Manner of Death and Means of Murder

Lone Star Tick Image from
dailynewsdig.com

“Death by misadventure,” a phrase describing manner of death catches my ear and stimulates my imagination. “Unintended consequences” does too. Both spring from the concept of “accident” but imply some sort of human intent, though not necessarily “good” intent or “well considered” intent.

The idea of someone meriting a Darwin Award by bumbling into their own death does not make for a good murder mystery, in my opinion. However, if a third party bumbles into someone’s death while that third party is involved in some nefarious activity – now I’m interested. Or if the dead person colluded in the crime. Or some other crime.

If the dead person were an innocent, and the murderer a jealous lover or crooked business partner or a crazed serial killer, the story very well may not be a mystery at all, but a news story. And those stories can and do inspire murder mystery writers.

All murder mystery writers understand that the most dangerous animal in the woods is homo sapiens sapiens – modern humans. Naturally, the fact that most murder mystery readers are modern humans makes them inordinately interested in what their confreres do or have done to them.

As to “means of murder.”

Agatha Christie was particularly fond of poison. Check out the Agatha Christie section of Torre Abbey Gardens in her hometown of Torquey, England. (May have to add Torquey to my Bucket List.) John LesCroart’s The First Law uses guns – up to and including a major shoot-out. (Maybe I should put San Francisco on the Bucket List.) Nevada Barr in Ill Wind takes advantage of a geologic peculiarity. (Definitely should put Mesa Verde on the ole Bucket List. It’s a lot closer to my house.)

My husband’s education and a lot of his professional experience is in the field of Veterinary Medicine. He says “The most dangerous animal in the woods, after man, is the tick.” Just imagine a man with a tick.

What an intriguing thought. Ticks, as described in Wikipedia, will make your blood run cold and reach for the DEET. And that’s just reading about them.

They have eight legs like their arachnid relatives, spiders and mites. They meet all their nutritional needs by sucking blood. They can carry disease-causing bacteria, viruses, and protozoa. Indeed, they can carry more than one pathogen at the same time making diagnosis and treatment more difficult.

In far southeast Arkansas, where we had a veterinary clinic, my husband provided blood samples from our patients with ehrlichiosis to Dr. Sidney Ewing at Oklahoma State University School of Veterinary Medicine. Ehrlichiosis is caused by members of the genus Ehrlichia, a genus of bacteria named for the German microbiologist Paul Ehrlich. One of those little beasties is Ehrlichia Ewingii, named for OSU's Dr. Ewing. (Rather a perverse honor, I think – having a disease causing agent named for you.)

Ehrlichiosis in dogs and humans has long been successfully treated with Doxycycline but some of our cases were proving to be drug resistant. And untreated or unsuccessfully treated, the disease is lethal.

The important thing in treating any tick-borne disease is beginning treatment immediately which requires early diagnosis or at least awareness that the sufferer has been exposed to a tick so treatment can be started. 

Just think, if the intended victim had not been in the woods – maybe did not even live in an area known to be a tick-bite risk area . . . .

The murderer could acquire the ticks elsewhere. Overnight by UPS then give the little buggers easy access to a blood source to keep them alive – say a mouse the murderer is not particularly fond of. And then access to the victim -- say in the hair behind the ear.

The local medics wouldn’t know to ask about recent tick bites or look for ehrlichia or promptly start proper treatment. Voila – Murder by Tick.

Food as a Weapon or Why I'm an Unlikely Thriller Writer

image from pixgood.com

I’ve been thinking. My cousin's daughter has been blogging about her bread recipe. She describes it as producing soft, fluffy, aromatic bread. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

But, me? I like substantial bread. The more nuts and seeds, the better. Does it have heft? If I hurl it at an intruder, will it make an impression? Concussion?

As a writer of murder mysteries, I find myself thinking about these things.

While I’m eating tender, juicy, perfectly grilled pork tenderloin, I think about how using a little too much Tony Chachere’s Original Creole Seasoning could make a guy gasp for breath and clutch his throat, giving me time to whack him over the head with a roll of frozen cookie dough.

How quickly would a person die, choking on a boiled egg? Okay. So it might be hard to get someone to let you force a boiled egg into their throat and you’d still have to do something to block their nose.

Maybe a peanut – it could get lodged in their trachea. Deprive them of air from both the mouth and the nose with one little nut.

Stab him with a steak bone? A frozen carrot? It could work.

Blunt force trauma from proper application of any frozen food, right? Well, maybe not peas.

I don’t think I’m unusual in this. Agatha Christie must have contemplated the different kinds of poisons on a regular basis. Can’t you just see the wheels turning? At breakfast. “A three-minute egg, dear. And toast.” And strychnine (which she would pronounce stric-neen), or a dash of arsenic, antimony, ad nauseum.

Maybe I'm more chemistry challenged than she. But it seems to me that, lacking those more difficult-to-come-by chemicals, one could, if properly thought out, do a villain in with whatever came to hand.

Frozen peas? You could scatter them on the floor, the baddie would then slip and fall hitting his or her head on the brick fireplace. If you get to them before they thaw, they should be pretty easy to sweep up. The peas, that is. The villain and the blood on the brick fireplace probably not so easily disposed of.

Slit someone’s throat with the sharp edge of peanut brittle? The lowly peanut again. But honestly a pecan praline would just not be hard enough.

Then there are foods that are too good to be used as weapons. I can’t imagine wasting dark chocolate or a nice wedge of cheesecake. And everyone is safe around me if I am armed with a cappuccino. Unless they get between me and it.

You see? Food as a weapon is not so fetched.

How to Write a Murder Mystery

 

by Duelpad on DeviantART

 

 
One of my Beta Readers suggested that I include a scene summing up the story, as do many mystery writers. She is very well-read, quite bright, loves books, and has a library background including choosing which books to include in the libraries she worked for. So I have good reason to take her suggestion seriously.

Mystery writers have had long and illustrious careers producing just such summing up scenes. Agatha Christie comes immediately to mind. Her Hercule Poirot was forever gathering everyone into the parlor to explain who done it. And this is not a hidebound tradition abandoned to the dead-and-buried writers’ club. J.K. Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith employed it in The Cuckoo’s Calling. So it is still legitimate and still in good standing.

So I thought about it. Initially I had chosen not to have just such an explanation of the story. My favorite living, American author is John Irving. Yes, I know he doesn’t write murder mysteries, but aren’t all novels mysteries? If you know who done it and what they done in the first few pages, why would you read the whole thing?

What I like about Irving is that he trusts his readers to know what happens without spoon feeding it to them. Admittedly there have been times when I went back to see ‘When did that happen?’ only to find that he didn’t actually say that’s what happened, but obviously it did!

To me it’s like explaining a painting or a ballet or a poem or a joke. If the work is well-done, the audience will get it.

And my whole point in writing Murder on Ceres has been to write a book like I want to read. A murder mystery. A science fiction murder mystery.

Well, I’ve discovered that I want Murder on Ceres to be the kind of book other people will want to read. So traditions must be considered.

After having read The Cuckoo’s Calling, I decided it would be a good idea. The author’s summing up scene in no way offended me or interfered with my satisfaction at the end of my reading it.

I thought of two different scenes in which to do it, one of which would lead into my next book. But, I don’t want to do it. I added bits and pieces to the manuscript toward the end of the book that are pretty specific and will, I hope, take the place of a summing up scene.