Next to romance novels, it's the mystery or thriller that sells and literary agents can't seem to get enough good manuscripts to the publishing houses that crave them. The key, of course, is that your thriller novel has to be well written, with a plot that's not full of holes. Researching your details could only help.
Amok, written in 2003, was popular enough in Poland that it attracted the interest of the police in Wroclaw. Author Krystian Bala put together an intricate plot, described the crime with plenty of detail, provided a revenge motive for his main character, and then sat back to wait for the royalties to pour in. It was the police who came to his door, claiming that the plot of Amok adhered precisely to a murder that occurred in 2000.
Mr. Bala insisted that his novel was pure fiction, but Inspector Jacek Wroblewski found that parts of the novel read like the case notes for the real murder of businessman Dariusz Janiszewski, who was kidnapped, tortured and then drowned. In fact, there were situations in the novel that matched precisely some details from the murder that were not known to the public. The author insisted that he had based his novel on news reports and then made up enough to flesh out the manuscript. And the fact that Mr. Bala's wife was reportedly having an affair with the murdered gentleman was pure coincidence.
Was the novel penned by the travel writer particularly well researched, or were the police on to something? As it turns out, Mr. Bala sold Mr. Janiszewski's phone on E-Bay shortly after the murder, a little detail that he failed to include in his novel but which featured prominently in his trial. The author has been sentenced to twenty-five years.
Careful research will help to construct a well-crafted thriller that will catch a publisher's eye. It is not necessary, however, to actually kill someone.
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