For all of recorded history, poisons have been a means of death, both deliberate and accidental. Greek philosophers, kings, emperors, actresses, scientists, mathematicians, and more were felled by lethal doses of chemicals.
Arsenic, cyanide and strychnine were popular instruments of death due to ease of access. Arsenic earned the nickname of “heir powder,” as it was often used to dispatch relatives standing in the way of inheritances. Cyanide’s telltale symptoms of blue lips and rapid death limited its use, as did strychnine’s foaming of the mouth and asphyxiation. Thus, arsenic became the most widely used poison as it was tasteless, odorless, and difficult to detect.
During the twentieth century, more toxins became common in households, as well as general awareness of natural poisons. Thus, with more possible toxins available, more people fell victim to a wider variety of poisons.
Given that poisoners usually wear the mask of caring family member, trusted friend, or valued employee they have easy access to their targets. Oftentimes their traits lean toward emotional immaturity, cleverness, premeditation, amorality, sneakiness, and self-centeredness.
With such an appealing villainous list of flaws and with the ease of access to poisons, is it any wonder many authors use poison in their crime fiction?
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 – 1930) frequently used poison in his Sherlock Holmes books. For instance, in A Study in Scarlet, South American arrow poison compounded into a pill was the means of death. In A Sign of Four a vegetable alkaloid of a strychnine-like substance applied to a thorn killed someone. In The Adventure of the Speckled Band, snake venom was the poison. In The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter, cyanide proved to be the victim’s undoing. He used ether in the atmosphere to kill in The Poison Belt, the second in his Professor Challenger series.
Fast forward to the 1920s and 1930s, the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, when authors such as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Margaret Allingham, Patricia Wentworth, Gladys Mitchell, Ngaio Marsh, and Josephine Tey killed their characters with toxins.
The most acclaimed author of the Golden Age is undisputedly Agatha Christie (1890-1976), also known as the Queen of Crime. She killed more than thirty characters with poisons in her sixty-six mystery novels. Cyanide was the poison she employed most often, followed by arsenic, strychnine, digitalis, then morphine. Less often she used unusual poisons such as thallium, coniine, Bacillus anthracis, phosphorus, and monkshood. In the medical poisons family, she employed belladonna, physostigmine, morphine, sleeping pills, and amyl nitrate. Is it any wonder that the era of Christie and her contemporaries is also known as the Golden Age of Poisons?
While poison is also used as a means of death by contemporary crime writers, cozy mystery authors have an edge in their source expert, the “The Poison Lady,” who attends the annual Malice Domestic Conferences. Lucy Zahray, a former nurse has a passion for poisons, which she shares with cozy writers. Her talks inspired me to include poison in my writerly arsenal, but I needed the right story for it.
My new series with a psychic candlemaker in Savannah proved to be the perfect vessel for a poisoning death in book two, In the Wick of Time. The stillroom of the Magic Candle Mystery Series is a blend of science lab, apothecary shop, and crafting room. So when someone close to the shop owners is killed with poison, the police target Tabby Winslow’s twin Sage as a person of interest. They see the stillroom with its mortars and pestles as the perfect means to grind the plant poison, Sage’s public argument with her boss the day before his death and her recent application to move into management at the nursery as motive, and then opportunity is covered with an oleander growing behind the shop.
Here are a few key facts about this murder weapon. Poison adds an extra dimension of sneakiness to a mystery novel. The killer rarely acts in a burst of passion. Poisonings are premeditated and meant to make the victim suffer.
Below is a sampling of contemporary authors and the poisons used in their mystery fiction:
Carolyn Haines is a versatile poisoner of characters. She’s poisoned victims in these books from her Sarah Booth mystery series: Buried Bones, Greedy Bones, Bone Appetite, Smarty Bones, and Bones of Holly; and poison also featured in her Fever Moon, a dark literary mystery.
Arsenic and Cyanide: Rex Stout used cyanide-laced champagne to kill in Champagne for One in his Rex Stout series. Mia P. Manansala used arsenic in food to kill in Arsenic and Adobo. Nancy J Cohen used different poisons in her long running Bad Hair Day mysteries. In Permed to Death, cyanide and monkshood (the toxin is aconitine) were employed.
Thallium: Marilyn Levinson, writing as Allison Brook, used thallium as a poison in Death on the Shelf, the fifth in her Haunted Library series.
Plant poisons: Kate Khavari in her A Botantist’s Guide to Flowers and Fatality employed a plant poison with the red herring of a different plant poison. Hope Clark struck with hemlock, a naturally available plant in the South Carolina setting of Dying on Edisto, the fifth in her Edisto Island Mysteries. Marilyn Levinson selected lily of the valley water (the toxin is convallatoxin) in Murder a la Christie. Nicotine featured in Debra H Goldstein’s Five Belles Too Many, book five in her Sarah Blair series, and in Nancy J Cohen’s Star Tangled Murder. In addition, Cohen used liquid latex to poison a victim with a known latex allergy in Facials Can Be Fatal. Alana White served up a poison mushroom in her latest Guid’Antonio Vespucci mystery, The Hearts of All on Fire.
Drugs and Medications: Greg Herren’s October release, Death Drop, employed fentanyl to kill. Diane A.S. Stuckart, writing as Anna Gerard, fatally dosed her victim with a sedative in Peachy Scream, her second Georgia B&B Mystery.
Salt: Salt poisoning is a subplot in Lois Winston’s A Stitch to Die For, the fifth in her Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series, where a character who suffered from Munchausen by Proxy force fed her kids excessive amounts of salt.
In life and crime fiction there are always people who covet what others have, who want more than their fair share, who seek status, or who thirst for revenge. Though social norms may change, it’s clear that basic human nature does not. With such a wide arsenal of toxins and many that require specific and often costly testing to detect, law enforcement can’t afford to test every known toxin out there for every suspected poisoning, and as such some villains literally get away with murder.
That would never do in a murder mystery, and our sleuths are relentless in seeking truth and justice. Considering the keen satisfaction that many armchair sleuths feel when matching wits with a clever fictional poisoner, this means of death endures as a perennial mystery fan favorite.
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