The suspense is one of the best things about crime fiction, and learning how best to create it is one of the key skills of crime writers. There are lots of different ways of creating suspense, and as you write more and more, you will probably develop your own methods and preferred options. However, there are still plenty of popular, successful methods that you could utilise in your own work.

Here are five ways you can create suspense in crime fiction.

Keep building the mystery

One of the best ways to create suspense has got to be to keep the mystery coming. Keep layering on new little clues and twists, raising the stakes ever higher. If you do it properly, it will make your readers want to read straight through to the end without stopping.

Make the readers care

Suspense also works best if your readers care about the outcome. After all, if your character is completely unlikeable or two-dimensional and thus not very interesting, it will be harder to ramp up the tension when they are in a dangerous situation. Give your readers a good reason to root for your characters and care about what happens to them, and any suspense will take on a new dimension.

Consider foreshadowing

A great thing about good crime novels is that as we read them, we know that all the clues are there – but we still can’t put it together until the end. You can create suspense for readers by creating a tight, interesting mystery that gets them thinking but that remains a conundrum until you choose to reveal the solution.

Employ cliff-hangers

Of course, we cannot forget the cliff-hanger. These need to be used properly and be carefully deployed for best effect, but tricks such as building up the action for pages only to end the chapter on a killer cliff-hanger are eternally popular in crime fiction – and they’re popular for a reason.

Offer success, and then withdraw it

Another trick for building suspense is to make your protagonist (and therefore the reader) think that they’ve won. Give them a taste of victory and then snatch it away. And then make it so they’re further away from the truth than ever before and raise the stakes again.

What are your favourite techniques for creating suspense?