An AI mystery writer that plays fair with the reader
A mystery is a contract: every clue the detective uses is on the page, and the reader still does not see the answer coming. INKFLOW plans the solution before the first chapter, then places the clues, the false leads and the reveal across the book.
Whodunits, police procedurals, private detectives, noir, and cosy mysteries with an amateur sleuth. Say which you want and the writer follows that form.
How a mystery is put together
- 1Set the crimeWho died or vanished, where, and who had a reason to want it. Give the answer yourself, or leave it to the planner.
- 2Choose the detective's voiceClassic noir for hard-boiled detective fiction, Cosy & warm for cosy mysteries, Cinematic for police procedurals.
- 3Read the first three chapters freeNo card is needed. The opening is where the crime and the suspects are set up, so it is a fair test.
- 4Follow it to the revealCarry on in the app, or order the whole novel.
A real Chapter 1, written from one line
The idea typed in: “A Glasgow private investigator is hired to find a missing jazz pianist, and the only clue is a room key from a hotel that closed in 1979.” · voice: noir. The first lines below are INKFLOW’s output, unedited. The full piece ran to 1,226 words.
The piano in the back room of the Blue Lantern had its lid up and its stool pushed out, as if the man who played it had stepped away for a cigarette and fallen through a crack in the floor. Somebody had left a half pint of heavy on the music stand. The head on it had gone flat as a widow's voice.
"Donnie never leaves a drink," Ishbel Quarrie said. "Never. Forty years I've known him and he's never once left a drink."
Rain worked at the basement window above us, grey water sliding down the glass and taking the streetlight with it. Sauchiehall Street on a Tuesday in November sounds like a radio somebody forgot to switch off. The club was shut. The chairs sat upturned on the tables with their legs in the air, a room full of dead beetles.
"When did you last see him?"
"Did I tell you he played with Tubby Lennox in Hamburg? Nineteen sixty-four." She smoothed her coat over her knees, both hands, the same stroke three times, the way a seamstress flattens a hem before she cuts. "Friday. He went out for the late set and he never came home."
"And the police?"
"The police think a man of seventy-one with a bad chest and a bar tab has wandered off to die somewhere quiet." Her mouth went thin. "They said it nicer than that."