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

[graycardinal]

Various pro writers I've met over the years have mentioned a book called Deadly Doses by Serita Stevens & Anne Klarner, which was published as a writer's guide to poisons, as a key resource for would-be mystery writers.

In checking up on the title/author information just now, it looks as if Stevens and another writer, Anne Louise Bannon (or I suppose it could be the same collaborator under a married/remarried/divorced name), have recently updated the book as How Dunit: Book of Poisons, and that there are at least a couple of other books in the publisher's "howdunit" reference series, on forensics and police procedure. Not perhaps 100% on point for "coverup" strategy, but likely to have useful data.

[icepixie]

Oooh, those look helpful for future projects. Thanks! (I've decided to make up a mushroom for this one, since it's basically two lines in the fic that I'm using it for.)