I have a question for a murder mystery I'm writing. I want the bad guy (who also happens to be the victim in this story) to be surprised while he has a mouthful of cookies and he'll aspirate and choke to death, OR he'll be punched very, very hard in the chest or stomach and killed from some sort of rupturing/internal bleeding.

Would either work? I've got in mind a scene where one angry man confronts a guilty man and the angry man either punches him and kills him (seems unlikely unless the angry man is Mike Tyson)... or throws a non-lethal punch but leaves too quickly to notice the guy is choking -- and concidentally, just out of spite, he'll toss the outside lock closed on the room he leaves the bad guy in, not realizing he's confining someone who's choking. (My problem with the second scenario is that a punch would make the victim exhale, not suck in air and block his airway with cookie bits. And I didn't think that internal injuries would incapacitate and kill the guy quickly enough for this story to work, plus he'd still be able to yell for help.)

Any suggestions? I'd like to write some variation of the above scenarios. I'd particularly like to work the sugar cookies in somewhere; it's an important part of the rest of the story.

Many thanks for any tips you can offer.

Why don't you make the guy miss and punch him in the throat or slap him in the back of the head just as the guy is swallowing making him distracted. The good thing about fiction is that its fiction, you can pretty much get away with it if done right. :-)

As far as the choking is concerned, someone might easily not be alarmed by someone choking, esp if they didn't like them in the first place. They might not 'read' the signs or think the person is joking. If the latter and they don't like him, walking away would be not at all out of the ordinary.

For the punch - maybe the guy's appendix was about to burst, or he had an aneurysm in an abdominal artery and the punch might be enough to cause either to be fatal. The appendix would take a while but if the char is locked in a room in pain, maybe no one would be near enough to help. The burst aneurysm might cause bleeding out in minutes. Houdini was killed by a punch. He was known for being able to 'take a punch' but when he invited a spectator to test him he didn't get 'set' in time and the punch caught him by surprise. I can't remember what it was that ruptured but a Google search should tell you that. (Tho he did have time to get to a Dr).