Clues

I'm beginning to see a light a the end of the tunnel with my WIP. I've finally determined on a route to take to the end that pleases me, and I've come up with a couple of twists I like. Now all I have to do is persevere. It's grunt work, now. Sit and type it out, find the right word, the right sentence.

One technical detail every mystery writer has to deal with is how to dole out the clues. You want to lead your reader on, like scattering bread crumbs through the forest. You want to play fair with your reader, and give her all the information she needs to be able to solve the mystery along with the sleuth. Yet you want to keep her guessing. It's a bit of a problem, and it takes some skill to know just how much information is enough without being too much.

It's easy enough to determine how often you should drop a clue. Be sparing with clues early in the story, then as you get near the end, the clues should come faster. But which piece of information to reveal? Start out with general discoveries, and become more and more specific as the story goes on. When do we reveal that the killer had to have entered through the basement window, therefore Suspect A is far too large? How soon should the reader know the victim had a clandestine affair with Suspect B's wife 25 years earlier? When do you drop the final bit of information that makes it possible to solve the mystery?

Savvy mystery readers are hard to fool. How do I lead him astray while giving him all the right clues? He knows the killer is seldom the most likely suspect, nor is the killer often a recurring character in a series. Should I therefore surprise him and have my killer be the most likely suspect or a series regular?

Lovers of mystery novels know all the common mystery writer tricks. The mystery writer knows they know. I quite enjoy trying to anticipate what the reader is going to think, and to write in little twists and turns to play with the reader's mind. 

Whether I can pull it off or not is another story.