Share your favorite "perfect murder" plans from fiction (open spoilers inevitable).

[raspberry_hunter]

@astorian

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.

Since reading Curtain, I’ve always wanted to see a Poirot/Miss Marple crossover where it turns out that Miss Marple is a dastardly mass murderer in this vein. Because it’s just implausible that an ordinary, honest old lady would be mixed up in a dozen murders… I’m imagining Miss Marple needling her friends: “Come on, you know your husband’s a loser… it would be so easy to just get rid of him…”

[Elendil_s_Heir]

Yeah, St. Mary Mead (and its American analog, Cabot Cove, Maine) has a homicide rate worthy of a Mexican border town.

[Damfino]

@astorian

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.

The **ABC Murders ** of course. I think I’ve read all of Father Brown. Can you point me to the story you’re thinking about?