The Myth of the Untraceable Poison

By DP Lyle

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One of the most common questions I get from writers is: Is there a poison that can’t be found in a corpse? The answer is No. And Yes.

Much depends on the state of the corpse when it is found. If severely decayed or completely skeletonized, the ME and the forensic toxicologist have their hands tied. Mostly. There are some toxins, such as the heavy metals (Mercury, Lead, and Arsenic are common ones), that can be found in bones and hair. But most toxins can’t be found in corpses that are severely decayed or simply bones.

In a more or less intact body, your villain can still get away with the murder by poison. That is, until your clever sleuth figures out that something is amiss and solves the crime.

The first thing your murderer must consider is how to make the poisoning look like something else. An example would be an elderly person with heart and lung disease who dies in his sleep. In this case, the person's private physician would sign the death certificate as a natural cardiac death and, almost always, the ME will accept it. Why? Because there is an old adage in medicine that says: Common things occur commonly. Most people who die in this situation do indeed die from natural causes, so searching for something more sinister would be neither logical nor practical. If the ME accepted the private physician’s cause of death, no autopsy would be done, and no toxicological examinations would be undertaken. An overdose of Morphine or digitalis or arsenic or anything else would go undetected. 

Unless someone asked questions. Maybe a high-dollar inheritance or insurance policy is in play. If an inheritance, one family member could suspect another and ask questions. In the case of a large insurance policy, the insurance company would look under every stone before paying off the policy. Or your sleuth could have some reason to suspect that things are not as they seem. In any of these situations, the ME might be moved to open a file and investigate. 

But if your killer is clever, he might be able to keep the ME completely out of the picture or at least give him an easy answer for the cause of death. If no murder is suspected, he'll take the path of least resistance, which is also the cheapest route. Remember, he must live with and justify his budget annually. If he is wasteful, he'll be looking for a job. So, give him a cheap and easy out. Your sleuth will then have to battle the ME to get the case re-opened.

The second thing a clever poisoner can do is to use a poison that is not readily detectable and will slip through most drug screens. Toxicology testing follows a two-tiered approach. Screening Tests, which are easier, faster, and cheaper, are used to identify common classes of drugs such as narcotics or amphetamines. This only tells the ME and toxicologist that some type of narcotic or amphetamine is present, but not which one. Determining which one requires more sophisticated, time-consuming, and expensive Confirmatory Testing. And if the screening tests are normal, no further testing is warranted and the ME would not spend the time and money to go further down that road. 

Drug screens typically test for alcohol, narcotics, sedatives, marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines, and aspirin. Some screen for a few other classes. Once a member of a class is identified, then confirmatory testing will determine exactly which member of the class is present and in what amount. For example, if narcotic is found in the screen, further testing might show that the actual narcotic present is morphine. Or an amphetamine might be further analyzed, and this might show that methamphetamine is the culprit. 

Your poisoner could use a poison that would not be found in the typical screen. Things such as arsenic, selenium, and most plants (oleander, deadly nightshade, etc.) do not show up on the typical tox screen, and when the screen comes back negative, the ME might not go further. Why would he spend the time and money without a good reason? This is where your sleuth steps in to shake things up.

But, if a poison is suspected and if the funds and interest to pursue it are present, anything can be found in an intact corpse. Using gas chromatography in conjunction with either mass spectrometry (GS/MS) or infrared spectroscopy (GC/IR) will give a chemical fingerprint for any molecule. And since each molecule has its own structure and thus its own fingerprint, every compound can be distinguished from every other one.

To write a good mystery that will keep the reader guessing to the end, you must plot the nearly perfect murder. This way when your sleuth cracks the case, he or she will be a true hero. If poisoning is your killer’s chosen weapon, then use the above principles to make your plot as clever and convoluted as possible. Have your killer mask the death as natural or use some poison that is not readily detectable in screening tests and then your sleuth must be very clever to solve the case.

