How to write a satisfactory summing-up in crime fiction? (I don't have the answer)

AI instruction: woman wearing black coat and black jeans with multi-coloured hat, short white hair, walking along road through valley with river, ice, hills, trees

I didn't do any editing, didn't even open my manuscript. But I tidied my study and desk ready for Monday. However, I finally finish reading Portrait of a Murderer by Anne Meredith (first published in 1933). I enjoyed it, a locked room crime fiction story, but I lost interest a bit. I met someone once who said they wanted to be a writer but refused to read books in case they influenced her writing. I am fairly confident that the vast majority of writers also read and learn a lot from their reading.

Crime Writing for Beginners is my first attempt at writing crime fiction. I'm enjoying it because I like thinking about and writing detail, which I think is more important in crime fiction than the more general fiction I've written before. The Portrait novel was well written but I didn't like any of the characters and couldn't connect to it, though in fairness it was written almost a century ago. I liked a lot about it though. The reader knew who the murderer was and what happened long before the characters. That meant there never had to be a section about what happened, a summing up. I am finding it hard to think of a way to sum-up what happened with my character's death. I want it to be something fairly realistic, not some kind of pompous Poirot summing-up. I've had a few ideas. I had thought of leaving it slightly vague, with the reader knowing as much as the other characters, but I think most readers of crime fiction like reading crime because they know they will be told what happened, kind of like being given the answers to a quiz, confirmation you got it right.

I have asked a lot of people who say they read crime fiction why they read it. A recurring theme is that it's good to have a mystery element that you know will be solved, so you can find out exactly what happened.

I felt a bit housebound today, having been outside quite a lot this week but not for a proper walk. I walked along the road, which is clear of ice except just along from our house. I really do think we live in a micro-climate within this valley, which in itself is a micro-climate. On my walk, I met one of the men who came in for a hot drink yesterday when his van was damaged by the ice pot holes along the road. I chatted to him and his wife for a while, which was a huge novelty out in the middle of nowhere. They were justifiably annoyed because the RAC had sent someone out to collect their van (to tow it about nine miles so they could repair it), after they'd driven out in another car to wait in the cold with the van. The handler spoke to them a few times and in the end said that because it was an accident rather than a breakdown, they weren't covered. The RAC tow truck, which had got to within ten minutes of them, then appeared to turn around (they showed me on their app) and the RAC refused to help them. Because ice and pot holes aren't covered and don't count as a breakdown, even though the deep ice potholes are what damaged the van so they couldn't drive it. When they drove off in their car, having to leave the van, I carried on walking to the riverbed and got painfully cold hands, but I felt a lot better for having been out. I'm sort of looking forward to the big edit from Monday. And I've decided to try and write here every day in January so my entry numbers and dates match - bit sad!

"Oil painting" of a photo I took along Tima Water 10 January 2026