A Arsenic coverKudos indeed to the folks at Bloomsbury Sigma for thinking of The Well-read Naturalist when rolling out the advance notices for Kathryn Harkup‘s new book A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie. After all, what if not ingenious distillations of the natural world – as well as important clues to the identity of the culprit – were the classic poisons featured in Dame Agatha’s famous mystery novels?

And who better than Dr. Harkup, a professional chemist turned freelance science communicator, to delve into the devilish details of fourteen of the good Dame’s choices in poisons. And furthermore, just who was the last person to see Miss Courtenay alive? Hmmm…