Skip to main content

This one goes in the “strange, unusual and more-likely-to-fail-than-succeed murder method “ file

Q: What is one of the first things a rational person would think about when planning a cold blooded murder?
A: Choosing a fail-proof murder weapon and method. Right?

Q: Mysteries abound in strange and unusual murder methods, and risky ones can be found in quite a number of them, but when you combine the three, what do you get?
A: A murder that defies even suspended disbelief.

In this case of The Irish Manor House Murder by Dicey Deere the method is so unlikely and so likely to fail that it is just ridiculous. The killer has no way of knowing that shooting a piece of knitting needle into a horse would kill the horse – it was just as likely to have simply made the horse rear up in pain and gallop off uncontrollably, and even then the rider had a good chance of surviving a fall off the horse. Besides, I find it hard to believe that a pop gun is powerful enough to shoot an approximately 4 cm piece of knitting needle – which by the way have blunt tips – so deep into solid muscle that it sinks completely out of sight. Even if the gun is capable of shooting pellets a whole 15 feet.

When, oh when, are mystery writers going to realise that the tried and tested methods are usually the best and that novel methods need to be at least plausible in order for the story to work?
Labels:

Comments

Dorte H said…
I have heard about murderers who could kill with a hat pin, and some time ago I read a rather good cosy mystery where a knitting needle was used as the weapon, but no, I don´t buy this indirect method either.
September 12, 2010 8:34 pm
Bibliophile said…
A pin in an ear, an eye or the heart is a classic and almost sure-fire method, but this just leaves too much to chance.
September 12, 2010 9:11 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout  woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went...
Post a Comment
Read more

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...
Post a Comment
Read more