Running mystery/investigation

You need to adapt your clues to where your players are looking for them. Once adapted, you need to make sure players find the clue without railwaying them too much. To me, you need to be an accomplished mystery writer to do this on the go, an Agatha Christie magnitude of person.

However, I discovered that sometimes you can direct players to a place where they’ve already been and missed a clue there. E.g., an NPC related to the investigation notes that another NPC frequented the place or had a meeting with a suspicious-looking fella there. In my case, players previously tried to torch the place in question, so they didn’t think anything of value was left there.