There are several sources for you to search out poisons and to discover how they act and how they are identified. Google, of course, and try plugging into your state poison control center. My books, Forensic For Dummies, Murder and Mayhem, and Forensics and Fiction cover a number of poisons. I also recommend Howdunnit: Book of Poisons by Serita Stevens and Anne Bannon from Writers’ Digest Books. It is a great resource for poisons of all types.

The Writer’s Playbook: The Drummer Boy

By Steven Harms

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As a contributing writer to Killer Nashville Magazine, I’ve been tapping into my career as a professional sports executive to showcase some very personal stories and observations from my time in the business. Each one has been filtered through the lens of utilizing those moments to correlate topics to discuss in the world of writing. 

Here, I’m going to pivot a bit and pluck a different kind of story from my background. It’s about my journey to becoming an author and getting published. My hope is that it serves to inspire, in some way, all those who are trying to break into the business despite its tendency to be a rather difficult and complex undertaking.

Writing is our passion. It’s a creative expression full of dreams and hopes and wants. Success, comes in many forms. For me, I simply wanted to challenge myself to write a novel and get it published through the traditional process. Would I have the chops to succeed? But that question and dream followed something I accomplished that was a precursor; an undertaking that took me down a road I had never traveled.

As a backdrop, I’m a person of faith and have attended church my entire life. In the early 2000s, my wife and I started attending a non-denominational church that, we came to find out, used creative arts at times in its sermons. Specifically, dance and drama in the form of skits to underscore that day’s message. I dabbled in theater in college, but frankly, never stayed with it and moved on with my career following graduation. Apparently, the acting bug never truly left me, and I ended up volunteering to be in some skits at our new church home. I eventually started writing their skits around 2004 to provide the need for “home-grown” drama, which implanted in me the writing bug. 

Fast forward a few years. I can’t tell you the exact moment, or the trigger, or the catalyst that washed over me one day and placed on me a calling to take a stab at being a playwright and write a unique story surrounding the birth of Jesus. If you are a person of faith, chalk that up to the nudging from the holy spirit. If you aren’t, chalk it up to me being a crazy half-baked dreamer.

The inspiration was quite clear and straightforward, though. The seed of the idea was to create a story using songs of the Christmas season to help drive the plot like a traditional musical does and build a compelling story arc that would touch believers and non-believers alike. The story wasn’t what you’re probably thinking. The target audience was very much adult-oriented, with the main character’s life unraveling in some very troubled waters. I also have zero musical talent, making this idea even nuttier. After a few nights of trying unsuccessfully to get it out of my mind, I dove in.

There I was, like we all sometimes do, staring at a blank screen with that heavy mixture of excitement and dread. You think I would’ve researched simple things like how to write a script, what were the dos and don’ts, generally acceptable lengths of scenes, and on and on. Well, I didn’t. I just started.

I landed on something from my childhood in the form of the song “The Little Drummer Boy.” It’s been a favorite of mine, perhaps my most favorite. I gave him a name–Mozel–and filled my head and notes with his backstory and plot line to get him to Bethlehem on the night of the birth. Along the way, literally a hundred characters came to life. Eight traditional Christmas songs were used to help drive the plot. It took me about a year to complete. 

I never told my church I was undertaking this effort. I simply acted on the inspiration I was gifted and wrote the story. I distinctly remember, when it was completed, I said something to God along the lines of, “There. I did it. You asked me to do this, and, well, I did, and it’s now done.” I never held any purposeful intent to ever let it see the light of day. 

Maybe a few weeks rolled by, and then something happened. The head of drama for my church had professional theater experience and was an advocate for utilizing drama as an outreach to the community. She directed some secular plays annually at our church over the years, with most of those targeted at kids and families (think ‘Wizard of Oz’ type shows). She and I became good friends along the way. We connected following a Sunday morning service, or maybe at a church picnic or something, and I casually told her why and what I had written. She wanted to read it and was adamant that I send it to her. This occurred in spring of 2007.

