Death by Smart Key

You know what they say: there are two types of people who are fascinated by murder—sociopaths and crime writers. I like to think I fall into the second category but I do have to wonder whether there's a little of the former in me as well.

You see, just the other day I was thinking about the new fangled 'smart key' and how easy it would be to kill someone with it. For anyone who doesn't drive a swanky new luxury vehicle (which would be, er, me) take a look at my latest Ghostwriter Mystery—Words Can Kill (now out on Amazon and slowly making its way to other ereaders). I feature a Mercedes 'smart key' in this one, although it's not used as a means of murder. But it could be!

When Cars Attack!

I read recently in the Sydney Morning Herald how some poor woman was trapped in her own car in soaring heat by her smart key. She used the keyless entry remote to get into the luxury Audi Q3. Then, once in, the doors automatically locked and she couldn't reopen the car. What's more, she couldn't start the engine to get the airconditioning going. The key had glitched! Suddenly, the desperate soul found herself trapped on a sundrenched parking lot, in the heat of the day, with no-one else about. She couldn't get out, the heat inside the car was unbearable, and her screams for help went on deaf ears. Well, no ears, as the parking lot was empty at that time.

Saved by the bloke

Fortunately, some bloke showed up after 12 minutes and managed to open the door from outside, and the gasping woman was able to escape, collapsing onto the searing pavement with great relief and, I suspect, never quite looking at her fancy new vehicle with the same innocent delight again. Apparently someone else had a similar experience a few years ago with a Porsche.

The key to a good murder?
So, of course, this all got me thinking: What a clever way to murder someone without leaving so much as a print! Here's how it would go: You have two smart keys and one car. You give your husband—let's bump him off shall we?—the wrong key and keep the right one. Then you lure him to a secluded spot on a hot day and watch as he goes to unlock the vehicle with the useless key. You press your smart key at the same time, so he thinks his key has worked and gains entry to the car. Then, once in, you lock it again and stop him from getting out.

He tries to start the car and his key fails. He tries to get out, but you have secured the doors. He starts to panic and you walk away (or drive your old bomb, whatever works for you) as his final gasping cries for help go unheeded, his screams echoing down the empty road. (Cue sinister laughter now.)

Okay, so it's a little elaborate and he could probably just smash his way out, but it gives you a tiny glimpse of the worrying way my mind works. And it must make you wonder how my husband sleeps so soundly in the bed beside me each night. I certainly do.

Of course we can't afford a luxury vehicle with a smart key, so he's safe for now. (Cue more sinister laughter, then fade away...)

Happy reading, everybody.
xo Christina

Writing with kids is murder

So I've just bashed a man across the head with his 1920's Gibson guitar, there's blood spurting everywhere, bits of his brain are bubbling out through his skull. We're in a dark Berlin apartment, I'm spouting Italian and he's looking very confused as he takes his final gasping breath. He'd just given me a lift from Riomaggiore, he'd thought I was a good guy, so why ... why ...?

"Muuuum! Can you come here?"

Huh? What? Who?

Damn it, there goes that thread again. Writing with kids in the house can lead to murderous thoughts, but not a lot of actual crime writing. I'm two-thirds of the way through my fifth Ghostwriter Mystery and now that the summer holidays have hit, it's all starting to go AWOL. Sort of like attempting to drive a manual vehicle when you've only ever driven automatic, it's a case of spits and spurts, bunny hops and splutters and you occaisonally make ground but you never really get anywhere. Not in a hurry, anyway.

"Mum, Felix can't find his money."

There he goes again. Except that's the other one. There's two of them, you see, so it's twice the battle and half the luck.

"It's your fault for having us," he says now, reading over my shoulder as I write this. That's the older one again, the cheekier one, the one who should know better. "It sounds like you absolutely hate us," he adds.

"Muuum, I can't find my money," says the younger one now, wandering into my office. "What are you writing?"
"Mum hates us."
"No I do not."
"Yes you do, says so right there on your blog."
"I'm just explaining to my readers why it's so HARD to finish novels with you guys on holidays. Now, if you'll let me get on with it, I'll stop writing about you."
"But what about my money?" demands the younger one.
I sigh, stop typing and turn to face him. "Why do you need your money, sweetie?"
"Because I want you to take me shopping to buy Ratchet & Clank. It's on special at EB Games."
"Shopping? Really? I was hoping to finish a few chapters today."
"But Mum, I'm really bored."
"And then we'll have something to do and we'll leave you aloooooone!" adds the other one, the older one. Did I mention he was cheekier?

At some point, this point actually, I start screaming like a hapless murder victim and they rush out of the room knowing they've pushed me too far, and I'm left alone for a blissful paragraph or two before ...

