Dame Agatha Christie was the First Lady of Crime and left behind a plethora of novels, short stories and plays that will allow her to continue to live up to that moniker for generations to come. So it’s no surprise that she is the focus of Carla Valentine’s latest enlightening work of nonfiction, THE SCIENCE OF MURDER.

Valentine confesses that she became interested in forensic science after falling in love with Christie’s novels. Her famous sleuths, like Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, were implementing many of the methods that are used by forensic investigators today. This book goes into wonderful detail digging it all up.

The word forensic means “relating to or denoting the application of scientific methods and techniques to the investigation of crime.” Many of Christie’s works not only employed these elements but also dictated crimes that were actually replicated over and over again in the real world. Following the publication of THE ABC MURDERS, multiple real-life imitators went on murder sprees with victims being killed in alphabetical/mnemonic order. Valentine includes this quote from TOWARDS ZERO: “The story begins long before [the murder] --- with all the causes and events converging towards a given spot…Zero hour. Yes, all of them converging towards zero.” The story of a murder victim begins at the scene, and all the evidence converges towards the body --- towards zero.

"Valentine pats Christie on the back for always being on top of things from a forensic science perspective.... [She] wraps up by treating readers to a special appendix that lists all of Christie’s writings chronologically and outlines the murder methods in each. What more could you ask for?"

Each chapter in THE SCIENCE OF MURDER deals with a different topic and references various Christie works for support. Fingerprints are frequently used in crime fiction and appeared in her first novel, THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES. Her second, THE SECRET ADVERSARY, did something that was unheard of at the time --- a character wears the fingerprints of another to get away with a crime. She was indeed ahead of her time! Later on, in AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, former policeman William Blore carries with him a fingerprint kit that helps identify the assailant.

Trace evidence are small items that have always played a big role in Christie’s work. She was initially inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fiction, who in turn was influenced by the work of Scottish surgeon Joseph Bell, so learning about trace evidence was always a focus. In THE ABC MURDERS, Hercule Poirot uses objects like the ashes from the suspect’s cigarette butts to identify him. Other matters of trace evidence, like soil or clumps of earth, factor in Christie’s favorite book, CROOKED HOUSE, when they are left behind on a piece of furniture and help point out the guilty party.

Forensic ballistics is always important, especially as the various use of firearms pervade many of Christie’s tales. As an actor who has appeared in a number of her stage productions, I can speak directly to one that is famously mentioned in this chapter. In AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, the judge is “killed” by a phony bullet hole to the head, which is only identified upon close inspection by the doctor with whom he had been in cahoots to fool the others. This is a great moment of ballistics subterfuge from the master! For Christie to understand ballistics would require her to research the differences among handguns, revolvers, semiautomatic pistols, rifles and shotguns, not to mention differentiate between caliber and bore.

Blood spatter sounds like a more modern term and calls to mind Dexter Morgan from the Jeff Lindsay novels, but Christie’s detectives incorporated these methods of analysis into their cases as well. We are told that a blade is covered with “red, glistening patches” of blood, and we are treated to words like “spurted” and “congealed” in the surprising blood orgy that was HERCULE POIROT’S CHRISTMAS. Arterial spray is also referred to by Poirot in that very same story, making him sound quite technical and using a bit more than his little gray cells.

Saving the best, and perhaps Christie’s favorite method of killing, for the last chapter, we dive into toxicology --- more specifically, poison. It is nice to learn that on the grounds of the Torre Abbey Museum in Torquay, her birthplace, there is an homage in the form of a garden. It's called the Potent Plants Garden, and its flower beds are more akin to death beds, filled with poisonous plants that can stupefy, convulse and kill. Christie utilized poisoning as a form of murder more often than any other, with her most veneniferous work being APPOINTMENT WITH DEATH. Not only are there so many toxic substances mentioned, the sadistic antagonist, Mrs. Boynton, is discovered in the end by Poirot to have died by the toxin known as foxglove.

Valentine pats Christie on the back for always being on top of things from a forensic science perspective. In fact, in THE CLOCKS, Poirot discusses his friend, Ariadne Oliver, who shares many of Christie’s characteristics: “She has an original habit of mind, she makes an occasional shrewd deduction, and of later years she has learned a good deal about things which she did not know before. Police procedure, for instance.” Valentine wraps up by treating readers to a special appendix that lists all of Christie’s writings chronologically and outlines the murder methods in each. What more could you ask for?