THE CRIME WRITER'S HANDBOOK, by Douglas Wynn, is a remarkably effective tool in the workshop of every writer who begins to write crime or detective novels. The book has the suggestive subtitle: “65 ways to kill your victim, on paper”, of course. Although then everyone can do what they want with it, if they are not afraid to face the weight of the law. The structure of the work presents three well-defined and successive parts: murder methods, detection and forensic science methods, finally a miscellaneous part that includes police procedures, legal terms and other useful concepts, often necessary to avoid making mistakes by those who are not familiar with the technical aspect of the matter. Since one thing is the aesthetic aspect of the murder, for which I rather refer to de Quincey and his “Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts”, and another thing is the task of the police from the moment the crime scene is established until the end of the trial, if there is one. In each of the parts, the different entries are presented in alphabetical order, which facilitates a subsequent search. Also next to each method appears a notation out of 10, which includes three aspects regarding the first part, murder methods, namely: availability (if the murderer has decided to strangle his victim, he does not have to go far to find the crime weapon, since it is his own hands; on the other hand, if he has decided to use curare, then it will be somewhat cruder, which is why Wynn rates the latter with a score of 3 out of 10), effectiveness, and the greater or lesser ease with which investigators they can detect it. To continue with curare, let us specify that it has a 7 out of 10 for effectiveness and a 4 out of ten for detection. Regarding the detection methods used by law enforcement, the rating is given in order of two aspects: ease of observation and effectiveness. All of this is accompanied by brief summaries of both real and fictional cases.

If you are interested, you can find it on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crime-Writers-Handbook-guides/dp/0749003456

And whoever wants to see how I have used it myself:

https://books2read.com/ap/xrw0jL/Alba-Longa

Automatic translation of the original article. The language of this page does not determine the language of the book: purchase links lead to the editions indicated, including editions in their original language.