"Muuum, I can't find my socks!"
I try breathing deeply. "Why do you need your socks?"
"Because I have to put my shoes on if we're going to go shopping."
I growl quietly to myself, I save the pathetic three pars I've managed that day, I push away from my desk and I search for the money, the socks and my car keys.

It looks like we're going shopping.

xo Christina

The Other One (a free quick read)

HEY GUYS: Here's an example of my short fiction (with a twist) that's available for free at:
http://freequickreads.blogspot.com.au/

The Other One
by Christina Larmer

My sister has always been more beautiful than me and I don't understand why. We're identical twins. We're supposed to look the same. But for some reason, men are more attracted to Kara. Hell, everyone's more attracted to her: old women, little kids, even the dog next door gallops across, tail wagging a million miles a minute when Kara comes around. He offers me not so much as a sniff, and it bugs me. Or, at least it did until last week, when Kara turned up dead.

They say a handsome young man found her body. Of course. He alerted the police, they called in the fire brigade who in turn called in the search and rescue squad. She was hard to get to, stuck in a tree, halfway down a cliff. Just dangling there, like a dead pig in a butcher's window. For all to see.

The irony of it hit me. Kara was always eager to be seen and death did not let her down. Of course if you spent as much time on yourself as Kara did, you'd probably be noticed, too. She always knew what to wear, how to do her hair. Subtle make-up, sexy shoes. I gather she spent all she earned at that glamorous PR job on her shoes. I've got them all now, of course, but they aren't taking me where I thought they would.

I'm thrifty. A mad saver, really. And not at all into fashion or lipstick or highlights in the hair. The 'plain one', I hear them say, sympathy edging out the disdain. They don't compare themselves to her, of course. Just me. Her other half.

I'm an accountant. Wealthier, wiser, lonelier. Had a boyfriend once. Until he met her. Of course Kara would not be tempted by someone so dull, but she might as well have. He was as good as gone after that; sex occasionally, the fire extinguished from his eyes. Unless he was thinking of her. I knew when that was because he was excited, animated, fervent. Alive. That's when I would slip off midway and leave him there, dangling.

Dangling. It's a funny word, isn't it? Ugly. Humiliating. Out of control.

Kara was never normally out of the control. She spoke well, she made friends easily, she drank just enough, never put on weight. She was School Captain and University President. She had been in love, but she never fell there like the rest of us. She sauntered up instead, opening the door to it, offering it a seat. And she always left them, a few expected tears, and happiness again.

"I love being single," she told me once. "I love being on my own." I'd noticed. Apart from our nine months wedged together early in the piece, we'd never been close. I laugh at the thought of poor, beautiful Kara stuck in the slimy environs of my mother's womb, her limbs entangled with mine, unable to get away.

Last week she got away from me. For good. She was pushed from a cliff. Then she really was all alone. And now in death as she lies rotting beneath the soil, she rests all alone. Except for the constant visitors of course. Mum can't bring herself to leave Kara's grave. Has practically set up a camp site. Old boyfriends have driven miles to pay their last respects, weeping over her marble plaque, leaving perfectly healthy roses to wilt without water and die. And I watch this all from a distance, disbelieving and distraught. I'm still here, guys! The other one. Give me a second of your time, hand the flowers to me.

One man has started paying me attention, though. A policeman by the name of Jones. Talks to me a lot, asks all sorts of questions, mostly about me. He discovers that I did it. He locks me up for life and throws away the key.

It's not so lonely in here. I have a room-mate called Sharon, and she's not going anywhere.

ends:
Read my latest short story at: http://freequickreads.blogspot.com

The Agatha Christie Book Club

The Agatha Christie Book Club©

By Christina Larmer

NB: Dear readers: Here are the first few chapters of a new crime fiction series I am writing based around my passion for Agatha Christie murder mysteries. It is the first in the series and will feature a book group who end up investigating mysteries that arise in their neighbourhood. I already have the next two books mapped out. Please let me know if you’d like to read any more from Book One.

Thanks,

Christina Larmer

Prologue

She needed to teach him a brutal lesson, but she couldn’t quite work out how. She shivered a little and turned the heating up. It was one of those fancy turbo blaster gas thingamejigs that had baffled her once. Before. But she had mastered it eventually, had sat herself down and read through the blasted manual—what the ideal temperature was, how to use the timer so it would switch on a good half hour before she headed to bed. She had worked it out, and she would work out a solution to him, too. She knew now that it was possible, that she wasn’t the ‘useless maid’ he constantly referred to. She would show him, and she would show his ‘precious princess’, too.

They would both learn the hard way.

But how? The woman sat, wedged up against the headboard of the bed and gave it some thought. To her left was a small table with the usual bedside accoutrement—a large, pearl coloured lamp, a clock radio (another thingamejig she had mastered, thank you very much), a glass of water, today’s local rag, opened at the classifieds, a half-read biography, her old watch, recently discarded, and a container of floss. She picked it up and absentmindedly pulled a long strand out, snapping it off and applying it to her recently brushed teeth. As she pushed and pulled, twisted and yanked, her eyes dropped back to the bedside table, and that’s when she saw it. The answer to all her prayers.

