# Share your favorite "perfect murder" plans from fiction (open spoilers inevitable). **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 22, 2011, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481 "2011-06-22T20:31:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481/21 "2011-06-23T18:59:38Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > Seriously, people, please don’t just give the name of the book, tell the method! What she said. Except with feckless threats. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481/22 "2011-06-23T19:04:26Z")
It wasn’t exactly planned, but it worked out pretty well for **Jackie Brown**. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481/23 "2011-06-23T19:05:45Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > Will someone else spoil it, then? The summary on Wikipedia only says that his friends confront him while he’s hiking, then one pushed him off a cliff - that doesn’t sound like much of a leap to come up with, but is a very sensible solution, I will admit. That’s basically it. Henry and his accomplices/dupes know Bunny’s habits very well. At first they, or rather Henry, come up with some elaborate plans, but ultimately Henry realizes that the best way is to let Bunny choose the place of his death. Bunny likes to go on walks alone on Saturday afternoons, and they know his route; the spot they elect is by a ravine he invariably passes. It’s secluded enough so that no witnesses are likely, and they can abort any time up till the moment they push him over the edge. Then it’s just a matter of letting the next hiker find him. The plan doesn’t go off quite as planned, because there’s an unseasonable (even for New England) snowstorm right after the murder, and that delays the finding of the body. This is a problem because if Bunny is found dead at the base of a ravine with a beer bottle in hand, the story will “tell itself simply and well” ( as the narrator puts it), but the longer he’s missing the more likely it is that there will be a police investigation which may uncover their earlier murder. They get away with it anyway. Sort of. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f8ce5/32.png) [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Peyote_Coyote)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481/24 "2011-06-23T19:27:28Z")
Thought of a couple more, your Rhymership. In Ellery Queen’s \*Face to Face \* and Martha Grimes’ _The Case Has Altered_, the murderers would have gotten away with it had they not confessed. There was no forensic evidence against them. In Sue Grafton’s _K is for Killer_, the killer left almost no important evidence save for a taped conservation made by a woman who was bugging her husband to see if he was having an affair. I’ve often thought Velma would have gotten away with it had she killed Marlowe at the same time she killed the blackmailer in Raymond Chandler’s _Farewell, my Lovely_. That would have been a damn short book, though. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481/25 "2011-06-23T19:31:47Z")
> [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](#): > > Thought of a couple more, your Rhymership. In Ellery Queen’s \*Face to Face \* and Martha Grimes’ _The Case Has Altered_, the murderers would have gotten away with it had they not confessed. Man, that’s almost half of the **Columbo** episodes. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481/26 "2011-06-23T20:26:50Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Man, that’s almost half of the **Columbo** episodes. I thought it was always Peter Falk peering around the door, “Oh, Mr. Pepper. One More Thing…” 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481/27 "2011-06-23T20:40:19Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > In which we discuss the most devilishly clever plans to commit the ultimate crime and get off scott free, as described in novels, short stories, theatre, television, and movies. There’s but one rule: please confine yourselves to stories set in relatively realistic settings: that is, no science fiction or fantasy. > > I’ll open the bidding with Henry’s second murder in Donna Tartt’s _The Secret History_. (The first murder was a complete fuckup that he and his compatriots got away with only by luck.) It wasn’t really a murder, though–more like manslaughter. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481/28 "2011-06-23T20:47:46Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > It wasn’t really a murder, though–more like manslaughter. I was going to say that you’re nicer than I am, but everyone knows that. 😉 Yeah, I’ll grant that Henry and his band of spoiled nitwits didn’t set out to kill the farmer, exactly. But they were consciously trespassing on his land and doing drugs in an attempt to evoke an altered mental state in a fashion they knew or should have known was highly dangerous, both to themselves and to others. I say shoot the lot of 'em. 'Cept Camilla. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Hamsandwich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4bbf92/32.png) [@Darth\_Hamsandwich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Hamsandwich)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481/29 "2011-06-23T20:47:55Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Roald Dahl’s “Lamb to the Slaughter” is pretty good, for the small-scale end of things. > > A wife kills her husband by clubbing him over the head with a frozen leg of lamb. Then, when the police come over to investigate, the distraught widow feeds them the murder weapon. I remember **Alfred Hitchcock** mentioning that his idea of the perfect murder weapon was an icicle. Damned if I can remember where I read that, though. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481/30 "2011-06-23T21:17:49Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I always felt the fake serial killer plan is best. Go out and kill a string of people, one of whom is your actual target, in the manner of a serial killer. The police will be looking for some anonymous killer rather than checking the people who had a motive to kill the victims. Doesn’t always work. Ask [Stella Nickell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Nickell). ---
