Many romances have mystery subplots that take up between three to seventy-five percent of the page count, and the emphasis upon and quality of the mystery is very important to many readers.

As a writer, I’ve found there are three basic ways to include a mystery:

-the incidental mystery (the characters know it’s a mystery and are investigating it, but it’s a pretty minor matter–no murders, nothing huge or life-threatening, etc., etc.)

-the central mystery (something that is central to the lives of the characters or to the characters’ jobs or something else big, which the characters know about and are investigating)

-the accidental mystery (the characters don’t even know thre IS a mystery to be solved because of false assumptions they make at the outset)

Most classic romantic suspense have a central mystery. There is a serial killer on the loose, or a bank robber, or someone is trying to ruin one of the characters’ lives for mysterious reasons. As far as mysteries go, these must be the most solid and generally take up the longest page count. When the characters are being chased by the Mafia and yet decided to take a minivacation and spend three days falling in love and talking about their childhoods rather than figure out why they’re being chased or getting to a safe place, the credibility of the mystery–or of the characters’ intelligence–is stretched to the breaking point. With central mysteries, the characters should be focused upon the solving of the mystery as a life-and-death issue and everythign else, including the characters’ love lives, should be portrayed in reference to the mystery until it is solved. Nothing kills romantic suspense like the characters forgetting avout the suspense.

The incidental mystery is very common in all sorts of romance. All Night Long by Michelle Jerott is a great example of a truly excellent incidental mystery romance. The heroine is investigating to supposed desertion of a Civil War soldier–not exactly time-critical material here, but interesting and plenty to provide a good push for the plot. Most Amanda Quick books also have an incidental mystery, though sometimes they become dangerous enough to need to move toward central mystery status. A good fourth of all romances probably contain some incidental mystery element.

The accidental mystery is the rarest but is one of my favorites. *g* Jenny Cruisie often writes them–though Tell Me Lies has a murder plot that might be a central mystery if written by someone else, but the ignorance of the main character about the mystery for a large part of the book and the fact that she really doesn’t care much about the murder victim (however much she might be expected to under normal circumstances) makes it a true accidental mystery. If the main characters are entirely ignorant of any diabolical schemes for a large part of the story, then until the moment of revelation, the story is often an accidental mystery that transforms into either a central or an incidental mystery at the moment of revelation.

I’ve only used one of these–the accidental mystery. I had a story that needed most of the emphasis on the characters and their interactions but also needed a mystery-like crisis, so the accidental mystery fit the bill perfectly. One curious characteristic of accidental mysteries is that often, if you know it’s a mystery from the start and don’t get swept up in the character’s assuptions, these mysteries tend to be fairly straightforward, and, in fact, can get away with being the most simplistic. But that’s not the point to these mysteries. The characters’ ignorance of the presence of the mystery at all means that, though the pieces are usually all laid out, the reader isn’t led to puzzle over themto figure out a known ‘whodunit’ but to discover the truth with the same sort of surprise that the character does. And then go, “Of COURSE!” That’s the trick to writing accidental mysteries. It must be obvious enough that readers see it clearly in retrospect yet written in such a way that the mystery takes the readers by surprise. You can’t always be successful, of course. In my accidental mystery, about 5% of readers guessed it immediately and about 5% thought that the solution came out of the blue and had no support whatsoever. *g* But the beauty to the accidental mystery is that even if it doesn’t work for someone, the story can still work just fine.