101 Mystery Vocabulary Words List (For Writing a Mystery Story)

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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

Neel Rana

About the Author- Neel Rana is a young adult fiction writer and children’s book author. He is a literary enthusiast and the founder of Pandora Post. Neel holds a degree in BA Honors in English Literature and has been writing since 2017. His magnum opus YA short storybook, “The Drunken Ghost” has been well received by the readers.