By the end of this week I expect to complete my latest SF short story, a dark little piece titled, at least for now, Lady Jane. With that story wrapped I’m going to tackle one of my challenges for this year, a non-genre story.

Next week I’ll start on a mystery story titled “A Question of Justice.” This is a story that has been rattling around my head for a number of months, and it has been an interesting experience plotting out a mystery.

Of course, the first thing I had to determine what sort of mystery was I going to tell? It seems to me, and I admit to not being terribly well versed in the form, that mysteries fall into two broad categories; The Who & How done it, where there is an unknown murderer and the reader, like the detective is trying to piece together how the murder was committed and by whom, while the second is the How to Catch’ Em, where the reader knows who the murderer is and the suspense in seeing how the detective can unravel the supposedly perfect crime, Colombo being a prefect example of this form.

The Who & How is also a game the writer plays with the reader. Providing clues and hints, and red herrings hopefully giving enough to solve the puzzle yet not so blatantly that the solution seems obvious.

I’m going to attempt the Who and How style, but with an under theme of deterrence and the immorality of that concept. I have no idea if I will submit this to any markets. I hope it comes off well enough to send out, but these are dark and uncharted waters for me.