26+ Ways to Kill: Q is for Quackle or Querk

Welcome! Since I write culinary mysteries, “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” deals with food topics and with mysteries. This month I am sharing ways to kill people—in your mysteries, of course—and some tips on getting away with it! To avoid the pronoun problem, I’ll use heesh (he or she), shis (his or hers), and shim (him or her) throughout the entries. Tune in for murder and mayhem.

Anyone doing this challenge knows that Q is a toughy. In fact the last quarter of the alphabet is challenging, not only this just-past-the-middle letter. Thus a shorter than usual entry today.

Quirt (a short-handled riding whip) held some appeal for me. That’s another up-close-and-personal one. Probably to kill someone with a quirt, one would have to be pretty angry. To stand there and whip and whip until someone dies would require the killer (sociopaths aside) to totally lose control. Besides quirt is related to knout, which I already did.

Quassation is one I rejected doing today because of the images it brought up for me. Quassation is the act of shaking. How many times have we read about a shaking death of a toddler or baby by the mom’s frustrated boyfriend? I just couldn’t do that one. However, if doing “true crime” mysteries or a police procedura,l you may want to have your killer create that heinous crime.

Quackle and Querk, today’s words, are very similar methods. And, or course, both kill in a bloodless manner. Both suffocate the victim, and may be synonyms, but I never found that indicated in anything official.

Quackle is to choke or suffocate.

Querk is to stifle, suffocate, smother, throttle or strangle.

Sound a lot alike, don’t they? I would have said, except for the choke/strangle connection, that quackle uses bare hands and querk uses an implement (like a pillow). But, with choke/strangle in both, beats me.

So whether you have your killer quackle or querk someone, the victim dies once deprived of oxygen for enough time.

Any Q words I missed? How about R? Get to reflecting!

 

If you take time to share this post on social media, I would be most grateful. 

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#Mystery writer, need killer ideas? Q is for Quackle or Querken . Lots of tips this month! #atozchallengehttp://bit.ly/1qRDB9X

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Check out Sharon Arthur Moore’s culinary mystery, Mission Impastable  

26+ Ways to Kill: O is for Obtruncate or Obvallate

Welcome! Since I write culinary mysteries, “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” deals with food topics and with mysteries. This month I am sharing ways to kill people—in your mysteries, of course—and some tips on getting away with it! To avoid the pronoun problem, I’ll use heesh (he or she), shis (his or hers), and shim (him or her) throughout the entries. Tune in for murder and mayhem.

There are some great O words of interest to mystery writers. Obfuscate is the bread and butter of mysteries. We attempt to occlude the obvious and obstruct the investigation leading away from the obvious. We make the obvious obscure. We milk obsequies (funerals) for hints. We murder both the odible (worthy of hatred) and the laudable.

We set our mysteries within rites such as omophagy (eating raw flesh) or ophism (snake worship). Perhaps we have the cult leader, who handles the venomous snakes previously “milked”, switching out a non-milked snake to a follower who is questioning shis authority.

Sometimes we have a caregiver oppilating (blocking up) old folks in a senior center via opoid constipation. Or administering an “accidental” overdose.

Or maybe orf (viral infection in sheep) is transmitted to a person. It can happen on farms. My father became infected with a cow disease and was hospitalized for weeks as they searched for the cause of his illness. He almost died when given antibiotics he was allergic to.

On a ship, we kill a passenger with oakum (old ropes untwisted and used to caulk the ship) to throw suspicion onto a crew member and away from the guilty captain. Ah, yes. We are good at using the usual in unusual ways.

But that’s not what we are doing today. Today, O is for Obtruncate or Obvallate.

When we kill someone by obtruncation, we have lopped off our victim’s head, decapitated shim. Sometimes, in our mysteries, we might make the obtruncation the coup de grace, the cherry on the top. A way for your killer to say to the world, “See me. I can kill and mutilate this body.”

Other times, our stories would lead us to a ritual killing (like kaishakunin—Japanese ritual beheading—or some such rite). We know beheadings were often used for political executions (look up Henry VIII, for example). Your historical mystery might have a character caught passing seditious codes and executed for treason.

In a beheading, some scientists say, the heart stops immediately but there is still about 15 seconds of consciousness. Maybe that accounts for the story of Mary, Queen of the Scots, moving her lips after her botched beheading (it took three whacks).

A blunt instrument ax/sword or a clumsy executioner are the most common causes of a painful and botched obtruncation. Use that to your advantage in your story line. To ensure success, your ax/sword needs to be heavy and double-edged. Both hands are used by the executioner to wield maximum leverage.

