Behind the Pages: Why I Write Mysteries

Why write mystery?

For me, the answer is simple: because no other genre feels quite so rich with tension.

Historical mystery allows a writer to work with more than crime alone. It brings in setting, class, expectation, restraint, reputation, and silence. People in earlier eras often lived closer to formality, and that formality creates a fascinating pressure. What cannot be said openly becomes more dangerous. What must be hidden becomes more meaningful. A glance, a letter, a missing object, an overheard remark, or a name entered into the wrong ledger can carry enormous weight.

That is a wonderful world for mystery.

I have always loved stories where the setting matters as much as the plot. A great house, a village with long memory, a corridor after dark, a study with locked drawers, a train platform in winter, a hospital ward, a churchyard, a solicitor’s office, a registry book, a sealed envelope — these places and objects are never just background. In the best mysteries, they become part of the machinery of suspense.

Historical fiction also gives us distance, and that distance can sharpen everything. When we look into the past, we often see human nature more clearly. Ambition, fear, pride, love, envy, duty, and self-preservation are not modern inventions. They simply take different forms depending on the time and place. That is part of what makes the genre feel timeless. Though the clothing, customs, and rules may change, the human heart rarely does.

I’m especially drawn to mysteries that unfold with patience. Stories that don’t rush the reader, but instead invite them into a world where every detail may matter. I love the old-fashioned pleasure of suspicion slowly narrowing, of truth gathering itself quietly, of tension building room by room until someone finally says what should have been said much earlier.

That sensibility shapes the kind of books I want to write.

My hope is to create novels that feel immersive, elegant, and quietly unsettling — stories with strong atmosphere, memorable characters, and mysteries that reward close attention. I want readers to enjoy not only the question of who did it, but the deeper questions underneath: why they did it, what it cost, and what had to be concealed to keep the truth from surfacing.

Historical mystery endures because it gives us both escape and recognition. It takes us somewhere else, but it reminds us that people have always loved, lied, feared, and guarded their secrets.

And where there are secrets, there will always be stories worth telling.

— Allen