A long while back, I edited a manuscript from one of my mentees.  The manuscript was aimed at a romantic suspense publisher, and while the story was good, and the characters were well handled, and the setting well done, the way she handled the suspense drove me absolutely bug-nuts.

I tried several times to explain my issue, but I didn't have the words to explain the troubles I was having.  A couple weeks ago, I read a published novel that was obviously a first book, and this book used the same technique to handle the suspense, but this author took the technique so far to the extreme that I was able to clearly see what was driving me so bug-nuts about my mentee's book.  Then last week, I read a book by a big name author who used the same technique, but used it effectively. 

So here I will try and explain the technique I call "False Suspense", using examples from "Mentee", "FirstBook", and "BigName".

All three stories have a heroine with a nasty past that is going to come back and bite her.

In Mentee's manuscript, the heroine begins the story already having a boyfriend, but after an incident where her picture ends up in a national tabloid, she dumps the boyfriend and meets the hero.  Heroine mentions a couple times to a friend "I have a nasty past", but says nothing to the hero, and hero and heroine go along their merry way falling in love. Meanwhile, the reader gets intermittent scenes from the bad-guy's POV, while the bad-guy plots his nasty plots.  Suddenly, at the black moment of the book, bad-guy poofs! into the hero and heroine's life, captures the heroine and does typical bad-guy nasty things.  The hero, of course saves the day (it's a romance after all), and the heroine learns all kinds of great things and the bad-guy is vanquished. But it left me unhappy in a way I couldn't define. (Read more)