How long should a crime novel be?

Every page counts in large amounts

Welcome to the free newsletter of David (D. V.) Bishop, author of the Cesare Aldo historical thrillers set in Renaissance Italy. This time: what is a good length for a crime novel?

But first…

I have a free event in Glasgow’s Ibrox Public Library this Thursday [February 13^th, 2025]. The library has been closed for refurbishment, so I am honoured to be the first author to make an appearance since the re-opening. The event starts at 6pm and should last about an hour.

I’ll be talking about the Cesare Aldo novels, writing historical thrillers and how I research real events that happened 500 years ago in another country and language. I shall give out free bookmarks (if I remember to take them) and possibly other treats too. Get your tickets for this Thursday’s event here.

Size matters vs less is more

Here’s a question I’ve been pondering while drafting my sixth Cesare Aldo historical thriller: how long should a crime novel be? Celebrated author Sir Ian Rankin was quoted last year as saying there was no need for most crime novels to be more than 300 pages. Indeed, his most recent Rebus novel Midnight and Blue is close to that.

But there is another well-known British author whose recent crime novels have all been 1000 pages long, with the last two a whopping 1200 pages! That is an extreme example, a true outlier in the current publishing landscape, but it doesn’t stop those particular books being best-sellers. Clearly, opinions differ on this question.

Photo by Jessica Ruscello on Unsplash

Before going any further, I shall declare my own numbers! Are the Aldo novels pithy and punchy or wrist-snapping in length? City of Vengeance runs to 398 pages of story, while The Darkest Sin is 415 pages. (That surprised me! I thought Sin’s confined setting and smaller cast would have meant it was shorter, but no.)

Ritual of Fire is 399 pages, almost equal with City, while A Divine Fury is the briskest Aldo novel to date. But that title will go to Carnival of Lies when it comes out this June as the page proofs show the story is 344 pages long. This did not surprise me, as I write it to be a swift and fast-moving, and so shorter.

For crime fiction publishers, financial considerations come into play for longer books. Such narratives take longer to record as audiobooks, which incurs extra expenses. Skyrocketing paper prices have increased the cost of printing for all books, but especially longer ones. Much of that extra cost is now being passed on to readers.

For example, the new Rebus in 2020 cost £20 as a hardback; in 2022 the next Rebus was £22. Midnight and Blue had a £25 cover price, though it got heavily discounted by larger retailers. But most independent bookshops cannot afford to offer such heavy discounts and risk losing valuable sales of premium hardbacks as a result.

My Cesare Aldo novels have crept up in hardback price, too. City of Vengeance was a £14.99 hardback in 2021, while The Darkest Sin was £16.99 a year later. The price didn’t change for Ritual of Fire, but A Divine Fury was £18.99 in 2024. Happily, Carnival of Lies will also be £18.99 when it comes out in hardback this June.

The factors mentioned above are driven by issues of cost and profit. But what about creative choices made by authors? How long does a crime novel really need to be, even if it has a complex historical setting? Should writers be aiming to craft shorter narratives? Can a 1200-page crime novel truly be justified?

Clarity vs complexity

Several creative factors influence the length of a book. For a start, what level of world-building is required to present a fully immersive location? Novels with contemporary settings need less context to establish time and place, while crime fiction set in, say, Renaissance Florence has to work harder at transporting a reader back to another era.

Photo by Jonathan Körner on Unsplash

Next, how complex and multi-stranded is the story being told? A single character is easier to follow than dual protagonists. A classical three-act structure tends to fill fewer pages than a story that employs five acts, since the latter requires more escalations. Increasing the number of plot pivots involves more story, more words.

Significant sub-plots also demand room to introduce, develop and resolve themselves, all of which means – you guessed it – additional wordcount. The more sub-plots you include in a novel, the larger the numbers of pages will be necessary to do these story elements justice, especially in a plot-heavy genre such as crime fiction.

Obviously, there are exceptions to all of the above, writers who are able to craft stories rich with sub-plots, narrative complexity in their structural approach and establish an immersive historical setting without requiring hundreds and hundreds of pages. But for mere mortals like myself, I need some elbow to pull that off.

The Aldo novels usually have at least one beefy sub-plot, usually a secondary mystery. City of Vengeance sees Strocchi hunting for the killer of a sex worker, while Aldo grapples with a political conspiracy and a murder. Strocchi has his own case to pursue while Aldo investigates events at a convent in The Darkest Sin.

But for the sixth novel, which I am currently drafting, the narrative focus is being tightened. The setting is one location in the Tuscan countryside; the cast of characters is therefore more constrained, though there will still be plenty of suspects. My current plan is for there to be a single mystery for Aldo to investigate…

…though I have a few feats of literary legerdemain lurking up my author’s sleeve to keep everyone guessing, hopefully. I have been contemplating a switch from the usually five-act structure to a brisker three-act approach, but the further I get into the story the more it bends toward having five acts. Time will tell.

My aim is for Aldo book six to be about 90,000 words, which means it should be close to Sir Ian Rankin’s suggestion of 300 pages as a reasonable length for a crime novel. Let’s see what the story and characters have to say about that. Onwards!

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