McGinnis’s’ Blind Faith is dramatized reportage of a New Jersey murder case in which Rob Marshall was accused of hiring hitmen to free himself to marry his flamboyant mistress. According to McGuiness, when Marshall thought something was wrong with one of his tires, he pulled off the Garden State Parkway into a pitch-black, deserted picnic […] read more

Bainbridge’s idea of picnic fun is a biting satire of an English company picnic during which everything that can go awry does, including murder. Two friends, Brendass and Freda, organize a picnic for the employees at an Italian wine and spirits shop on Hope Street in London. An ulterior motive is Freda’s dreamy intention of […] read more

When a child is murdered at Bratbe’s picnic, a public and family scandal erupts. Then it begins to rain. Hytha Bratbe’s picnic is an annual event for about 800 invited guests, including the Prime Minister, at her estate in the West Sussex Downs, surpassing Mrs. Isabella Beeton’s picnic for forty persons—and crushing it. The over-the-top […] read more

Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy intended his narrative to accentuate the pernicious effects of social and economic struggles;  Josef Von Sternberg’s film narrative accentuates love and murder. Dreiser argued that von Sternberg and Paramount Pictures did not have the right to change anything they pleased. He took their money, sued, and lost. Von Sternberg retorted […] read more

It’s an ordinary school trip when Hélène guides her class to Cougnac Caves above the Dordogne River. The cave paintings are thirty thousand years old, but lunch is more important for the children. They chatter when Hélène has the children safely settled on the edge of a steep hillside with an overhanging ledge. There is […] read more

The horror of LeRoy’s The Bad Seed is serial killer Rhoda Penmark, a darling little girl with blond pigtails and blue eyes who murders a classmate at a school picnic because she covets his penmanship medal (pun intended). The picnic food is present but inconsequential. As in March’s novel, the picnic serves as an unsettling […] read more

George Stevens’s A Place in the Sun is a rework of Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. He renames the characters, too, so that Clyde Griffiths becomes George Eastman. It’s like renaming Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz or Tarzan. He and his screenwriters are emphatic that Alice Tripp’s murder is crucial for the story’s Hollywood success. Dreiser’s […] read more

Rhoda Penmark is a successful serial killer whose career begins at a school picnic. She looks innocent, a darling little girl with blond pigtails and blue eyes. But Rhoda’s interior is ruthless and murderous. Wanting the penmanship medal for herself (March’s pun intended), Rhoda follows her classmate Claude around, trying to snatch it. When that […] read more

Time and details in Beckett’s Malone Dies are contradictory and often obscure. Events of the narrative are confusing, especially as it reaches a bloody climax that ends when Malone hacks six to death at a picnic. The picnic is narrated by the protagonist Malone (sometimes known as Lemuel), who remembers (more or less) the day […] read more

Crace’s combination of an awful picnic and murder is not your average picnic. But Being Dead’s readers often find it so appealing that they search for Baritone Bay, where the central characters are murdered. There is no telling where they search because it is fiction. Similarly, many readers search for the missing schoolgirl in  Picnic […] read more

Grass’s picnic in The Flounder is among the worst. Not only does he mock the accepted idea of a picnic, but he turns it topsy-turvy.  It’s an ugly episode in which Sybille, aka Billie, is a variation of the Greek oracle/prophetess Sybil. According to Grass’ version, Sybille’s friends rape her. When she finally stumbles away, […] read more

Dreiser’s picnic is hellish. It’s an expression of his dark view of humanity, like Zola’s proposition that when people succumb to the “fatalities of their flesh,” they are, and a sordid picnic is the “cataclysmic” center of An American Tragedy. Once started, the picnic is a nightmare as Clyde Griffiths contemplates the murder of his […] read more

“How lovely it is to be free,” said Ursula, running swiftly here and there between the tree trunks, quite naked, her hair blowing loose. The grove was of beech trees, big and splendid, a steel-grey scaffolding of trunks and boughs, with level sprays of intense green here and there, whilst through the northern side the […] read more

Colgate’s The Shooting Party is a snapshot of English gentry circa October 1913 when Sir Randolph and Minnie Nettleby, the lord and lady of the manor, host one of their traditional fall shooting parties. A halt accompanies it on the hunt or midday break for luncheon. Once the hunting is resumed, the situation alters drastically […] read more

Stevens’s A Place in the Sun is a rework of Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. He renames the characters, too, so that Clyde Griffiths becomes George Eastman. It’s like renaming Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz or Tarzan. He and his screenwriters are emphatic that Alice Tripp’s murder is crucial for the story’s Hollywood success. Dreiser’s […] read more

Thérèse Raquin and her lover, Laurent Le Claire, murder her husband Camille at a picnic. It’s a pivotal episode, proving Emile Zola’s contention that people acting out the “fatalities of their flesh” become brutes humaines. to characterize this outing because the French usage defined it as an indoor meal. Everything about this picnic,  Zola does […] read more

Transforming the popular children’s song “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” into a death picnic is Trevor’s metaphor for portraying the 1980s generation as infantile and short on morality. Six months into their marriage, Edwin, a twenty-nine-year-old stockbroker, and Deborah Chalm, a twenty-six-year-old secretary, bicker about attending a Teddy Bears-themed picnic. Edwin is incredulous. “You call sitting down […] read more