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  September 3, 2017 armchairreviewer This month will see the 50 th  publication in the British Library Crime Classics series, with their reprinting of  Portrait of a Murderer  (1934) by Anne Meredith, (penname for Lucy Beatrice Malleson, who is better known under her other penname Anthony Gilbert). For those mystery fans who have been residing in outer Mongolia or the middle of Antarctica and have not come across this reprint series already, here’s what it’s all about. The British Library began reprinting long forgotten and neglected mystery stories in 2012 when they reprinted Charles Warren Adams’  The Notting Hill Mystery  (1865), yet the series really hit its stride when they reprinted  Mystery in White  (1937) by J. Jefferson Farjeon, which when released in the winter of 2014 sold more copies than paperback editions of Gillian Flynn’s  Gone Girl  (2012). It is fair to say this book was a runaway success as out of the 155000 books sol...

  January 15, 2016 armchairreviewer This is a book I have had my eye on for some time since it was released and I think Harkup has chosen a good topic, making me aware how often Christie uses poison in her novels and how accurately she uses them and fits the symptoms of her chosen poisons to her plots. Poison as her murder method of choice is seen in her very first novel,  The Mysterious Affair at Styles  (1920) (which was favourably reviewed by a pharmaceutical publication at the time) and continues into her later novels such as  The Pale Horse  (1961). The book, whilst generally introducing the topic, also hones in on Christie’s own pharmaceutical training, working at a dispensary in both WW1 and WW2. I was especially impressed that considering the number of hours Christie put in to her dispensary work during WW2, she still managed to complete 12 novels. A wide variety of poisons are utilised by Christie in her stories and in a number of novel ways and Harkup ...

  June 4, 2025 armchairreviewer Today’s review is a bonus post for my ten-year blog anniversary celebrations, as when reading this book, I realised that Harkup’s first book on poisons in Agatha Christie’s work ( A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie ) was published in 2015, the year I started my blog. Moreover,  V is for Venom: Agatha Christie’s Chemicals of Death  will be available for purchase this month on the 19 th , my anniversary month, so I decided such serendipity should not be overlooked! I have enjoyed Harkup’s previous books which explore the science behind various works of literature.  Death by Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts  (2020) is another I have reviewed and would recommend. Perhaps my favourite book by Harkup is  Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein  (2018). Synopsis ‘Fourteen stories. Fourteen more poisons. Just because it’s fiction doesn’t mean it’s all made-up … Agatha ...