The Poison Pen: How Writers Kill Off Characters

As a kid I used to love reading Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie mysteries--but somewhere along the line these got dropped for less fun tomes like “Fundamentals of Biochemistry.” Now, after a visit to a local crime bookstore, I’m laden once again with unimproving literature--and much better informed to boot.

I’d gone to Book’em Mysteries in South Pasadena to learn if all our new knowledge about drugs and human biology had made any difference to the types of poisons used in crime books. Have we moved on, I wondered, since Dame Agatha’s days? The classic methods are alive and well, said bookseller Jean Utley--but there’s a lot more variety too: “Everybody’s using everything nowadays--it’s not just straight arsenic anymore,” she said.

Poisoning, says Utley, is as popular as ever--often cropping up in so-called gardening mysteries (sometimes complete with gardening tips), botanical mysteries (with info on plants), even kitchen mysteries--some with recipes, no less.

Take herbs. As the herbal supplement health movement has grown, so, has the trend for more “natural” murders in books, she says.

And take drugs. The general public is a lot more savvy about pharmaceuticals, side effects and adverse drug reactions, and these things are showing up in books as well. Not that this trend is entirely new: In a 1971 book called “Old Cheese,” Swedish psychiatrist/writer Ulf Durling killed a fictional victim by feeding him Chianti and old cheese and mixing a class of antidepressants with his blood-pressure medication. Each heightened the man’s already high blood pressure--enough, together, to give the victim a stroke. Chancy, but elegant.

Writers do a lot of research in their quest for accuracy and the perfect poison, says local crime writer Rochelle Krich (who has variously bumped off victims with curare, strychnine, arsenic, digitalis and by combining certain medications with adverse interactions.) She and local members of Sisters in Crime--a crime-writers organization--get together regularly and hear talks from toxicologists, forensics experts and the like. They also consult books, such as “Deadly Doses: A Writer’s Guide to Poisons” (Writers Digest Books, 1990) by Serita Deborah Stevens and Anne Klarner.

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A Sampling of the Tried and True

Next we called Kathleen Rodgers, a professor at USC’s school of medicine, who gamely dipped into her pharmacology and toxicology texts to explain how various tried and true poisons do their deeds. Here, from Rodgers and some of our own reading, are a sampling:

* Strychnine interferes with the action of certain nerve cells. This causes other nerves to go into overdrive, sending muscles into spasm.

* Hemlock is a poisonous plant known since way back. The Greek philosopher Socrates was forced to drink a cup of its juice as his death sentence. Hemlock contains the alkaloid coniine, which is a sedative and relaxes muscles, kind of the opposite of what strychnine does. For that reason, it’s been recommended by some as an antidote to strychnine (though “this seems like a fine line to tread,” comments a co-worker.)

* Ricin is a plant toxin derived from castor beans. It was famously used to kill a Bulgarian defector in 1978 when a specially rigged “umbrella” was used to shoot a ricin pellet into his leg. Ricin interferes with cells’ abilities to make proteins.

* Curare (used by Krich in one of her books) paralyzes skeletal muscles--the muscles we use to move about and breathe with. Historically, it was used in nonlethal doses as a muscle relaxant during surgery.

* Arsenic, a heavy metal, wreaks its havoc by interfering with the ability of cells to process energy, essentially starving them. The Borgias, a famous Italian family, used arsenic to assassinate people--some have even suggested that Napoleon was offed with arsenic-tainted wine.

* Cyanide, that Christie classic, can be found in tiny amounts in pits of fruit such as apricot, apple, peach and almond. It also interferes with energy-production in cells.

* Oleander and foxglove plants both contain chemicals that boost the pumping of the heart and--in high doses--can lethally interfere with heart function.

Finally, we stumbled upon a true 1977 account of a nurse who diagnosed an illness from a crime book. The gravely ill child, whose sickness was a mystery, had symptoms just like the thallium-poisoned victims in an Agatha Christie book she was reading.

There. What good would “Fundamentals of Biochemistry” have been in that situation?

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If you have an idea for a Booster Shots topic, write or e-mail Rosie Mestel at the Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st. St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, rosie.mestel@latimes.com.