Is it a Thriller, Suspense or Mystery?
W hen I think of the various genres, some of them sort of run together. Romance , Women’s Fiction and Historical Fiction tend to run together. Science Fiction and Fantasy tend to run together, so much so that they are often referred to as Speculative Fiction . Then there are Thrillers , Suspense and Mystery . What is it that distinguishes a thriller from a suspense novel from a mystery ? Keep in mind that each of these can have elements of the other. A thriller may have mystery and a mystery may have suspense . For that matter, they may contain romance . So to the answer the question, we should look at the book as a whole. We should consider the most dominant elements of the book. The most dominant element of a thriller is action. An example of a thriller might be that we begin with a car chase on page one. Our protagonist cop is chasing a cop killer through the streets with many other cars. The chase comes to a deadly end for the cop killer, but before he dies he tells t...