To get published, your writing has to make people other than your mother and the friend who owes you big time want to read it. That means sounding like the polished pro you want to be rather than the amateur you currently are. A lot of rejections stem from amateurish writing, which provides the quick-decision excuse a busy publisher's "screener-outer" needs to get through a pile of submissions as quickly as possible. Amateurism comes in many guises, as Ms. Roerden makes clear when showing you how to identify and purge it; not just things that can be picked up with spell checkers or grammar check.

I read this as both a quondam publisher's screener-outer and a writer who wants to be published someday. Both sides gave Ms. Roerden emphatic thumbs up. I learned a lot and nodded in agreement at the rest. I also enjoyed reading her. That's important; it makes the lessons easier to absorb and it's natural to better trust writing advice that is itself well written.

Even the book's organization is fun, with labeled "clues" and headers based on aspects of a criminal investigation. It flows in a nice conversational style, salted with dry humor, which instructs but never pontificates. Lessons are illustrated with examples from a wide range of published mysteries that help you connect with how getting it right feels to a reader, while also showing that there is no one and only way to get it right. Keeping the reader in mind is one of the key underlying themes throughout the book.

Whether your work-in-progress is a mystery novel or not, I highly recommend Don't Murder Your Mystery as a useful and enjoyable guide to moving from someone who writes to someone others want to read.