|
Deadly Doses: A Writer's Guide to Poisons (The Howdunit Series): Writer's Guide to Poisons
|
| Price: |
11 new or used available from £0.33
Average customer review:
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #422071 in Books
- Published on: 1990-11-08
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 298 pages
Editorial Reviews
Synopsis
Describes the symptoms, forms, methods of administration, and reactions of various poisons, and briefly traces the history of poisioning.
Customer Reviews
a must for historical or mystery writers!
This book is a super reference book for writers. Gives you a short history of poisons,then moves in the classic aka Agatha Christie style poisons. Next we get into the what's on hand style of poisons i.e. household stuff. Plant poisons, the dead mushrooms etc. They cover movie poisons such as spiders and snakes, medical oops-es, what's in the garden pesticides. Even Street Drugs and a few hints on do-it-yourself-versions. They covered the methods, the forms, the symptoms, and even the time that is takes and just how successful (toxicity rating)....anything a writer needs to know....no no no don't touch that mushroom!
Super reference work and highly recommended
Top marks for contents, zero points for layout/design
This book tells you everything you need to know. As a writer, you may know the symptoms your victim displays, or the time it takes until death, and the book helps you to find the appropriate poison. Or you may have decided on the type of poison, and need to know how the murderer would obtain it, and how it can be disguised to look like natural death. This book is so practical it should be forbidden. It could be abused by would be murderers because it contains such clear instructions for murder by poison. Alas, the layout is appalling. There's no line spacing between the different poisons. The text just runs on into the next one. No headlines even! This makes it less than user-friendly.How a publisher could possibly use such an unpractical layout is beyond my understanding. I suppose they may have tried to save two sheets of paper by not allowing for space between. I took a coloured marker pen to underline the names of poisons, just to have something similar to headlines.