A less bloody way to kill your victim is obvallation. To obvallate is to wall in or seal up. It’s related to occlusing, the closing of an opening, passage, or cavity. As both child and adult, I have been fascinated with stories of being buried alive. To come to consciousness behind a newly-bricked wall would be terrifying. It would take the victim a while to realize shis circumstance and then the panic would set in. Imagine the scenes you could write of sheer terror.

The task of the killer is to incapacitate the victim long enough so that heesh couldn’t break through the fresh masonry. To make sure the majority of the wall is solid, I would brick up the wall a few weeks in advance leaving only enough of an opening to insert my victim’s living body. Then I would put a heavy appliance flush against the wall so the bricks couldn’t be dislodged. That should do the trick.

The victim will die of thirst, starvation, or lack of oxygen. But heesh will know heesh is dying long before it happens. Alone. In the dark. With no chance of rescue.

 On the other hand, one could obvallate a dead body as a way to conceal it. No body, no trial. I want to write a story about a house renovation and the discovery of a skeleton in the basement walls. Oooh!

What did you think of these ways to kill? Do you have other O ways to do in your victims? Whatever will I share for P? Come back tomorrow to check out more outrageous crimes.

If you take time to share this post on social media, I would be most grateful. 

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#Mystery writer, need killer ideas? O is for Obtruncate or Obvallate . Lots of tips this month! #atozchallenge http://bit.ly/1Sfwnn3

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Looking for new, fresh ways to kill (in books of course)? Check out Obtruncate or Obvallate on “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” at http://bit.ly/1Sfwnn3

Check out Sharon Arthur Moore’s culinary mystery, Mission Impastable  

26+ Ways to Kill: N is for Noose or Noyade

Welcome! Since I write culinary mysteries, “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” deals with food topics and with mysteries. This month I am sharing ways to kill people—in your mysteries, of course—and some tips on getting away with it! To avoid the pronoun problem, I’ll use heesh (he or she), shis (his or hers), and shim (him or her) throughout the entries. Tune in for murder and mayhem.

Ultimately death results from necrobiosis. Cells die. The order in which they die, the length of time it takes them to die, the reason for them dying all become fodder for your story. A related term is neomort, a brain-dead person. This is the twilight zone for a lot of stories. Dead or not dead? Sentient or not sentient? Will physical death follow naturally? Can the rate of death be accelerated by withholding or administering something?

Napoo is to kill or destroy. Nice word for this month’s challenge, right?

A necrographer is an obituary writer. That could come into play somehow in your book. I can think of several ways to use the necrographer in major or minor roles.

On the other hand, someone who is necrophagous eats dead people. A necrophobic is afraid of corpses. That person should not choose a career in the funeral business, but that could make for an interesting story. Necroaltry is worship of the dead. Sounds like a cult thing for your book. And we all know about necromania/necrophilia, right?

Nosomaniacs are delusional people who believe they are suffering from a disease. In your book, nobody believes the person, ah, but someone is administering mithridates (see M).  The person isn’t delusional at all, but that doesn’t matter. Heesh dies. Will your protag figure it out?

A narcomaniac has an uncontrollable craving for narcotics. The killer could use that general knowledge to stage an “accidental” overdose.

If you’re a WWII buff, you may know of the nebelwerfer the Germans created in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles. However, I couldn’t quite feature killing an individual with a six-barreled rocket mortar! If you can, go for it!

So how plebian is it for me to use Noose for one of my killing methods today? While hanging was included in lots of books (Lucinda, my as-yet-unpublished historical fiction, uses a lynching on the first pages), it’s not a method I have seen recently. What’s old can be new, right? This is another method that lends itself to the judgment of hanging as suicide. It’s easy enough to stage it that way as long as the restraints used to keep the person immobile don’t leave tell-tale traits. Or as above with the suicide meant to look like murder to implicate an innocent, the person could use the noose to hang shimself in order to frame another.

The killer needs to know some things about hanging with a noose. The weight of the body tightens around the trachea and neck blocking jugular and carotid artery flow. There are four ways to kill with a noose: suspension, the short drop (under 4 feet), the standard drop (between 4-6 feet), and the long drop (4-10 feet). In hanging, death is often a slow one of strangulation. The killer could watch shis victim suffer for up to 20 minutes. And sometimes people survive. Your killer should have a back-up plan.

