Question

[icepixie]

Crime show fic-writers, perhaps you can answer this: Is there a resource out there about the various suspicious ways people can die and what the signs are/how they can be tested for? Say, for example, you're writing something where it looks like a victim has died in an obvious manner (gunshot, knifing, etc.), but the ME thinks something more subtle was the real cause of death, and must run a test of some sort to determine whether the hypothesis is correct. Where might one come up with the "something more subtle" and the name of the test? Or at least a general type of test that might be run? (The real cause of death would preferably be something it's easy to miss signs for.)

Comments

Re: Off Latest Things page

[icepixie]

Hey there,

Thanks for the info! I see what you mean about Google being useless for this kind of thing. I keep getting newspaper articles about suspicious deaths, or if I go for poison specifically (it seemed the most likely thing for what I need) I get results of clinical trials on mice and things like that.

I'm actually writing a short, ship-centric fic and basically just need some plausible-sounding technobabble for a comic scene; too much detail would probably spoil the scene. I think what I might do is just make up a deadly variety of mushroom and make vague handwavy motions about testing stomach contents for a particular made-up compound unique to this mushroom. (The canon itself is hardly a shining beacon of realism, so it should fit right in. *g*)