In December 2008, The Little Drummer Boy made its debut on our stage. All in, the cast and crew numbered around 150. We pulled together every discipline a professional theater needs, including volunteer leaders who captained costumes, lighting, sound, choir, music, ushers, parking, and marketing. We paid a local university’s drama department to build sets, leaning into their expertise based on our stage dimensions and back-of-house capabilities. The show ran for five years with four shows during one December weekend annually in 2008-2010, 2012, and 2014. Over 20,000 people attended the performances, some from nearby states who became aware of it through social media marketing. We gifted homeless veterans an entire section of seats each year. We bused them in from shelters in Detroit. They usually numbered about 300 and were the most energetic and grateful group of people I had ever been around. That alone was worth every minute of our collective efforts to bring the production to life. After those seven years, I pulled the plug due to personal burnout, and wanting the show to go out on a high note. 

But something interesting happened in that final year of the show. That same little voice gave me another nudge around October 2014. Having never written a short story, let alone a novel, it told me to write one, anyway. The inspiration was the challenge, but more so, to task myself with embedding moral principles as the undertow theme within a secular book in the mystery/thriller/suspense genres. Two years later, with an edited manuscript completed, I began my search for an agent and landed at the Liza Royce Agency in New York about five months into the process. The first book, Give Place to Wrath, was published in 2017 as the Roger Viceroy Series, with the second one, The Counsel of the Cunning, released in 2021 after a pandemic pause.

While the books have been critically well-met, the sales haven’t done nearly so, which makes me a member of the overwhelming majority of authors in the world. But I press on with determination and confidence, having shifted to a stand-alone story taking shape now for my third book.

As mentioned at the start of this blog, perhaps there is inspiration for you in the telling of my road to being a published author. Mine was a voice that simply wouldn’t go away. 

As I look back, I truly believe becoming the playwright of The Little Drummer Boy was a deep-dive training experience. I had to map it all out as the playwright and producer, ultimately having to devise a business plan and then follow through with the hundreds of action steps to bring the show to life. Yes, it was consuming, but the results outperformed even my most positive projections. The process taught me there are no corners to be cut, that inspirational story ideas, told well and authentically, will capture audiences, that people in your universe of contacts and relationships will help without question, that sticking to a plan produces results, and that you can jump into the great unknown and find your footing because you heeded a calling to do so.

Give it your excellent best effort. There are readers out there just waiting to dive into your book. Happy writing.

Horror with Character

By Mark Anthony

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Many years ago, I had a bizarre and uncomfortable nightmare. One of those unsettling dreams that plagues when you wake. Hoping it won’t come back, it replays behind your eyes as you go to bed the next night. Whilst working as a Cancer Nurse, COVID decided to arrive, and I found myself living in a very unsettled, scared, world. From this, I decided to finally play with those scenes that had kept expanding in my mind. Quite naturally for me, my imagination began to weave them into a story. Building upon thought, creating visions and moments like jigsaw pieces which, as my mind was manifesting them, it was piecing them together to form complete pictures. 

I have always been a storyteller and, on reflection, a fan of very specific stories. Whether written, or on screen, I have always been drawn to tales of normal people in extraordinary, otherworldly, situations. The archetypal stereotype of the determined hero, the ordained victim, and the clear win or lose motive, did not interest, or inspire my imagination. The tropes of the pure virginal hero and the twisted, ugly monster arguably had their time. The audience became desensitised to heads rolling. To blood, blood, and more blood. 

However, the juxtaposition of a normality infected by a world of stark anomalies and extraordinary dangers enthralled me. The closer horror is entwined with reality, the more unsettling it can become. The harder it is to draw that line between fantasy and reality, between the good and the bad, the more horrific it can be. And a key aspect of creating this uncanny stage is the characters within it. 

In the beginning, the first of the LIT novels started with the framework for one, single protagonist. Her physical appearance, her mannerisms, her voice were a mimicry of someone I already knew. A real, tangible person used as a blank sheet to add the vast amounts of color that would make her an intriguing, natural individual in this dark world that I planned to create. I had a rough idea of what would happen and how I would develop the atmosphere that would be humming throughout the entire story. Foreboding, bleak.

