Ten Reasons to Write Crime Fiction

Crime fiction is as popular now as it’s ever been. Some readers love it because they enjoy solving puzzles. Others like experiencing all the dark and dangerous things they’d prefer to avoid in real life. Still more just want to see justice done.

So much for the readers. What compels crime writers to grab their pens or fire up their laptops? I can’t speak for anyone else, but here’s a list of ten things that motivate me.

I Write Crime Fiction Because …

1. If there’s one thing better than solving puzzles, it’s creating them
2. It beats tailing dangerous hoodlums down sunless streets in the driving rain
3. If I don’t, they’ll mail my grandmother’s head to me in a cardboard box
4. I need the money to pay the ransom
5. It’s safer to confront criminals on the page than it is in real life
6. There’s nothing else to do in this cosy little village whose eccentric residents seem hell-bent on committing an endless stream of highly improbable murders
7. How else am I going to find out whodunnit?
8. My fingerprints are on the keyboard so I might as well just keep tapping away
9. It’s something to do until I make parole
10. The game’s afoot!