"Frey urges writers to aim high - not to try to write a good-enough-to-get-published mystery, but a damn good mystery. A damn good mystery is first a dramatic novel, Frey insists - a dramatic novel with living, breathing characters - and he shows his readers how to create a living, breathing, believable character who will be clever and resourceful, willful and resolute, and will be what Frey calls "the author of the plot behind the plot."" "Frey then shows, in his well-known, entertaining, accessible (and often humorous) style, how the characters - the entire ensemble, including the murderer, the detective, the authorities, the victims, the suspects, the witnesses, and the bystanders - create a complete and coherent world."--BOOK JACKET.

Why People Read Mysteries and Other Useful Stuff for Mystery Writers to Know -- Ideas to Get You Started--The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly -- The Plot Behind the Plot -- Creating a Murderer -- How to Become Intimate with a Murderer -- The Hero/Detective -- Creating a Damn Good Hero -- The Other Characters: Some Mythic, Some Not and Mythic Motifs of Interest to Mystery Writers -- All About Plotting, Stepsheets, Flowcharts, and That Kind of Stuff or How to Get the Hell Out of the Way and Let Your Characters Tell the Story -- Designing the Plot for Fun and Profit -- Plotting Theory -- The Hero/Detective Gets to Work -- How Our Hero/Detective Figures It All Out -- All About Bringing Off a Gripping Climax and Other Good Stuff -- Gotcha! Putting the Murderer in the Bag -- Writing Damn Good Prose -- The Fine Art of Writing the Mystery Scene -- All About Viewpoints and Voices or Who's Telling This Damn Story Anyway--Me or Him? Him or Me? -- Drafting, Rewriting, and Polishing Your Damn Good Mystery -- The Killer Attitude or Getting an Agent, Dealing with Editors, Promotion, Book Signings, and Living the Writer's Life.