 Mystery: September 15, 2010 Issue [#3965] |
  Mystery
This week: Instruments of Death Edited by: shaara
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This week, I am delighted to be your Mystery Newsletter Editor.
Where I'm going today in my newsletter
is not peaceful or pleasant,
but if you write mysteries,
you'll need to ponder
DEATH and how to cause it.
Because no matter the excuses you make,
the truth is that mystery stories
are most often about death.
Someone dies by someone's hand.
MURDER.
How did it happen?
Sometimes that's part of the mystery.
Today I'm going to investigate:
Instruments of Death.
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Mystery and Its Instruments of Death
Mystery writers know that that DEATH can be caused by a gun, rifle, knife, or a wide variety of weapons.
The victim could perish due to poison. The variety of those could fill a volume, and some have not even been discovered yet. (Think of Amazon frogs and lizards.)
Varmints can be the death of one -- varmints such as snakes, spiders, scorpions, etc.
Someone can be pushed over a cliff or buried under an avalanche. A simple hit on the head with a rock works, too. (Include a hammer or any hard object with this.)
One can be held down in water whether it's inside a bathtub, swimming pool, river, pond, lake, ocean, or puddle.
Of course, there's the vehicular method - death by automobile, helicopter, train, motorcycle, bus, or plane - as in brakes that don't work or by mysteriously altering, disconnecting, puncturing, or contaminating various assorted parts.
The olden day method of riding accidents such as a burr under the saddle or a wagon part in disarray could still successfully achieve one's aim if the unsuspecting innocent has access to horses.
Then there's weather. Leave a fellow outside in a blizzard and he'll be a gonner, for sure. Or you could toss the unconscious victim into flood waters or the raging flames of a lightning-inspired (or otherwise) fire (smoke inhalation falls into this category, too.) You could arrange for the victim to be at the contact place of a hurricane, tornado, earthquake or volcanic eruption, but how does one predict those? (I'll throw electrical heart failure into this category, even though a big volt of shock through the body could actually occur inside the person's house or when the telephone pole falls on him or when the victim is pushed or thrown against something electrically haywire.)
And so on. The list is long and hasn't even included the dangers of the work-environment -- acid vats, the vaccuum of space, polluted air vents, or a boss who pounds on the desk, while making growling threats thereby causing fatal heart failure. Metal pipe carrying unpaid bookies -- burglars, gangsters, and street gangs and the newspaper boy 's often misdirected five-pound flying Sunday times are other avenues. A person's wife or husband (or significant other,) sweet as cynide-laced honey, may have a baseball bat up one corduroy sleeve. And never forget that the butler carries rat poison in his pocket.
Thus, the method of departure for a victim seems endless. I may even have neglected to speak of your personal favorite. (Please let your Writing.com public know!)
But I've decided to brainstorm a few odd balls methods. I haven't quite worked out the details or specifics of how death's card would be dealt with the following, but I'm sure with adequate research and thought, in your next mystery tale, you can give us the succulent details:
My first deathly skeleton's scythe might use:
GUM.
Forget the many brands found in the market. This gum would be specially loaded with something absolutely guaranteed to race the victim's heart at first or second chew.
Perhaps, the coating would do it, or maybe the poisonous substance would be located in the bubble of flavor deep inside the tablet. Or, is it possible, the victim must chew a while until the saliva and chemicals swimmingly dance down the victim's throat?
PAINT might be another odd vehicle - the brother-in-law house painter, the artist who cheated you at cards, the hated neighbor who's using purple paint on the fence next to yours . . . one slap of the brush and flop. The odor of the paint stops all breathing apparatuses. Or is it the powderish substance on the paintbrush handle? The paint thinner that he uses to clean his brushes? Was it the chemical reaction when paint met wood?
The wife who is stubborner than a Tennessee mule (and a bigger nag than the old gray mare) perhaps should suspect her daily MAKE-UP. What is that odd dust in the corner of the bottle's lid? Why is the make-up slightly paler than usual? Is there a peculiar scent to the powder puff?
Cigarette, cigar, and pipe smokers (okay, marijuana enthusiasts, too) better examine their TOBACCO (or whatever) for added ingredients. It's alarming how vile an enemy can be.
Of course, danger could lie in the MATCHBOX itself or the fluid inside the LIGHTER. What chemicals could find their way into a victim's next unhealthy smoke?
