Like a detective who needs clues to solve a crime, same as a writer needs to know the common mystery vocabulary words to write a breathtaking mystery story. So, If you are thinking about writing mystery fiction (which is also called detective fiction), then first you need to get familiar with the common mystery vocabulary words used in the genre.
Knowing all the important mystery vocabulary words makes it much easier for a writer to build up their mystery story and write it easily without spending much time looking for the perfect words to describe any event in the story.
Below is the list of common mystery genre vocabulary words used in mystery story writing. These words can also be used to brainstorm new ideas for your mystery fiction.
Related: Mystery Genre in Literature
101 Mystery Vocabulary Words List-
- Alibi
- Baffling
- Bizarre
- Breakthrough
- Catch
- Caution
- Cautiously
- Cleverly
- Clue
- Conspiracy
- Custody
- Crime
- Criminal
- Cryptic
- Culprit
- Curious
- Deduce
- Deny
- Destroy
- Detective
- Discovers
- Distress
- Doubt
- Elusive
- Encounters
- Enigma
- Escape
- Evidence
- Experts
- Explores
- Finds
- Fingerprint
- Flashback
- Forensic
- Foreshadowing
- Footprint
- Fraud
- Guilt
- Heist
- Hidden
- Homicide
- Hunch
- Intelligence
- Interrogate
- Investigate
- Investigation
- Investigator
- Lies
- Mislead
- Motive
- Murder
- Mystery
- Mystified
- Note
- Origins
- Offense
- Ominous
- Perpetrator
- Perplexing
- Police
- Problems
- Proof
- Puzzling
- Red herring
- Relieved
- Resolve
- Revelation
- Reward
- Riddles
- Risk
- Secret
- Shadow
- Shocked
- Silently
- Sinister
- Sleuth
- Sneaky
- Speculate
- Spy
- Strange
- Stranger
- Stumped
- Suspect
- Suspense
- Suspicions
- Testimony
- Theory
- Threatening
- Truth
- Uncanny
- Uncover
- Undercover
- Unease
- Unexplained
- Unknown
- Unnatural
- Unravel
- Unsolved
- Victim
- Vulnerable
- Witness
To write better mysteries and explore more mystery vocabulary words, you can start reading popular mystery books and the works of prominent mystery writers.
Start with reading the works of the queen of mystery, Agatha Christie‘s popular mystery novels and short story collections.
Related: 7 Popular Detective Novels