She would create the perfect murder. What a brilliant idea!

She dropped the floss to the floor and smiled, the first time she had smiled in months. Then she picked up the book and continued to read...

Chapter 1: Two weeks earlier

Alicia Finlay was in the wrong book club.

Of course, she hadn’t realized it at first. Had come along, every month for three months, the latest Booker Prize-winner wedged under her arm, a strained smile on her lips, and pretended to be having fun. But there was no fun to be had. On the fourth Monday night it dawned on her.

It was the table of canapés that first drew her attention to it. Not because she wanted to eat them. Quite the contrary. The stiff cardboard crackers adorned with dribbly yellow and red gunk resembled something her dog recently brought up. No, it was the simple fact that they had been placed to the side, just out of reach. So, too, were eight sparkly crystal wine glasses and two bottles of Merlot, opened, inviting, yet unattainable. It would all have to wait until the serious chatter was over. She knew how things went. Alicia’s mouth salivated. She glanced at the man to her right but he was deeply engrossed in something the woman to her left was saying.
“It’s not so much the physicality of the tear drop,” the woman, Verity, was saying, “but the way in which it draws the reader into the major themes of the novel. There really is a reoccurring water motif running all the way through this book. Don’t you agree, Alicia?”
She darted her eyes from the wine bottle to the grey haired woman talking and smiled awkwardly. “Oh, well, I—” She paused. Laughed a little. “Actually, sorry, wasn’t really paying attention. Thought I might help myself to a glass of red.”
“Red?”
“Yes, red wine.” She stood up. “Does anyone else want me to get them a glass? Something to eat?”
Kirsten, the book group’s hostess, sat forward with a start.
“Ahh, sorry, Alicia, but it’s not really time for wine, we’re still in discussion mode.”
She tapped her wrist watch.
“Oh,” said Alicia, dropping reluctantly back into her seat. “We can’t discuss and drink at the same time?”
Kirsten smiled politely, exchanged glances with another participant—they had exchanged those kinds of glances before—and shook her head, no.
“Why not?” Alicia persisted and Kirsten looked slightly taken aback.
“It’s just not what we do... here.” She fumbled for her sheet of questions. “Okay then, if we can return to the subject at hand. Where were we exactly? I think we were up to question five? Yes, style of writing. Have you got anything to say about that, Wilfred?”
She stared pointedly at a large man with a shaggy beard and gold-rimmed glasses who was slouched in an armchair across from Alicia. He pushed the glasses back into position and then slid one hand down to his beard and began caressing it lovingly. He’d been waiting for this.
“Yes, right well, if you ask me, and I believe you just have, I really have my doubts about this chappie. His writing, well, it leaves a lot to be desired don’t you think?” A few murmurs of agreement broke out around the lounge room where the meeting was being held, and, encouraged, he launched into his trademark monologue on the fallibilities of today’s novelist. There wasn’t a decent writer left in the world, apparently, not since Hemingway and Salinger had a good book been published. Alicia couldn’t help wondering what a science lecturer would know about that but pushed the thought away and let out a long, soft sigh instead.
Why hadn’t it dawned on her earlier? Why had it taken four sessions and a forbidden bottle of wine to make her see what was probably blatantly obvious to everyone else in the room from day one?
She just didn’t fit in here.
If truth be told, Alicia Finlay didn’t give a toss about literature. She just wished she did, in the same way a woman who guiltily watches Desperate Housewives on TV, wishes she could find the strength to switch over to that really important current affairs show on the public broadcaster. She just didn’t have it in her. She just didn’t care enough.
Alicia’s mind wandered now to her own bookshelf in the small, semi-detached house she shared with her sister Lynette and their Labrador Max. The shelf was huge, took up an entire wall and tipped ever so precariously to the right. It was cluttered with well-thumbed paperbacks, mostly crime novels, and mostly by British author Agatha Christie. Alicia’s smile returned. What really woke her up in the morning and saw her drift off to sleep most nights was an old-fashioned whodunit. And if it happened to be penned by the Queen of Crime herself, all the better.
She suppressed a giggle. Imagine if she suggested Murder on the Orient Express for the next book club! Wilfred would have a fit. Kirsten would choke on her chamomile tea. And I’d be in book heaven, she thought.
That’s it. Enough’s enough.
She stood up. She walked across to the table. She picked up the bottle of cabernet sauvignon and poured herself a generous glass. As she did so, the room fell silent behind her and she could feel their eyes boring into her back. She wondered if Kirsten would tackle her to the ground and wrench the wine out of her hands screaming, “But it’s not drink time yet!”
She turned around slowly and tried for her bravest smile. Kirsten’s eyes were abnormally wide. Verity looked nervous, glancing between Alicia and Kirsten. And Wilfred had stopped stroking his beard.
“What are you doing, Alicia?” Kirsten said eventually.
“Just helping myself, before I head off,” she replied.
She finished the drink, placed the glass down and reached for her handbag.
“Where are you going?”
She took a deep breath, tried for a smile. “Look, I’m really sorry, guys, I gave it a go, but this club is clearly not right for me.”
They all looked stunned, as if it hadn’t even dawned on them, and Alicia realised then that it probably hadn’t. They were so self-obsessed they hadn’t noticed the elephant in the room. A wistful look crossed Verity’s face and for a moment Alicia thought she might leap to her feet and follow her out.
“But... but what about your book?” Kirsten demanded, grabbing Alicia’s pristine copy of the latest award-winning novel from the coffee table and thrusting it towards her.
“Oh no thanks, Kirsten, you’re welcome to it. I’ve got much better things to read at home.”
And with that Alicia Finlay walked out on the Monday Night Book Club, their suffocating rules and their tediously dull literature. And she returned to her inner city home where her sister was just starting work on a crispy duck stirfry, her dog was wagging his tail maniacally, and her latest Agatha Christie novel—Murder At The Vicarage—was waiting, temptingly, by her bedside.

