I read this after finding out about it on the Swinging Christies podcast and it was fun to switch things up with this relatively scientific non-fiction read about potions!
Arsenic, nicotine, strychnine: they all get a thorough review from both a chemical and biological standpoint, as well as a sketch of their individual historic and cultural value.
You also get a nice analysis of Christie poisoning texts and Agatha’s pharmacological training in WWI means she’s highly accurate in the way she uses poisons on her works. I also appreciated the true crime mixed in with the fiction, with a few famous and historic cases of poisoning highlighted too.
In all honesty, I don’t think I really understood much about, or stopped to think, how poisons work on the body before, and how different they are. (To the extent that one poison is sometimes the antidote for the other). I really enjoyed understanding the details of how poisoning works on a neurological level.
I didn’t find this gory at all, but obviously there’s a lot of suffering and death here! But, there’s also a lot of facts on how to recover from poisonings, and in fact, a lot of Christie’s victims could have been saved with the right interventions.
Read this if you’re into Agatha Christie, or fancy a book that blends social history, true crime, and science.
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