How many people have I killed?

When my girlfriends and I walked out of the movie theater yesterday after seeing “Stranger than Fiction”, my friend Bea turned to me and said, “How many people have you killed in your books?”

Damn. That’s a really tough question. Over the years I’ve developed an almost Rumsfeldian disregard for casualties in the fictional field, but I know that I have not killed as many as, say, Clavell did in SHOGUN. But I have sent a lot of souls to their deaths, most of them deserving. (Well, there was the Good Samaritan in the campground in DARK HORSE who got hit in the face with a shovel, but that was a walk-on part.) (Or a walk into part, to be more precise.)

I have eleven and a half books under my belt, give or take, and some of those books have faded in my memory, so it’s going to be hard to come up with a body count. For this exercise, I’ll limit it to DARKNESS and DARK SIDE.

DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN: 11. Does it count when some of them are dead before the story begins? I’m counting those.

Breakdown:

Strangled – 2
Murder-suicide – 3 (back story)
Booby trap shotgun – 1 (another guy lost his eye and had internal injuries)
Bludgeoned to death – 1
Burned alive – 1
Beaten to death – 1 (also back story)
Shot execution style during home invasion – 2 (back story)

Jesus. Am I deranged, or what?

DARK SIDE OF THE MOON: 7

Shotgun while sleeping – 2
Murder-suicide with shotgun - 2
Blown up in truck (suicide) – 1
Shot execution style during home invasion – 2 (back story)

I see I was much less bloodthirsty in DARK SIDE OF THE MOON. Was that because I was in a good mood?

Most memorable way I’ve killed someone: The surprise shovel to the forehead? The guy who was badly injured (not killed) by a booby trap of fishhooks to the face? The woman who was shot in the head and then posed in one of her own animal cages as a trophy? I really did like that one.

When you write mysteries and thrillers, there’s bound to be some carnage— a little collateral damage. A few heads are going to get cracked. But I wonder if I’ll ever pay for these gratuitous and sometimes cheerily flippant murders. I wonder, too, if there’s a formula for figuring out how much I’ve been paid over the years per body.

Just curious – writers – or fantasizers - what’s the most interesting way you’ve killed someone? And what kind of body counts are you coming up with?