Let’s end today with Noyade, execution by drowning. This offers multiple scenarios from waterboarding to holding a hose to the mouth (as shown in The Railway Man) to the traditional push off the boat/pier/bridge story. The killer can straight out murder the victim or cause pain and suffering along the path to drowning. “Execution” does signal that this is a punishment type method, so develop the story accordingly.

Have you used any N murder methods? Monday is O—we get Sundays off. Stop by to see how can I kill off your folks with O methods.

If you take time to share this post on social media, I would be most grateful. 

Twitter share:

#Mystery writer, need ideas to kill? N is for Noose or Noyade . Killer tips this month! #atozchallenge http://bit.ly/22xisxn

Facebook share:

Blogging from A to Z Challenge offers a wide range of topics. If you want to kill someone (in books of course), check out killing by Noose or Noyade on “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” at http://bit.ly/22xisxn

Check out Sharon Arthur Moore’s culinary mystery, Mission Impastable   

26+ Ways to Kill: Methysis or Mofette

Welcome! Since I write culinary mysteries, “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” deals with food topics and with mysteries. This month I am sharing ways to kill people—in your mysteries, of course—and some tips on getting away with it! To avoid the pronoun problem, I’ll use heesh (he or she), shis (his or hers), and shim (him or her) throughout the entries. Tune in for murder and mayhem.

Back for some Monstrous Murdering, are you? M marks the halfway point, the point at which the blogger thinks, “Whaaa? Why did I think this was a good idea?” LOL Well, kinda.

I found lots more M words related to murder than for ways to murder, and of those, some have already been done.

Some of the interesting M words I found are only tangential to murder methods. Did you know that murdrum (a palindrome) is killing a human in a secret manner? Or that mactation is killing or slaughter of a sacrificial victim?

I didn’t use mangling because it was covered with crushing. Maleation, hammering someone to death, was sort of covered with bludgeon. We did molybdosis (lead poisoning) yesterday. Dosing with a muscicide (fly poison) has been done with other toxic plant or animal killers.

And common things, like causing a motorcycle accident are too unpredictable to count on for killing. Whereas, I can’t quite figure out how to macerate (steep, soak, break up, emaciate—I do this with fruit when I cook) or mummify someone to cause death.

I also came across the term mithridate, which is an antidote to a particular poison, and mithradatism, which is an immunity to poison provided by taking small doses up to increasingly larger ones. Very interesting. I guess it would be a way to protect yourself if you didn’t trust those around you. Or alternatively, the killer could be the victim. If heesh knows a spouse is cheating, and will inherit wealth upon death, the killer/victim could poison shimself over time in order to frame the spouse in the ultimate gotcha game!

But I decided to share methysis and mofette.

Methysis is drunkenness. Extreme drunkenness can lead to alcohol poisoning. Get your victim drinking a lot over a short time period and you can kill shim. One person a day dies of alcohol poisoning, and 50,000 cases of alcohol poisoning are reported each year.

We typically hear about these deaths in conjunction with college student binge drinking.  So set your book on a college campus. The sorority is hazing someone and she dies from a BAC (blood alcohol content) over 400 mg/dL. Fast forward to the 20-year reunion. One of the sisters suspects the death was not accidental. Mayhem ensues.

Just so you know, amethysts got their name because the gem was thought to prevent intoxification. You wonder how these things get started, don’t you?

A mofette death is one of those your killer could stage as an accidental one, but this method would require knowledge of and access to something very special: a volcanic opening emitting CO2, carbon dioxide.

If your murderer is a geologist or outdoors person, you could stage an interesting scene. The symptoms of CO2 poisoning are: weakness, headache, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, confusion, blurred vision. You get the idea. The victim would be easy to manipulate at a certain point because of the symptoms.

Perhaps the victim accompanies the killer on a hike to check out a volcano, but the killer stops before they get to the top. They might eat lunch beside opening in the side of the mountain which is spewing the odorless, colorless gas. Keep your killer upwind! I can see the killer spinning this as an accidental death. Heesh was further from the opening and experienced milder symptoms, but the victim was too close and died. Oh, dear! Too bad, so sad.

Have you used any M murder methods? Tomorrow is N. Stop by to see how can I kill off your folks with N methods. 

If you take time to share this post on social media, I would be most grateful. 

