How Can I Kill Thee? Let Me Count the Ways

by Edith Maxwell

Thank you so much, Annette, for having me over to Writers Who Kill. I will happily send a signed copy of Charity’s Burden, my newest historical Quaker Midwife Mystery, to one commenter here today. 

Writers who kill – hmm, so true. Charity’s Burden is my seventeenth published novel (in five series) but to date I have completed twenty-one mysteries plus a novella. How many ways have I killed people on the page? Note that some books have more than one victim.

·         Gun – 3

·         Some form of poison – 7

·         Knife or very sharp object – 7

·         Garrote – 2

·         Strangle – 2

·         Pitchfork – 1

·         Push resulting in fatal injury – 3

And those don’t even include the murder methods in my more than a dozen published short stories.

I guess it’s a tie between sharp objects and poisons! The killer uses a sharp object in Charity’s Burden, but we don’t discover the truth until the end of the book, so I’m not telling here, either.

I do love exploring poisons. I have three great reference books on my shelf, and also take careful notes every time Luci Zahray – otherwise known as The Poison Lady – speaks at a conference.

Luci "The Poison Lady" Zahay

Liquid nicotine, rosary peas, Tylenol and alcohol? I’ve used them all. Luci’s specialty is talking about commonly available toxins.

 

Rosary Peas

Notice that I don’t resort to firearms very often, and all three of those were in the first or second book in a series. It seems too easy, I suppose.

I hope you enjoy the latest adventures of Rose Carroll, midwife. Here’s the blurb:

The winter of 1889 is harsh in Amesbury, Massachusetts, but it doesn’t stop Quaker midwife Rose Carroll from making her rounds of her pregnant and postpartum mothers. But when Charity Skells dies from an apparent early miscarriage, Rose wonders about the copious amount of blood. She learns that Charity’s husband appears to be up to no good with a young woman. The woman’s mother, who goes by the mysterious name of Madame Restante, appears to offer illegal abortions and herbal birth control. A disgraced physician in town does the same. Charity’s cousin mistakenly thinks he will take control of his father’s estate, part of which was to go to Charity. Rose, who suspects Charity’s death was from an abortion either incompetently or maliciously performed, once again works with police detective Kevin Donovan to solve the case before another life is taken.

I’m excited Quaker Midwife Mystery #4 is out, and I am happy to announce the series is moving over to Beyond the Page Publishing with book five. Look for Judge Thee Not to release this fall! There will be at least two more in the series after that. My next Country Store mystery, Strangled Eggs and Ham (written as Maddie Day) comes out June 25.

Readers: What’s your favorite murder weapon – used in a novel, I mean! Writers, yours? I’m happy to answer questions, too, and I’ll give away a signed copy of Charity’s Burden to one lucky reader. (Leave a comment to enter!)

Edith Maxwell writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries, the Local Foods Mysteries, and award-winning short crime fiction. As Maddie Day she writes the Country Store Mysteries and the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries. Maxwell, with seventeen novels in print and four more completed, has been nominated for an Agatha Award six times. She lives north of Boston with her beau and two elderly cats, and gardens and cooks when she isn’t killing people on the page or wasting time on Facebook. Please find her at edithmaxwell.com, on Instagram, and at the Wicked Authors blog.

Bad-Natured Botany by Holly A. Chaille

Poisonous plants have long played the villain in both fiction and non-fiction over the centuries. Perhaps you’ve read about Socrates being forced to drink poison hemlock while his acolytes watched. There’s also that most badass of botanists, Locusta, who became such a well-known expert in her field that the Romans essentially had her on speed dial to off one another when reasonable discourse failed them, which happened frequently. She was prolific in knowledge and talent, utilizing such classics as nightshade and arsenic, and, when it came time to take out that most Noblest of Romans, Augustus, she added mushrooms—the Deathcap variety.

Holly with Moonflower

Agatha Christie is perhaps fiction’s most profuse poisoner, utilizing digitalis (Appointment with Death), opium (Sad Cypress), monkshood (4.50 to Paddington) and hemlock (Five Little Pigs) and many others. One might wonder why so many of her books revolve around poison. She developed an interest while working in a medical dispensary and sealed her fate once she took her exam for the Society of Apothecaries. She often spoke of her admiration of poisons as the ideal murder weapon because of the many ways they can be delivered to the intended victim and the amount of time certain poisons take to manifest in murder. Guns shoot, ropes strangle, but poisons, ah poisons. They stalk, pounce, and paralyze in ways that guarantee surprising and unnerving story lines for readers.  

Here in the twenty-first century the happenstance of hemlock or opium is too out of place for reasonable minds to accept as a likely murder weapon. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t dozens of other potential perps lurking around your back door or local Lowe’s. I have a dedicated area in the  backyard that’s my poison garden, which includes several plants that were already growing here when I moved in. The aforementioned monkshood and digitalis (foxglove) are present, as are hellebore (Lenten rose) and yew. I’ve added castor bean, poppies, larkspur, and Angel’s Trumpet.

Angel’s Trumpet, also known as Brugmansia, is my favorite and it has a lead role in my manuscript The Poison Season.  It’s a member of the nightshade family which also includes jimson weed, bindweed and moonflower. In the summer evenings I can sit and watch the blooms of my peach and cream plants spiral open. The scent is, quite literally, swoon-worthy. While researching the flower for my story I spent a little too long sniffing blooms and became a bit nauseated.  It passed after a few minutes, and I’ve learned to be more cautious when I’m hanging out with these clever killers.

Another favorite, Moonflower, is a close relative of Angel’s Trumpet. Whereas the Angel’s Trumpet blooms hang down and sway like the skirt of a southern belle, the moonflower faces upward, a beacon for evening moths to come and get their pollen on. Moonflowers open rather quickly, in about seven minutes, right at dusk. It’s a lovely show and guaranteed to provide great photo opportunities.

As a writer I am, by definition, curious. I could spend all of my time researching poisonous plants and like the rest of you authorial assassins, my browser history is ridiculously suspicious. By having a poison garden in my back yard, I can tear myself away from the computer, go outside for a breath of fresh air (not too close to the Angel’s Trumpet), and still be researching my work. I highly recommend investing in a few felonious flowers for your research and relaxation. Plus, a garden gives you a good place to dump the bodies.

If you’re into Mother Nature’s murder mob, check out these sources for more information:

Amy Stewart’s fantastic book WICKED PLANTS https://www.amazon.com/Wicked-Plants-Lincolns-Botanical-Atrocities-ebook/dp/B003I83EI6

Kathryn Harkup’s book on Agatha Christie’s poison AIS FOR ARSENIC https://www.amazon.com/Arsenic-Poisons-Agatha-Christie/dp/1472911326/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=

The Potent Plants garden at Torre Abbey https://www.torre-abbey.org.uk/gardens/agatha-christie-potent-plants/

The Alnwick Poison Garden https://www.alnwickgarden.com/visiting/whats-in-bloom/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/step-inside-worlds-most-dangerous-garden-if-you-dare-180952635/

Holly A. Chaille is an advanced master gardener and writer plotting gardens and murders in northern Indiana. She’s a member of Sisters in Crime and knows more ways to use poisonous plants than her husband would like. Chaille is querying her first novel, The Poison Season, a suspense about sisters, the thin tendril between love and betrayal, and of course, poisonous plants. Find her at: https://www.hollyachaille.com/