Kathryn Harkup (Bloomsbury Sigma)
Agatha ChristieāsĀ five-decade writing career saw her poison dozens of her characters, supplying the killers in her stories with an assortment of deadly chemicals, including poisons and venoms produced by living organisms and delivered via injection.
Chemist Kathryn Harkup has visited their use before in 2015ās A Is for Arsenic. : Agatha Christieās chemicals of death looks at āthe more unusual means of chemical killing that [make] Agatha Christie a true āQueen of Crimeā.ā
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Christieās murders were made all the more authentic due to her scientific background: she was a pharmaceutical dispenser before she became a bestselling writer, and she furthered her knowledge of toxicology while volunteering as a nurse during the first world war. Harkup presents a detailed but never overwhelming account of the substances at the centre of her stories ā and how many of them didnāt come in small bottles conveniently marked āDangerā.
Spoiler: a dirty bandage that had recently dressed a catās ear infection is used to spread septicaemia in 1939ās Murder Is Easy, while the killer in Sparkling Cyanide harnesses carbon monoxide from coal gas. Harkup explains the science behind each murder, avoiding spoilers where possible. She considers, for example, the feasibility of a āpoisoned dart hidden in an adapted cigaretteā and the consequences of imbibing toxic hat paint (feasible and not good, respectively).
Harkupās analysis stretches to the fictional poisons Christie invented, like Benvo from 1970ās Passenger to Frankfurt, a drug that causes its victim to become fatally benevolent (Harkup concludes that āapparently, this is a bad thingā).
Antidotes to the murder methods are outlined ā CPR may have saved the life of the dinner party guest who had unknowingly ingested opioids in 1962ās The Mirror Crackād from Side to Side, while real-life cases that likely inspired Christieās plots are explained in asides.
Drugged drinks are used as a murder method in several of Christieās novels. Harkup writes of the disgraced Scottish chemist who worked as a bartender in 1870s San Francisco, and whose chloral hydrate āknockout dropsā, slipped into patronsā beer glasses, would later take his name: Mickey Finn.
Harkup reveals that many of the drugs from Christieās stories are still widely available. Barbiturates, as featured in 1933ās Lord Edgware Dies, are today prescribed as epilepsy treatments, such as Seconal. But she cautions against using Christieās chemicals as āhomicidal inspirationā, explaining that toxicology was āa little different at the time Christie was writingā. Would-be poisoners attempting to mimic her assassinations today would either be swiftly detected or else suffer a calamity.
Harkup balances the macabre with the scientifically intricate. For every passage detailing the chemical history of chloroform, there are accounts of real murders that Christieās imagination may have influenced. We learn of a poisoned billionaire who in 2011 died after eating cat-meat stew laced with gelsemium, the same plant featured in 1927ās The Big Four. Harkup also deconstructs the hydrochloric acid murder in 1936ās Murder in Mesopotamia, drawing comparisons with todayās corrosive substance attacks.
Christieās inventive killings made her a perennial bestseller. But itās fitting that, as Harkup highlights, one of her favourite accolades came via The Pharmaceutical Journal. In response to her debut novel, 1920ās The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the scientific review noted, āThis novel has the rare merit of being correctly written.ā
George Bass is a writer based inĀ Kent,Ā UK
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