Twitter share:

#Mystery writer, need ideas to kill? M is for Methysis or Mofette. Killer tips this month! #atozchallenge http://bit.ly/1SD4G6Q

Facebook share:

Blogging from A to Z Challenge offers a wide range of topics. If you want to kill someone (in books of course), check out killing by Methysis or Mofette on “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” athttp://bit.ly/1SD4G6Q

Check out Sharon Arthur Moore’s culinary mystery, Mission Impastable  

26+ Ways to Kill: L is for Lapidate, Lead Poisoning, or Liquate

Welcome! Since I write culinary mysteries, “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” deals with food topics and with mysteries. This month I am sharing ways to kill people—in your mysteries, of course—and some tips on getting away with it! To avoid the pronoun problem, I’ll use heesh (he or she), shis (his or hers), and shim (him or her) throughout the entries. Tune in for murder and mayhem.

If something is lethiferous, it is lethal. It causes death. That could be my theme word of the month! I am reveling in your reactions to the murderous methods I am sharing with you. Keep those comments coming!

Other fun crime-related words I found were lamister, a fugitive (must be related to “on the lam”); lustrate, to purify by sacrifice; lycanthropy, the mythical ability of humans to turn into wolves (werewolfism); lithophagus, eating rocks, and lour, a threatening or sullen look.

As to methods, lancinate poped up during my search, but as you can probably tell from the morpheme, we’ve kind of done laceration/piercing when we did foraminate.  We also dealt with lapatic when we talked about various purgatives.

I thought death by lammergeier, a giant vulture bird of prey, might be pretty gruesome. I can see a guy in his castle, with a few lammergeiers he keeps as pets. Does one get loose and terrorize the neighborhood or does he feed them uninvited guests?

Luxation, the dislocation of an anatomical part would be painful and life-threatening. But we did cover that with ectopia a few days ago.

I was really drawn to lyophilization, freeze drying, for a while. Our killer would have to freeze the body to minus 18 degrees (that would be the initial killing) and then submerge the body in liquid nitrogen. The body would become very brittle and could be vibrated to the point of forming an organic powder. How amazing is that? Boy, there goes the evidence. But getting a vat of liquid nitrogen does present a few acquisition and storage issues!

That brings us to the three I just had to share.

Lapidate is pelting with stones, to kill by stoning. Though different from thlipsis (the term for crushing to death), there is certainly a relationship through the rocks and through the restraints one would have to use on the victim to murder with rocks.

However, in crushing, the body needs to be flat so the stones can be placed on top to crush organs and bones. With lapidation, the body can be in any position, as long as it stays in place. In some cultures, a hole is dug and the person is buried up to the neck so people can toss the rocks at the head. Or one could tie the person to a post so the whole body can be pelted. It would take mortal wounding to kill this way, so this would be a long death. Like in the Old Testament.

Lead Poisoning, also known as plumbism, among other names, is extremely toxic and dangerous.  I researched lead poisoning when I did mercury poisoning (hydrgyrism). When lead paint is found in a building, it must be removed. It is illegal to sell paint made with lead.

The symptoms of lead poisoning include memory loss, headache, muscle and joint pain, abdominal pain, constipation, and more. You could make your victim suffer with this one. Just imagine the great bathroom scenes! The killer could introduce the lead through a number of avenues. If I were killing this way, I’d use more than one to get the job done!

The killer might obtain lead poison from several ethnic options. Hispanics use the orange powder greta (azarcon) from ground up coral to treat constipation, diarrhea, vomiting, etc. In the Dominican Republic the mineral litharge as a pink powder is used for deodorant. In Asia, you find ba-baw-san, an herbal remedy for colic in babies, ghasard (brown powder drunk as a tonic), and daw-tway used as a digestive aid. Let your killer get shis hands on one of more of these lead-laden ingredients, and death can ensue. Very high lead levels result in seizures, unconsciousness, and death.

This last one may remind you of the TV show, “Breaking Bad.” To liquate a body is to melt it or liquefy it. Only eight pounds of lye will dissolve several bodies. How economical is that for a serial killer?

If using lye, with either a sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide base, you will liquate a body in about three hours when heated to 300 degrees. You could also have your killer liquate the victim with sulfuric acid. That would take about two days.

Just so you know, bone bits and medical devices survive liquation, so that could lead to the detection of your killer by the authorities.

Oh, my! Isn’t this fun? Have you killed anyone with an L word? See you tomorrow when we kill with M.

If you take time to share this post on social media, I would be most grateful. 

