Murder, she wrote.

Years before Nancy Crampton Brophy was accused of gunning down her chef husband in a Portland kitchen, the novelist penned a handy treatise on offing one's spouse.

"As a romantic suspense writer, I spend a lot of time thinking about murder and, consequently, about police procedure," Brophy wrote in a 2011 essay titled "How to Murder Your Husband."

"After all, if the murder is supposed to set me free, I certainly don't want to spend any time in jail."

Police booked Crampton Brophy, 68, in the Multnomah County Detention Center last week after they say she fatally shot Daniel Brophy, her husband of 27 years.

A beloved instructor at the Oregon Culinary Institute, Brophy was found in a kitchen at the school June 2 — a baffling early-morning shooting that yielded no suspects.

While Crampton Brophy appeared in court on charges of murder, police and prosecutors have remained silent on a possible motive.

The author provides several possibilities in her 700-word essay, which was published on the website See Jane Publish on Nov. 4, 2011.

Among them: infidelity, an abusive relationship, greed.

"Divorce is expensive, and do you really want to split your possessions?" she wrote under the section on financial motives.

The author, whose self-published works include the title "The Wrong Husband," also offers a list of options to carry out the killing. Guns. Knives. Poison. Hitmen.

"I find it is easier to wish people dead than to actually kill them. I don't want to worry about blood and brains splattered on my walls. And really, I'm not good at remembering lies.

"But the thing I know about murder is that every one of us have it in him/her when pushed far enough."

The post is no longer public, but archived versions are available online.

Crampton Brophy's steamy books featured "rugged men, strong women and a good story," the author wrote on a personal website. Their paperback covers depicted handsome heroes — and at least one heroine — with chiseled bodies and dark coiffed hair.

A synopsis of her 2015 novel "The Wrong Husband" tells of a woman who escapes an abusive and powerful spouse during a shipwreck in the Mediterranean, and who later falls for one of the men sent to find her.

While her romance novels had happy endings, her 2011 essay seemed to ponder a darker outcome.

"What if killing didn't produce the right results?" Crampton Brophy wrote. "Would they do it again? Could they do it again? What if they liked it?"

-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh

skavanaugh@oregonian.com

503-294-7632 || @shanedkavanaugh