Christie, Agatha

Christie, Agatha, The Floating Admiral (New York Jove Books reprint edition, 1993). 

Agatha Christie s murder mysteries Alphabet series (A is for Alibi) by Sue Grafton The Client by John Grisham Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Shining by Stephen King Watcher by Dean R. Koontz... 

Pycnogonids, Jerzy Kosinski, Ellery Queen, John F. Kennedy, Agatha Christie, John Cheever, Alfred Knopf, and amphioxus. 

Then a remarkable thing happened. A nurse on the intensive care ward where the child had been placed for observation was an avid Agatha Christie fan. She had just been reading one of Dame Agatha s classic mystery novels. The Pale Horse. The plot revolves around an organization that ehminates undesirables for a fee by sneaking poison into their food, their drink, or even their toothpaste. It occurred to Marsha Maitland, the Hammersmith nurse, that the symptoms of Christie s victims were remarkably like those of the sick child. When she pulled on the baby s hair and noted how easily it came out, she became... 

Thallium, atomic no. 81 This element is better known for its poisonous properties and links with almost undetected deaths and Agatha Christie -type murder mysteries.2 Thallium compounds are used in some countries as cheap insecticides, particularly for killing cockroaches. Intake of this element causes stomach pains, vomiting and nausea, painful soles and palms of hands, limb weakness, double vision, involuntary eye movements, hallucina tions, characteristic hair loss and white lines across the nails. The symptoms are often mis-diagnosed as other diseases. Treatment is with the chemical Prussian Blue... 

We thank Maria Teresa Cascella for suggesting the citations on bitter taste taken from Plato and Agatha Christie and for finding the original texts. 

This element, perhaps more than any other, has long been associated with poisoning, especially of the homicidal and suicidal type. Thus Agatha Christie called one of her plays Arsenic and Old Lace and the author Gustave Flaubert had his character Emma Bovary use an arsenic compound to commit suicide in the novel Madame Bovary. This aspect of arsenic poisoning will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 9 (pp. 221-2). 

Chloral hydrate is the infamous knock out drops of Agatha Christie or the Mickey Finn of Prohibition gangsters. 

None of the students know that both mystery writer Agatha Christie and inventor Thomas Edison was dyslexic. 

Chapter 2 by Giovanni Appendino provides a fascinating treatment of Taxine, a collective name referring to a mixture of diterpenoid alkaloids from the yew tree (genus Taxus). Taxine is responsible for the toxic properties of the yew tree that has been documented in historical and fictional literature, from Julius Caesar to Shakespeare, and from Agatha Christie to T. S. Eliot. The chapter treats the history, isolation techniques, structure elucidation, chemistry, and pharmacology of Taxine. 

A further point which may have impeded studies of the chemistry of thallium is its reputation as a poison. The most significant contribution to this fame is probably Agatha Christie s novel The Pale Horse... 

The Poisonous Pen ofa Agatha Christie, M. C. Gerald, University of Texas Press, Austin, TX (1993). 

Helping Miss Marple—Miss Marple is the smart volunteer detective in Agatha Christie s popular crime novels. She had to rely on logic and circumstantial evidence to identify the culprit. We could help her now using genetic sequencing. 

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