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.
Related: Mystery Genre in Literature
101 Mystery Vocabulary Words List-
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.
1. Alibi
2. Baffling
3. Bizarre
4. Breakthrough
5. Catch
6. Caution
7. Cautiously
8. Cleverly
9. Clue
10. Conspiracy
11. Custody
12. Crime
13. Criminal
14. Cryptic
15. Culprit
16. Curious
17. Deduce
18. Deny
19. Destroy
20. Detective
21. Discovers
22. Distress
23. Doubt
24. Elusive
25. Encounters
26. Enigma
27. Escape
28. Evidence
29. Experts
30. Explores
31. Finds
32. Fingerprint
33. Flashback
34. Forensic
35. Foreshadowing
36. Footprint
37. Fraud
38. Guilt
39. Heist
40. Hidden
41. Homicide
42. Hunch
43. Intelligence
44. Interrogate
45. Investigate
46. Investigation
47. Investigator
48. Lies
49. Mislead
50. Motive
51. Murder
52. Mystery
53. Mystified
54. Note
55. Origins
56. Offense
57. Ominous
58. Perpetrator
59. Perplexing
60. Police
61. Problems
62. Proof
63. Puzzling
64. Red herring
65. Relieved
66. Resolve
67. Revelation
68. Reward
69. Riddles
70. Risk
71. Secret
72. Shadow
73. Shocked
74. Silently
75. Sinister
76. Sleuth
77. Sneaky
78. Speculate
79. Spy
80. Strange
81. Stranger
82. Stumped
83. Suspect
84. Suspense
85. Suspicions
86. Testimony
87. Theory
88. Threatening
89. Truth
90. Uncanny
91. Uncover
92. Undercover
93. Unease
94. Unexplained
95. Unknown
96. Unnatural
97. Unravel
98. Unsolved
99. Victim
100. Vulnerable
101. 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
