How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit Martin Edwards’s website.
The aim of Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife is to give readers the chance to play mystery games of various kinds as well as enjoying a twisty mystery. Titles are very important, but it wasn’t easy to find a fresh idea that worked for a crime novel set at Christmas. I was keen on Evil under the Snow, as a jokey riff on Agatha Christie’s Evil under the Sun, but my editor suggested Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife. In the end we compromised. Evil under the Snow became the title of a podcast that plays an important part in the story. And I enjoyed finding ways to make my editor’s choice of title highly relevant to what happens in the remote village of Midwinter – even though there is no character called Miss Winter in the story. But the elements of the title all come together, again in a jokey way, in...[read on]
Writers Read: Martin Edwards (April 2013).
The Page 69 Test: The Frozen Shroud.
The Page 69 Test: Dancing for the Hangman.
The Page 99 Test: The Arsenic Labyrinth.
The Page 99 Test: Waterloo Sunset.
My Book, The Movie: Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife.
Writers Read: Martin Edwards.
Q&A with Martin Edwards.
--Marshal Zeringue
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