The first chapter was all about her. Intimate, and to be honest, as much as it was there to reveal her essence to the reader, it also served to plant my own seed of who this young woman was and would become. Strong, stoic yet selfish. Determination fuelled by self-absorption. Clever and manipulative. 

In the third chapter, Sam was created. An amalgam of different people from my past. A dynamic young man, smart, candid, and irrepressible despite the horrors that hid within. A rebel within his own mind. Most people can relate to this. There to push against the inner demons with varying degrees of success. He was to be an open book, in stark contrast to the pure, but damaged, introvert of chapter 1. An openly gay man who demonstrated that we all have so much more in common with each other than not. 

The second chapter, however, was an afterthought. I find it very interesting on reflection that he quickly became a reader favourite—a 9-year-old boy. A pure innocent. A character there to inject heart and yes, I will admit, give this horrific tale some balance. It is funny but I once had him described to me as the “pathos” of the story. . .and I felt largely offended! Yes, I was genuinely offended, not about this young character but. . .for this young character. However, he fulfilled the ‘pathos’ brief. A child who deserved no guilt, no fault, and no karma. Yet even he wasn’t going to be spared from the same terrifying existence as the others. He would experience the same losses and grotesque rules. Perhaps he would become the character that most people would “root for.” And they did. 

Many people don’t notice that it takes quite a lot of time in LIT, before our three protagonists are there in the same space at the same time. Whilst writing, I had a concern. When these individuals came together, in the same space, would they all still be able to hold their own. To remain as equals. Each a fully formed 3-dimensional protagonists? Yes. By carefully keeping their characters in limbo, swaying between the macabre and the mundane, it creates a deep understanding of the individual that invests the reader in all three equally. When they come together, the reader’s familiarity with each of the individuals allows for an intriguing ensemble to develop that embraces the reader like a special treat.  

With the three protagonists in play, each continued to have their own distinct storyline. That took a deal of planning, but more so, a need for intuition and an understanding of the people that had been created. As any writer would agree, after a time the characters are able to take on a life of their own. Their mannerisms, their reactions and even their dialogue begin to write themselves. Each of the above is paramount in giving the reader the feeling that they are gaining the gift of insight into someone else’s life, someone else’s thoughts, and feelings. And within the universe of LIT, someone else’s trauma, terror, and bravery. Why would they make the decisions they make? Take the path they chose in any given situation? Because that’s what real people do. 

These three characters with their own unique afflictions demonstrated what I had learnt over the course of my life. No one is 100% good or bad. No one is either hero or villain. Every person has the ability to be brave, to be scared, to fight or run. Everyone is influenced by their own experiences, successes, and traumas. That is what I wanted to achieve in the LIT series. 

Horror writers tell tales to scare, titillate and sometimes, simply to shock. I wanted to create a story that not only terrified the reader but also, moved them. The best way to achieve this was to give the true victims of evil a basis in our own reality. A small part of them will then resonate within each of us. Do you agree with their decision? No, but you understand why they made them. Do you like them? Sometimes, you won’t, but isn’t that just like real life? 

Horror and suspense greatly benefit from the gift of thoughtful, natural character arcs. One grizzly scene set-up only to follow another fulfills just a small component of a memorable horror story. There is so much more that can be done to grasp the reader. Not only does strong character development prevent reader boredom, it enhances the intrigue of the ‘What next?’ It drives curiosity for the avid fan of dark writing and gives them protagonists that embody universal character traits. Traits that one can both relate to and be repelled from. It makes us question what would we do if faced with the same dilemma? Are we coward? Hero? Or a bit of both depending on the circumstance and drive. This is the task of the storyteller. Their reader is a guest, to be guided through our world. Our characters take them on a journey both from within and outside their mind. 

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Mark Anthony is the award-winning author of the supernatural horror series, “LIT” He lives in Perth, Western Australia with his husband and 9 year old son. Anthony began writing whilst working as a Cancer Nurse when the COVID-19 lockdowns commenced in 2020 and has since produced a sequel “ASCENT”. “RAGE” the third book in the series has an expected release for April 2024.