D is for Death - Blogging from A to Z April Challenge

Now I considered many possible ways to go with this prompt. I could have gone with the many personifications of death in fiction, the fact that I don't like character death in fiction and why etc.

What I have decided to go with it is the weird and wonderful ways people die in murder mystery fiction. I love a good murder mystery and the higher the body count the better.

In all other genres I don't like character death, but it is the basis of the murder mystery and I'm all for a vaguely ridiculous murder.

I also decided to do this off the top of my head rather than going and looking things up, because I thought the most memorable murders would be the ones that have stuck in my head.

Now one of my favourite TV shows is Midsommer Murders, an ITV production set in a created place in England called Midsommer and the villages and towns therein. Early on they decided the body count of each episode was a bit ridiculous because of the small place it was supposed to be, so they reduced it, but people complained, so they soon dropped that idea :). Now if you want some strange deaths you want Midsommer:

• run through with a pitchfork
• killed by wine bottles being sling-shotted across the lawn to where the victim was staked out on a flat target
• falling off a roof after seeing a headless horseman
• killed by a poison mushroom slipped into a basket of wild mushrooms
• shot by an arrow during a midsummer fertility festival
• decapitation
• immolation using chemicals to look like divine fire

I could go on, but as you can see, Midsommer knows a thing or two about whacky ways to die. Of course there are the usual stabbings, shooting, poisonings and stranglings, as well as a few drownings.

Of course there can't be a post on murder mysteries without mentioning the Dame herself: Agatha Christie. Now there is a woman who knew how to write about death, although her stories are often more along the lines of usual murders. I have to admit I don't read the books, but I eat up the TV and film adaptations whenever they are on. I do love Murder of the Orient Express; such a sense of justice. Quite a gruesome way to go, drugged and then poisoned, but the evil man deserved it and Poirot lets the jury of twelve get away with it. I have enjoyed every version I have seen except the David Suchet one, which got preachy and brought in religion which is totally not in the book (I know because Soph read it just to find out).

I do enjoy a good Poirot, but I have always preferred Miss Marple. Her mysteries always seem more personal somehow. My favourite story in the Joan Hickson adaptations is Nemesis where the murders are actually long in the past. In this story it is love that drives the death and it is a very poignant tale. The death of a young girl, on the cusp of womanhood, trying to tame a wild young man with love brought a community to its knees and Miss Marple is given the task of finding out who killed her.

Unfortunately I think when they remade this one with the modern Marple they butchered it. My favourite in the newer adaptations with Geraldine McEwan is A Murder is Announced. Here death is meeted out by gun and by poison and if you haven't seen it, the mystery leaves you guessing to the end.

In the 80s there was a great series of mysteries by P.D. James, adapted for television. The one that sticks in my mind was a nursing college, where the nurses were learning how to put in a feeding tube. The victim was picked to be the patient and poison was poured directly into her stomach during the practice. That's the only thing I remember about the whole mystery - clearly it made an impression on me as a child :).

In ITV's Rosemary and Thyme everyone seems to die in or near a garden. I really wouldn't hire them to landscape my garden, because people always seem to drop dead.

Lewis and Morse have some of my favourite murder mysteries. It is such as shame both series are both finished now. Where else could you have a don dead in his rooms in college and an ageing rock band dying one by one in the same series?

It is amazing how death fascinates us, especially when it is strange and macabre. Now I have picked mostly UK murder mysteries, although I do concede that some of the Peter Ustinov, US based Poirots are so much fun too. So, please, tell me your favourites, be they books, films, TV or stage.

If you enjoy murder mystery books, you may like my twin and my offering called Sacrifice of an Angel. My husband describes it as "Harry Potter meets Midsommer Murders". It's a murder mystery with a side of magic, suitable for YA readers and up.

If you would like to see what all of my posts will be about in advance, click here to see my theme post.
My twin and I are also doing the A to Z Challenge over at our fantasy erotica blog: http://fantasyboysxxx.blogspot.co.uk/