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

Off Latest Things page

[needled_ink_1975]

Hi,

When last I researched crime cover-ups (what I think you're referring to), I found the simplest option involved posing questions to the following people: a medical examiner and a detective sergeant in a violent crimes unit. But I'm a stickler for absolute facts. I can tell you that online resources that provide accurate information are either so hard to track down that they seem invisible, or they don't exist, or they exist only for those people with authorized access. The rest of the info online is usually sensationalist and inaccurate, and it's attached to the kind of sites that no-one in their right mind wants to visit: the type with graphic color photos taken by civilians and not-so-nice first responders at crime and accident scenes. If you're prone to nightmares, please don't go there.

And fwiw, I still have my notes from the discussions with the two professionals I mentioned. Possible they might be of use to you. Feel free to ask.

Best

–Nic

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*)

[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.)

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

My sister owns The Complete Idiot's Guide to Forensics, which has been helpful to me on more than one occasion. :)

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

Also, if you don't use them already, little_details can be AWESOME when you have a specific question, on almost any subject. (Medical and can-someone-die-of-x posts are some of the most common.) So they're good to use when you're narrowed down the field a little bit and exhausted combinations of Google keywords.

[icepixie]

That...looks like it would be extraordinarily helpful if I'm going to keep writing in this fandom. (Writing Body of Proof fic from Megan's POV is much harder than I thought it was going to be. She's entirely too prone to scientific and medical tangents.)

[icepixie]

...They have an entire tag for poisons! Sweet!

[mylittleredgirl.livejournal.com]

*giggles*

I've got nothing helpful. I'm out of my depth when it comes to babble that's not related to Star Trek.

[icepixie]

Writing for a crime show is making my Firefox history look extremely suspicious. *g*

After staring blankly at some Google results and little_details posts, I've decided to make up a poisonous mushroom the ME in question Megan can test for. From some discussion I've seen of the show, they haven't exactly been stellar at the technobabble themselves, so it should fit right in. ;)