I think they work together…

Suspense and mystery.

We try to find out who did what to whom and why, but within that, we need a swirl of possibilities and events to make that final scene all come together.

Building suspense can be fun, but also a pain in the you-know-what.

In the first Minivan Mom Mystery book, I had a few key scenes in mind from the second I sat down at the keyboard.  I had this idea for a black car to play throughout the book.  It was actually easy to write the suspense scenes...