“I think you should start a book club,” Lynette announced between mouthfuls of dripping duck and broccoli. Alicia scoffed and Max pricked up his ears hoping the conversation had something to do with food and his mouth.
“Um, I don’t think you’ve been listening to me, Lynny, I hated the book club. I’m never going back. Why would I subject myself to a whole new one? It’s masochistic.”
“No, not that kind of book club. Start your own. One totally devoted to what you like.”
“Well, that would be crime fiction and last time I looked, you don’t have book clubs about that.”
She scooped a chunk of duck from her bowl and dropped it into Max’s waiting mouth. He slunk back under the table, satisfied.
Lynette frowned at her but let it pass. “Why not?” she said instead.
Of the two sisters, Lynette had always been the fearless one, always ready to dive head first into life, never considering consequences or looking back. Alicia, six years Lynette’s senior, was quieter and more conservative, less likely to just jump. She considered Lyn’s question and found that she came up short. Why not indeed?
“Seems to me,” Lynette continued, “that plenty of other people love crime fiction, too. You’re hardly alone.”
“Hell, more people read crime fiction than bloody Man Booker prize winning tomes of trite. Just look at the Millennium trilogy.”
“Exactly! So, it won’t be hard to get a group together. Just ask around. Or get on Twitter. You’ll be inundated. But if you’re not, I’m happy to plump up the numbers. I’ve always had a soft spot for Miss Marple, you know that.”
In fact both sisters had been Agatha Christie devotees since childhood, a legacy passed down from their mother, Amelia, who possessed almost every book in existence and read and re-read them at will. Their father, Tom, and brother, Monty (named after Agatha’s own son would you believe), were less inspired by the Queen of Crime and preferred a good, modern thriller complete with double crossing CIA agents and at least one missing nuclear bomb.
Alicia put her fork down, she could hear her heart beating suddenly, as though it had only just come to life.
“I’m not sure how it’d work,” continued Lynette but Alicia was way ahead of her now.
“I know how it’d work! Oh, it’d be great. We’d all choose our favourite crime novel and focus on a different one each fortnight. I’d start with Death on the Nile and then...” She stopped, darted her eyes from left to right. “No, no, forget that. We could all all choose our favourite Agatha Christie novel! It could be an Agatha Christie book club!”
Lynette frowned slightly and took a gulp of her white wine. “Well, that might be taking things a bit far. I mean, are there enough books to sustain it?”
“Enough books? It would take us about four years to get through them all, Lynny. The woman was prolific. She wrote something like 50 books in 35 years.”
Lynette looked impressed. “There you go then.”
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, this is the best idea you ever had!”
“I thought my duck creation—I’m calling it Lucky Duck by the way—was the best idea I ever had.”
“Nah, that comes a distant second. Good name by the way.”
Alicia began to contemplate the club and her heartbeat continued to accelerate. She hadn’t been so excited by anything in such a long time. Not since the receptionist at work had convinced her to take over her seat at the Monday Night Book Club.
Her heart skipped a beat. She knew how that had turned out. She slumped over her bowl.
“You really think it will work?”
Her sister winked. “’Course it will! You just have to get the right people together this time. Set up a Facebook account or start tweeting every one you know. How hard could it be?”

“Oh my God, it sounds like a bloody nightmare,” said Ginny, the aforementioned receptionist, over the espresso machine in the office the next morning....

to be continued