The Mystery, Crime, and Thriller Group discussion

Gail I tend to use mystery...but also police procedurals and psychological forensics(I prefer that to the other forensics lol). Ive had to play around with words and phrases to find what I want...thus the police procedurals phrase..I love British series which feature the lead Inspector... so I have also used Inspector so and so(name) and it will often give you "you may also like" options.....hope this helps! Marti

I don't know that I actually use any key words, Gail. I tend to look for certain authors, then also book covers that seem interesting, then read the synopsis. I don't know that specific key words actually attract my attention. Good question.

Bill and Gail....I do the same thing ...using specific authors names...but IF Im looking for a new author or want to just see whats out there, I do as I said in my first message...trying to find the right words to get the right result can be "interesting"! lol

Great! Ill look forward to it! :)

Another way to do it is to look at best sellers on
Amazon. Here are the categories and sub-genres they use to rank mysteries:
Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Mystery
African American
British Detectives
Collections & Anthologies
Cozy
Gay & Lesbian
Hard-Boiled
Historical
International Mystery & Crime
Police Procedurals
Private Investigators
Series
Women Sleuths

Don't forget that mysteries can also be a subgenre. I know that if you look at best selling romance novels a subgenre under Romance is Mysteries. You can get more ideas by picking a few books you've read and liked and look at the product page in Amazon, scroll down to the ranking links (e.g. "#1234 Paid in Kindle Store") click that link, then on the left click Kindle ebooks then Mystery, Thrillers and Suspense. Not all mysteries appear in the Mysteries category. It may turn out your favorites are categorized as Thrillers/Legal or Suspense/Psychological, etc. Explore them all. As an author I know that it is sometimes difficult to choose which categories best fit your book. Amazon only allows us to choose two. For example one of my books I considered a Mystery/Medical as well as a Mystery/Police Procedural but it also fit as a Thriller/Medical, Thriller/Crime, and Crime Fiction/Murder and Crime Fiction/Serial Killers. I could only choose two.

Gail, are you familiar with the website, http://stopyourekillingme.com/ ? They group mystery books by author, setting, historical time period, the sleuth's job, etc. It may help narrow down your search some. Also, I use it as a go-to reference for finding the order of books in a series.