**Author:** ![Damfino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Damfino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damfino)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481/31 "2011-06-23T21:27:31Z")
> [@Darth\_Hamsandwich](#): > > I remember **Alfred Hitchcock** mentioning that his idea of the perfect murder weapon was an icicle. Damned if I can remember where I read that, though. I read that plot in a short story by an author I’ve forgotten: Patricia Highsmith or Margery Allingham or something. The man is murdered in a sauna with the only clues a tea leaf deep in the wound and a thermos flask in his cubicle. Since everyone wears towels the weapon could not have been smuggled in. The answer of course is that an ice dagger was secreted in the flask.(Possibly dry ice) “The Perfect Murder” by HRF Keating. The first Inspector Ghote novel. Like everything in India (according to the book) it is imperfect. Mr Perfect is assaulted but not killed.He remains in a near-death coma for several days. It is reported as "The Perfect Murder " in the papers. It ultimately transpires he was attacked mistakenly for somebody else, explaining the lack of motive. ---
**Author:** ![Damfino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Damfino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damfino)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481/32 "2011-06-23T21:33:22Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I always felt the fake serial killer plan is best. Go out and kill a string of people, one of whom is your actual target, in the manner of a serial killer. The police will be looking for some anonymous killer rather than checking the people who had a motive to kill the victims. The Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child: _The Visitor_. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481/33 "2011-06-23T21:34:12Z")
> [@Damfino](#): > > The Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child: _The Visitor_. Also, the Batman story _Blades_. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481/34 "2011-06-23T21:53:49Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I always felt the fake serial killer plan is best. Go out and kill a string of people, one of whom is your actual target, in the manner of a serial killer. The police will be looking for some anonymous killer rather than checking the people who had a motive to kill the victims. That idea is at LEAST as old as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot mystery _ **The ABC Murders.** _ Ellis Peters and GK Chesterton have used it, too. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2011, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481/35 "2011-06-23T22:06:57Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I remember a _Hart to Hart_ episode with that premise. The killer was foiled when his distractionary hit on Jennifer was spoiled by a fluke and through some flavor of obsessive-compulsive disorder, came after her again and was arrested. It didn’t make sense to me at the time - he’s killed his intended target. Why go after Jennifer again? The nagging sense of a job undone? Perhaps he was seeking to atone for the other murders by freeing the world of Jennifer Hart. ---
**Author:** ![Double\_Foolscap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85e7bf/32.png) [@Double\_Foolscap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Double_Foolscap)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2011, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481/36 "2011-06-24T09:38:30Z")
> [@Damfino](#): > > I read that plot in a short story by an author I’ve forgotten: Patricia Highsmith or Margery Allingham or something. The man is murdered in a sauna with the only clues a tea leaf deep in the wound and a thermos flask in his cubicle. Since everyone wears towels the weapon could not have been smuggled in. The answer of course is that an ice dagger was secreted in the flask.(Possibly dry ice) > > “The Perfect Murder” by HRF Keating. The first Inspector Ghote novel. Like everything in India (according to the book) it is imperfect. Mr Perfect is assaulted but not killed.He remains in a near-death coma for several days. It is reported as "The Perfect Murder " in the papers. It ultimately transpires he was attacked mistakenly for somebody else, explaining the lack of motive. In Christopher Brookmyre’s _A Big Boy Did it and Ran Away_, the antagonist’s first kill is with a mercury-cored icicle, which melted away before the body was discovered. The icicle itself was made by his day job’s marketing department for an ad campaign. His second murder was a gluttonous heroin dealer. He mixed a lethal amount of heroin into a takeaway curry and knocked on his door, claiming that it was a pre-paid order from the address. Result: one dead guy who looked like he got high off his own supply. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2011, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481/37 "2011-06-24T13:37:00Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I always felt the fake serial killer plan is best. Go out and kill a string of people, one of whom is your actual target, in the manner of a serial killer. The police will be looking for some anonymous killer rather than checking the people who had a motive to kill the victims. That was the plot of Ed McBain’s first 87th Precinct book [Cop Hater](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cop_Hater) ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2011, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481/38 "2011-06-24T13:44:02Z")
Weirdly, I notice no Coen brothers plots have come up in this thread. Go figure. ---
**Author:** ![feppytweed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/feppytweed/32/4280_2.png) [@feppytweed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/feppytweed)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2011, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481/39 "2011-06-24T14:58:10Z")
I thought the premise for Fracture was pretty witty, although it took some careful execution and things had to go just right for the plan to work. Anthony Hopkins is a very affluent engineer whose wife is having an affair with a police officer. During one of the adulterous rendezvous, Hopkins sneaks into where they are having said affair and switches out the officer’s weapon with an identical one. Later, when Hopkins and his wife are home, he shoots his wife with the officer’s gun. He calls the police, saying his wife has been shot. The police come, and the officer involved in the affair is there as well. He is the only one Hopkins will let in the house. Said officer enters the house acting as a negotiator, and, at the request of Hopkins, puts his gun on the table. Upon seeing his lover dead on the floor, the officer rushes over to her, during which time Hopkins switches the guns back. At the station, Hopkins confesses, but when the affair is revealed, the confession is ruled inadmissable, as the adulterous officer was present during the interrogation. The gun casings found at Hopkins’s house doesn’t match ballistics against the round that shot his wife, and there were no witnesses or other proof, so he is aquitted. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2011, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481/40 "2011-06-24T14:59:01Z")
The only “perfect” murder is one that you don’t commit yourself and that nobody can possibly trace to you. The final Hercule Poirot mystery, _ **Curtain** _, featured a “murderer” who never actually killed anyone. The killer was a master manipulator and always knew just the right word or phrase to spur an angry or aggrieved person to commit murder. Just as Iago manipulated Othello into killing Desdemona (all the while ACTING like the voice of reason and restraint), the culprit in \*\*\*Curtain \*\*\*found ways to prod ordinary people into committing terrible crimes… but never said or did anything that could get him convicted as an accessory. How did Poirot come to suspect this person? Poirot disliked too many coincidences. The culprit was acquainted with a large number of people who’d committed murder, and THAT seemed implausible to Poirot. A cop or a criminal lawyer may have met a dozen murderers, but it’s impossible to believe that an ordinary, honest middle-class person just happens to know a dozen murderers. So, did the culprit ever actually TELL one of his friends to commit murder? No, not at all. He just learned how to read people and push their buttons. Let’s say a quiet, nerdy middle-aged man is sitting at a bar with a friend, having a drink. The nerd has just discovered that his wife has been cheating on him. He fumes that he hates her and wants to kill her. At this point, it’s just talk, of course. He probably doesn’t REALLY want to hurt her, and will probably be horrified by his thoughts when he sobers up in the morning. But… suppose his “friend” starts commiserating, saying, “Yeah, I know how you feel. Women are no good. They’re always hurting you, laughing at you, breaking your heart. I’ve been there, I know how it feels to want to kill someone… but who are we kidding? Guys like you and me, we’re doormats. You’d never have to cojones to kill her any more than I would. Guys like you and me, we’ll always just let women walk all over us, because we don’t have what it takes to put them in their place.” The inebriated nerd hears this and thinks, “Who SAYS I don’t have the cojones to kill her? You think I’m too much of a wimp to do it? I’ll show YOU!” So, he goes home and kills his cheating wife. Is the “friend” guilty of any crime that he could be convicted of? Not at all- he goaded the man into committing murder, but even if a witness had overheard the conversation, he’d have to tell a jury that “Iago” was actually discouraging his friend from getting violent. Is anybody really THAT good at manipulating people? Probably not. But a guy who COULD do that WOULD be a perfect murderer. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-perfect-murder-plans-from-fiction-open-spoilers-inevitable/586481.md?page=3)