Some musings on different ways to murder the victims in your book

In her sonnet #43, Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote ”How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” If you plan on murdering people in your book, Browning’s

quote can be corrupted to read “How can I kill thee? Let me count the ways.”

If you write murder mysteries or simply enjoy reading them you know what I’m talking about.

If you’re an author, how can you murder people in a unique, more interesting and innovative way for the reader? Decisions, decisions.

Let’s see, a glance down the list shows us options like these. There’s suffocation, bombs, guns, knives, poisons (in food, drink or in a gas), blunt objects,

the deliberate exposure to a chemical agent, biological agent, incurable diseases unrelated to any of the foregoing, fatal exposure to radiation, hurling

someone screaming out of the window of a multi-story building, drowning them in a pool, river, bathtub or aquarium, sabotaging a car, boat or airplane

so that the crash does the deed for you, or hiring that dark, sinister hit man or woman to do the victim in for you at the exact moment you are in front

of 1,000 witnesses 30 miles away dedicating a new orphanage for disabled children.

And let’s not forget the whole new array of options available by loading something deadly on a piece of modern technology like a drone or a self-driving car.

The possibilities are endless.

A historic approach to the review of criminal cases throughout the “civilized world” can be an endless source of inspiration as well.

So how do you select just the right way to kill your victim(s)?

I suggest that it all depends on your style of writing. In their song “murder by numbers” the old rock group “Police” sings a helpful, if not instructive

few lines. “Once that you’ve decided on a killing, First you make a stone of your heart. And if you find that your hands are still willing, Then you can turn a murder into art.”

I need to stop here to make a “real world” statement in light of the more senseless murders that come up in the news. In spite of what is out there online, I don’t think that a murder mystery needs to be a “how to” murder manual for some disturbed person out there. Having said this, no author, neither you nor I can be responsible for what someone

out there that we neither know nor have any control over will do. Fiction writers control the imaginary people in our books, we can’t control what any disturbed person out there takes it into his or her head to do.

One other thing I’d like to point out on this topic is making the means of death believable, but not “too real.” I had one very critical person point out to me that a poison I used to kill off one of my victims wasn’t real, and to him that was just like using magic. HE can’t abide magic in a murder mystery. Well, I do a good job of researching things and don’t believe in making everything real and accurate enough to a point where someone can use it to actually kill someone.  My stories are believable, not “how to” manuals.

Getting back to the point of this post, ruthless methods of murder – The mechanism you use to kill your victim should, in my view, fit a blend of the victim

as an individual, and the story line. Is your goal to have the reader sympathize with the victim, or to nod in approval at his or her demise? As one friend of mine once counseled me. “The bad guy in your story beats his wife, raped his daughter and has two S&M girlfriends on the side. Don’t shoot him in the

head. Have the woman detective shoot him 4 times in the crotch.” This friend is not the type of woman you ever want angry at you, but I think you can see her point.

Also, I feel one should select the means of death according to the setting. By that I mean your method needs to be flexible enough so that, when you are

in your third or fourth rewrite, the method of murder flexibility makes the task an easier one.

Also, fit the means of death to the location. Will the victim die in a public setting? During a private dinner? During a business meeting or while driving

home from the office?

While the old faithful, reliable “sniper’s shot to the head” from two city blocks away gets the job done, does it fit into a story line where everything is sophisticated, ultra-modern and dripping with advanced technology? Maybe not.

Another factor to keep in mind is forensics. Will the head of the crime lab be able to detect (tell the reader) the cause of death easily or is that poison

gas so sophisticated that the M.E. will have a lot of trouble determining the cause of death? Again, it depends on how you have the story set up and how

believable you want it to be. In the real world, crime labs and medical examiner types that we see in TV shows such as  NCIS are fine for a one hour TV show,

but won’t do well in a book unless it’s an NCIS story. The means of death, once investigated by the M.E. can move the story along, or be a red herring dead end to what the reader thought was a promising trail of evidence.

I suggest you use the method of death as a flexible tool.

In my stories I lean towards a sophisticated, believable cause of death, an understandable motive and enough clues in the book so that the reader has a fair chance of figuring out who the murderer is. I try to make certain that more than one character has not only the motive, but the skills or contacts

to carry out the murder in the way I’ve selected. That is an important reason why the means used to kill the victim(s) needs to be so carefully thought through. It helps facilitate multiple suspects.

I strive to do things that way to elicit that “this could really happen” reaction from the reader.

In the final analysis, whether your victim is a womanizing, embezzling politician selling influence for money, drugs and sex, or is that innocent mother with her 6 month old baby ruthlessly murdered in a grocery store parking lot, I strive to fit the method of killing to the murderers motive, goals and geographic location. And of course

try to make all of it “real world” believable. If you can slide the reader from fact to fiction seamlessly enough without them knowing it, then “ya got ‘em.”

So, if, after reading one of my books, people will look twice at something before eating or drinking it, or even touching it because of something I’ve written then I did my job.