ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to compare the use of poison or high-dose drugs as the cause of death in Western and Turkish literature.

The works of Agatha Christie and Ahmet Ümit were examined as examples of crime novels. The use of poison or high-dose drugs as the murder weapon and cause of death, the properties of these drugs and substances, and the findings of poisoning were given in the work were evaluated comparatively.

In the Agatha Christie novels, various poisons and drugs were given by mixing them into the victim’s food or drink. The victims ‘ causes of death were cyanide in “Ten Little Niggers (And Then They Were None)”, “Sparkling Cyanide” and “Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side”; and morphine in “Sad Cypress” and “Death Comes as the End”. In Agatha Christie’s other novels, strychnine, taxine, thallium, phosphorus, arsenic, hemlock, aconitine, belladonna, physostigmine, nicotine and a drug containing barbituric acid were used as the murder weapon.

In the novels of Ahmet Ümit, murder weapons such as knives and pistols appeared instead of poisonous preparations that kill the victim. On the other hand, Ahmet Ümit’s novel “İstanbul Hatırası” mentioned that the victims were incapacitated with the short-acting anesthetic propofol, before being killed, and with the neuromuscular blocker mivacurium in “Kırlangıç Çığlığı”. The main subject in the novel “Sultanı Öldürmek” was that Fatih Sultan Mehmet was killed by poisoning with opium or with a similar substance, while in this novel the murder weapon was a letter opener.

The use of poison and high-dose drugs as a murder weapon is noteworthy in the works of Agatha Christie, while in only a few novels of Ahmet Ümit there have been statements about the use of certain drugs for a short period of time. Although killing with poison is a mysterious subject in Ottoman history, it can be interpreted as a foreign element in terms of the Turkish conception of crime.

Keywords: Agatha Christie, Ahmet Ümit, Crime, Drug, Poison