Gumshoe: Creative Writing Through Mystery Stories - David McRobbie

Published by Longman Cheshire Pty Limited: Melbourne, Australia, 1989.

Here is a book that I have read solely to get some ideas in putting together a unit of work for some of my English students. I selected the book from a pile being given away by my former Head-of-Department, and when I noticed that some of my students had an interest in mystery fiction, I pulled the book back out and read through it for ideas.

For what I have been working on, it is a helpful, if slightly 'light' resource. McRobbie breaks the mystery genre down into its different elements - so chapters on such things as plot, settings and 'The Detective' - and intersperses them with original pieces of short mystery fiction. As someone who enjoys the 'whodunnit' genre, these stories are not very complicated, but then, that's not the point! Although for most of the stories I found myself going, "Well, of course its that person, they just said [insert incriminating statement here]," in making it that obvious McRobbie is able to highlight to high-school students how clues should be scattered throughout stories.

If I wasn't planning on developing some mystery stories with my students, this would not be a book I would come back to. But as I am planning on doing so, this is a good resource. 

It would also help to get your head around writing whodunnits if you were a wanna-be author.

Which, I guess, also makes me the target audience.

Completed 19 October 2022.

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