Food for Crime Fiction

Deadly Dining!   

I found these pics online and would love to serve some of these dishes at my next book launch party!

"Pushing Up Daisies" and so on...

I'm writing a piece on funerals (don't ask why...) and while writing, I wanted to use the words "death," "dying," and "dead" as little as possible.  I could easily think of several euphemisms and idioms for the aforementioned but wanted to find a few other terms and phrases.  So, of course, I Googled it and came up with several interesting options.  It seems to me that mystery writers might find this useful, even though this list is far from complete.. 

CRASS TERMS:
Dirt Nap,  Worm Food,  Go Into The Fertilizer Business,  Sleeping With Fishes,  Six Feet Under,  Kicked The Bucket,  Pushing Up Daisies,  At Room Temperature,  Bought The Farm,  Rubbed Out,  Snuffed Out,  Checked Out,  Tits Up,  Buying a pine condo. 

ONE WORD TERMS:Expired,  Demised,  Passed,  Succumbed,  Deceased,  Departed,  Taken,  Perished.

PHRASES:
Danced the last dance,  Gone into the West,  Bought a one-way ticket,  Gave up the ghost,  Joined the invisible choir,  Shuffled off the mortal coil, With his ancesters.

FROM ODYSSEUS
Crossed the River Styx,  Wandering the Elysian Fields,  Paid Charon's fare.   

GENTLE TERMS:Resting in peace, Asleep, Gone to meet their maker, That goodnight, In a better place,  Going to the eternal reward,  Breathed his last.

Death by Bear and other Unusual Ways to Die

Last week, a freak accident led to two deaths near Luskville, PQ (about 25 miles from Ottawa).  A 440 lb. black bear became airborne after being struck by a car.  The bear was launched into the path of an oncoming vehicle.  It went through the windshield, killing the driver and a passenger in the seat behind the driver.  The bear then sailed through the rear window. The person sitting in the passenger seat up front suffered only minor injuries, and the two men in the car that initially struck the bear were unharmed.  The bear did not survive.

This is a horrible and unfortunate story and is much stranger than anything I could ever write in a mystery novel.  I can imagine the reaction from a publisher if I were to write such a scene in a novel.  But the whole thing got me thinking about truth being stranger than fiction. 

Here are some other stories of unusual deaths:

Bazooka Joe:  In 2009, a Ukrainian student named Vladimir Likhonos died after accidentally dipping a piece of homemade chewing gum into explosives he was using on another project.

Bad Moon Rising:  Two years ago a Canadian folk singer named  Taylor Mitchell was fatally attacked by two coyotes. 

Men will do anything for sex... A horny 28 year old Russian guy, Sergey Tuganov, died after winning a bet.  The wager? He bet two women he could have non-stop sex with them for 12 hours.  He won the bet but then died of a heart attack, apparently caused by ingesting an entire bottle of Viagra just after he accepted the bet.

Get that Monkey off My Back:  A few years ago, the Deputy Mayor of Delhi, India died a a result of monkeys in his home.  Surinder Singh Bajwa fell from a balcony as he tried to chase off several Rhesus Macaque monkeys in his apartment.  He suffered from fatal head injuries after the fall.

Skin is Porous: An unnamed Taiwanese woman died of alcohol intoxication after she spent 12 hours in a bathtub filled with 40% ethanol. At the time of her death, her blood alcohol content was 1.35%. Apparently, she immersed herself in alcohol in an effort to prevent or ward off the ongoing SARS epidemic.

Source for above - click here.

ALSO (update added July 14, 2013) Death by Cow Falling through Bedroom Roof  
See story HERE