Asthma INHALERS are prone to such fixes. Poison or chemical enhancement definitely does not improve what a breather inhales (not unless a person is actually extraterrestrial and enjoys the scent of toxic fumes.)
FLOWERS are suspect. Plants contain SOIL that could be easily doctored.
The liquid in the fishy-smelling fish TANK may only kill fish 24 hours later. How long could a human coexist with certain contaminated waters? (If you were writing sci/fi mystery, the fish themselves, might be guaranteed to leech a victim's life away -- absorbing the life force in a vampirish manner?)
What if a KISS or an exchanged BREATH, the SCRATCH of a fingernail, even the TOUCH of a specially prepared finger could be a victim's last memory?
Ah, well.
The fuel of a mystery writer's imagination is
a never-empty pot of methods
whereby the wings of death
can separate a body
from its last fatal
gasp.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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Featured Stories for the Sept. 8th Mystery Newsletter:
A crime has been committed. Pods and her fellow investigator cut through the evidence to find the guilty one. This one is a chuckle and a half.
Pods has a brain on her shoulders, which are a good inch or two above mine. And like me, she carries a few too many of those Village Diner glazed donuts. Aside from her height and gender, donuts are about the only difference between us. I like jelly.
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A woman's body is found floating in the pool. It looks like the ex-husband did it, but his alibi is tight . . . or is it?
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Rutledge cheered up. Adams looked like a nice guy, the type of client that any lawyer loved to have for a client. He could afford to delay his dip in the pool and cocktails for a couple of hours work that led to a nice payday. He gave his most winning smile and offered his hand over the desk in the ritual greeting.
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Something like this could have happened to anyone. A young student in Amsterdam wakes up to a nightmare in a case of switched identity . . .
Ah, that was the kind of weekend guys dreamed of when they pictured Amsterdam, he thought. But now his head hurt, his eyes would barely focus, there was red lipstick on his shirt, and he was jouncing along, slouched down in the seat on the way to his next stop on his European tour: Paris. The landscape rolled by, green fields and green trees, and small villages nestled into valleys. Mesmerizing. His head lolled, and he half dozed in the sunlight.
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I got a kick out of this piece, but I gotta tell you, it was the lead-in that really hooked and reeled me in.
I gotta give Iverson his dues, though. He was downright professional when he came over and helped clear Syvert's stinky corpse on out of the TV room. All polite and calling me "Miz Anders" like he didn't used to yank on my pigtails back in the day. Some of his questions were a might nosey, but probably he was just doing his best to check into things so I'd know he was doing his job and all.
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This story is the perfect example of following the evidence. My favorite, J. B. Fletcher, couldn't have done any better!
The girl's lips trembled. "Yes. I came down for water. I saw that the door was still open. Carter always closed and locked it when he came in. When I saw it open, I thought I'd join him on the path. Walk with him. Try to talk. Instead, I found him d-dead," she gasped, burying her face in her hands. Her slim body shook as she cried.
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Okay, this story of mine isn't exactly a mystery, but there's a mystery in there. If you don't mind keeping your feet in a world of fantasy, your head can ponder one of the mysteries of life. I'm still trying to figure out what happened to that pencil.
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"For a moment, your fingers crawled around the table. Scientifically, you knew without thinking, that the little yellow pencil -- the one with only a slightly dulled point --must be where you left it. You knew that fact because all through grade school, junior high, and high school they told you it was true, and they named that fact 'cause and effect.'
"So you knew with a certainty that when you put that pencil down, it would still be there when you returned, and yet, it was not.
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That's all for this month. Hope you enjoyed my choices. See you in October!
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Have an opinion on what you've read here today? Then send the Editor feedback! Find an item that you think would be perfect for showcasing here? Submit it for consideration in the newsletter!
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Comments & Feedback from August 11th
Kate - Writing & Reading 
Thanks, Shaara, for an insightful newsletter opening with your creative puzzle. Mysteries are as versatile as the puzzlemasters who envision them as you show in your letter, and featured reads And, writing outside one's comfort can offer insights and techniques that add depth to one's writing, regardless of genre or style. Write On!!
Thank you so much for your comments on my guest editorial. It was so much fun. I volunteered to do it some more.
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Coolhand 
Great advice on mystery writing, Shaara. Excellent examples, too.
Do I ever appreciate your words. Thank you so much for writing!
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PLEASE give me feedback. It really, really encourages me to write these newsletters.
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PLEASE?
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QUESTION:
What novel method have you used for snuffing out the flame ?
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