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. 

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

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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 Methysis or Mofette on “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” athttp://bit.ly/1SD4G6Q

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