Twitter share:

#Mystery writer need ideas to kill? L is for Lapidate, Lead Poisoning, or Liquate. Many killer tips this month #atozchallenge http://bit.ly/1TPaob9

Facebook share:

Blogging from A to Z Challenge offers a wide range of topics. If you want to kill someone (in books of course), check out killing by Lapidation, Lead Poisoning, or Liquation on “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” at http://bit.ly/1TPaob9

Check out Sharon Arthur Moore’s culinary mystery, Mission Impastable  

26+ Ways to Kill: K is for Kidney Beans or Knout

Welcome! Since I write culinary mysteries, “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” deals with food topics and with mysteries. This month I am sharing ways to kill people—in your mysteries, of course—and some tips on getting away with it! To avoid the pronoun problem, I’ll use heesh (he or she), shis (his or hers), and shim (him or her) throughout the entries. Tune in for murder and mayhem.

Since I did knife yesterday, with the jambiya, I moved onto other options.

You could have your killer use a kebbie. A kebbie is a shepherd’s crook. This would be another blunt force trauma death. I know that kebbies aren’t part of the décor of city apartments, but that would be part of the fun, don’t you know. Imagine the M.E. trying to figure out what the blunt object might have been. Imagine how your killer would return the kebbie to the farm and remove it from the search jurisdiction of the police. On the other hand, your victim could be a collector of walking sticks and the like so that the weapon is left in plain sight, though cleaned up.

Another blunt force object is a knitch, a bundle of wood tied together. I think that would be a bit awkward, but in the heat of the moment, your killer might snatch up whatever is handy to whack the victim. Nasty face after that blow! It’s hard to lift finger prints from raw, rough wood.

But the real star today, and maybe the star of this month’s killer methods is Kidney Beans. Raw or under-cooked kidney beans, that is. They contain relatively high amounts of phytohaemagglutnin. Who knew?

Raw kidney beans are toxic and might be difficult for the killer to get shis victim to ingest. But kidney beans cooked at a very low temperature are five times more toxic than the raw kidney beans. Check the temperature on your slow cooker. Old ones are not as hot as the new ones. Kidney beans have to be boiling for at least ten minutes. Cooking at a temperature of 80C/176F can kill you. Think how easy it would be for a wife to kill her husband by using an original slow cooker! She can admit to cooking the raw kidney beans she fed him, but she can claim ignorance of the toxicity of low-temp cooked kidney beans. No jury would convict her!  I kind of love this one!

On a bloodier note, killing with a Knout, a flog or scourge, is another one of those up close and personal ones. Often the knout had knotted ends for each strand or a metal piece might be attached to at least some of them. Some religious engaged in self-flagellation as penance for supposed sins. I don’t know of any who died from the knout used, but it might be worth exploring. Old monk, self-flagellator, is found dead. Who would suspect murder?

But more likely, it seems to me this would be a killing for ritual or hereticism. Or you might have a sociopath who uses a knout as his signature method.

In the past, however, flogging with a knout was not an uncommon punishment for slaves or others. We know you can kill if you go on long enough and/or hit vital areas again and again to wreak internal damage. This is a very painful way to die, and I would think your killer would have to either a sociopath or a very strong stomach.

Whatever have I found for killing with L words? Stop by to find out tomorrow.

If you take time to share this post on social media, I would be most grateful. 

Twitter share:

#Mystery writer need ideas to kill? K is for Kidney Beans or Knout. Many killer tips this month #atozchallenge http://bit.ly/23zfdId

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Blogging from A to Z Challenge offers a wide range of topics. If you want to kill someone (in books of course), check out killing by Kidney Beans or Knout on “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” at http://bit.ly/23zfdId

 

Check out Sharon Arthur Moore’s culinary mystery, Mission Impastable  

April A-Z Blog Challenge: Theme Reveal

As you know, I am writing a culinary mystery series. The "Dinner is Served" series has one book out, Mission Impastable, and two more coming out in 2016. Maybe three if I can get it together. The next two in the series are Prime Rib and Punishment and Potluck. Try Mission Impastable if you like an entree of mystery with a side of recipes.

Writing mysteries challenges authors to come up with plausible ways to murder someone that has not been done to death, so to speak.

I mean, I know in real life, people die in pretty standard ways. But to get people to read our books, and not the newspaper, we have to go beyond the headlines. We have to come up with interesting murder methods.

To that end, I will be blogging, A-Z, 26+ ways to murder someone. Yep. This will be one-stop shopping for unusual ways to kill. Disclaimer: Do not really kill people this way. This is just an academic exercise.

Stop back by on April 1st, and no fooling, I'll give you the beginning of your murderous tool kit! Hmm! Wonder what A will be? Mwah ha ha!