Letters Behind the Bookshop Wall
During a routine renovation of an old family-owned bookstore, a hidden stack of letters tied to a notorious unsolved robbery from the 1930s is found behind a wall. The current owner, related to the original bookstore founder thought to be involved in the scheme, decides to unravel the truth.
Suggested length: A short story: 1,500 to 5,000 words, or flash fiction under 1,000
Start the clock
Pick a sprint, press start and keep going until it stops. Momentum beats polish on a first draft.
Make it yours
Three ways to take this prompt somewhere nobody else will.
- Tell it from the point of view of a suspect who is lying about something else.
- Give the victim a secret the reader learns before the detective does.
- Start with the confession, and make the story about why it's false.
Writing mystery books
Who did it? You get every clue and a fair shot at the answer.
A mystery opens with a puzzle, usually a death, and closes with the solution. In between, a detective (professional or not) gathers clues and suspects while the reader tries to get there first. A mystery looks backward, at a crime that has already happened.
What readers expect
- A crime or puzzle early on
- Clues, suspects and red herrings
- A detective the reader follows
- A solution that is surprising but fair
A tip before you start
Play fair. Every clue your detective uses should appear on the page first, ideally hidden in plain sight.
More Mystery and Crime prompts
- The Museum Heist CoinYou wake up to headlines that scream about a major heist at the museum you visited yesterday. Things get mysterious when you discover an ancient coin…
- The Hacker's Cold Case FilesA hacker who usually assists the police with their cyber security needs receives a peculiar file that seems to decode to dates and times of unsolved…
- The Cursed Gala JewelDuring a high society gala, a renowned jewel, reported to be cursed, goes missing. The host hires a down-on-luck private investigator to find the…
- Secrets in the Snowbound LibraryIn a small mountain town isolated by a snowstorm, the local sheriff discovers a series of coded messages hidden in library books. Each code deciphers…
Fifteen minutes in? Keep going.
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