Book excerpt: Students naturally love the thrill of solving crimes and cracking mysteries. Why not allow them to learn to write their own suspenseful stories? Writing Mysteries in the Classroom takes students step-by-step through the process of creating a good mystery story. Lessons include creating believable settings, writing suspenseful plots, detailing a crime scene, implementing mysterious tones and moods, describing suspicious characters, and writing realistic dialogue. Each lesson includes examples for students to follow and contains exercises that allow students to progressively complete their own detective stories. Grades 5-8