Murder

Some stories I think up and write, or think up and never actually write, have in them a murder or two.   If I don't write them down it is when I become uncomfortable and anxious that it is my subconscious desires that speak through them, desires to slaughter my real or imagined enemies.  I'm never certain that this is true, the stories are not that transparent.   They are told (or planned out) in first person singular relating a tale he has heard or observed, or else in the authorial third person.  They are not typical detective stories, there are usually no detectives in them, or else there are police detectives who fail to solve the mystery, while the suspect gets away from them.  And we are never sure if the suspect really did it, or contracted out to have it done.

And I wonder if the crime stories by more or less known writers are not sometimes tales of revenge against the writers' enemies.  It happens that writers put their friends, ex husbands and wifes and foes in their stories, and occasionally even get sued for it.  Besides, certain writers are known to be misogynist, misanthropist, or misandrist.

Here's a story idea I've thought up a few days ago, and haven't written.

Several prominent men, celebrities, movie stars die under mysterious circumstances.  There are few leads.  A letter surfaces from a man who admits to the murders and warns that they will continue until his unnamed lady friend agrees to marry him. Analyses of the letter lead nowhere.   The narrator of the story tells us he suspects a friend of his, who is in an up and down love affair.   Women in the naked city who have been asked to marry their beaus, and refused or else haven't made up their minds all begin to suspect the men.  The girlfriend of the narrator's friend finally accepts his proposal and the murdering spree stops.  She will live uncertain if she had married a murderer.