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!

 

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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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Looking for new, fresh ways to kill (in books of course)? Check out Quackle or Querken on “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” athttp://bit.ly/1qRDB9X

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