Yes, this is what you have been waiting for: the investigator. I am using that word rather than detective because it covers both the professional and the amateur sleuth. If you’ve read a variety of mystery stories you will probably know that the investigator can range from the sweet old lady to the seasoned homicide detective with a wide range in between.

There are a number of things you need to decide about your sleuth before you start writing. The first one is fairly obvious: how did he or she get involved in the crime? If he’s a professional detective, the answer is probably a given; it was assigned to him. The amateur, on the other hand, requires more creativity. Perhaps the victim was her sister or daughter, or perhaps the accused killer is a relative. Miss Marple was very good at inviting herself into cases, but Poirot and Sherlock Holmes were usually hired by a concerned party or a detective.

Another thing worth considering is the time period when the story takes place. Yes, there are amateur investigators around at present. YouTube offers a number of stories about ordinary individuals either accidentally or with considerable effort manage to expose the truth. Often these are ‘cold’ cases, all but forgotten by society. However, such cases are fairly uncommon. These days, investigations are led by seasoned detectives who are aided by technological marvels I probably can’t spell. The age of the amateur isn’t exactly over, but it’s not that common.

You also need to consider the environment where the crime occurs. Whilst the snow-bound country house or train so beloved by Mrs Christie is enticing if you want to plot a story with a limited number of suspects, this age of mobile phones and the internet make that form of isolation less likely. As we have seen from the awful headlines, murders can occur in department stores, bookshops, train stations and, really, anywhere. As you can imagine, that makes solving such crimes a challenge for the unfortunate detective, but also for the writer who wants to ground his / her story in modern reality.

Even under these circumstances you can still bring in the amateur. Perhaps he was a witness to the crime and feels the official police are focusing on the wrong man. Or maybe he, himself, is a the one suspected — that has to motivate a fellow, right? But if you do opt to go down the police procedural route you must, must do your research. I mean, you need to do your research in any case, but you really cannot fudge the details here.

Let’s move on to the investigator’s character. For Agatha Christie and many other mystery writers the puzzle was the focus so the reader didn’t know very much about the detective’s background or personal life. Likewise, it took an age before Conan Doyle revealed that Sherlock Holmes had a brother. As for other relatives, most of what we think we know comes from fans who have developed their own background for the Great Detective. In contrast, Dorothy L Sayers turned Lord Peter Wimsey into a well developed character, though it took several books to reach that point.

During your plotting and drafting you need to decide if the story will lean more heavily towards character or towards the puzzle. If your investigator isn’t a professional, you need to give him or her a compelling reason to get involved in the case. Despite what you might see in your favourite mystery programmes, detective work is exhausting, messy, and often very, very dangerous.

Alternatively, you could go in a very different direction and make the criminal the protagonist. The Talented Mr Ripley and the Dexter stories do this well. As always, it is up to you, the writer. I would caution you to make those choices as early as you can because otherwise you will spent most of your time second-guessing yourself.

Next week we will start looking at some of the other elements of the mystery, no less important than those we have examined so far.

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