While participating on the Women Solving Crimes panel at Malice Domestic this year, the moderator asked us about the different weapons we use to kill people in our novels and short stories.
Fortunately for me, the panel had received the questions in
advance, which gave me time to review all the homicides I’d written and determine
my methods of murder. With sixteen books, I was beginning to lose track of how I
kill people!
I began my murderous review with Mutt Mysteries, a four-book
series with dogwalker, Catt Ramsey, who solves crime and murder with her dogs,
Cagney and Lacey. I had multiple victims and killings in these books. The weapons
include a cutting board, knife, gun, pruning shears, and a dog trimmer. All of which
fit right into each killer’s homicidal hands.
In Virginia is for Mysteries, a three-book series, I was on
a killing spree with boards! I gave one victim a blow to the head with yet
another cutting board, then used three wooden boards in various stories to kill
people, smashed a killer in the face with a chalkboard, and used a glass vase
to kill another.
In other books, I used different methods and weapons. These include
strangulation with a lanyard lassoed around a victim’s neck, a chest stabbing with
a road sign, a stab in the neck with a pink beach charm, and three shootings in
three stories. I then pushed a killer over a riverboat’s balcony and shot him for
good measure before lodging a corkscrew in a victim’s neck…twice. I finished the
review with blunt objects to kill two victims, and a fatal allergy reaction to
another.
After the review, I realized that I had never poisoned
anyone. What would Agatha Christie think? That’s when I began tracking my
methods of murder and vowed to use poison in my next story. Check out the attached
graph to see the weapon that I used the most.
