Reference Guide is a must for any writer about to write a story centered on a crime or even if you have your story in your computer or on paper and you need to make sure you got all your crime facts straight.

“Just the facts Mam.”