How Do I Kill Thee? Let Me Count the Ways by Teresa Inge

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.