PICK YOUR POISON: TIPS FOR A "PLANT BASED" MYSTERY! by Yvonne Saxon

 

You see "plant-based" options everywhere: in grocery stores, in restaurants, even in fast food establishments. But unless you want to end up as a real-life victim, you'll want to pass on the following plant-based offerings and use these tips in a mystery instead!

1. Don't eat your vegetables! Did you know there's such a thing as "death by lima bean"? Raw lima beans contain extremely high levels of cyanide. How you get your character to ingest them is up to you, but for those you're keeping alive, thoroughly cook the beans, uncovered, so that the poison escapes as gas. Drain the cooking water too, unless you're "offing" more characters!

Do you eat rhubarb? The stalks are great, but don't fry the leaves or make a salad with them. The effects of the oxalic acid in the leaves range from vomiting to shock and convulsions. Rhubarb leaves could be useful for sidelining a character or two.

Put eggplant on your villain's list of despicable ways to put an end to a story character. If your victim has low iron levels, the nasunin (a phyto-chemical that binds to iron and removes it from cells) in eggplant is very dangerous.

2. Don't make a fruit smoothie! The skin, leaves and bark of mangoes contain urushiol (the same toxin in poison ivy). Grabbing a mango off the tree and taking a bite could mark your character for swelling, rashes, and breathing problems.

Setting your murder mystery in Southeast Asia? Give your "not long for this world" character a kidney problem and a basket of starfruit. This beautiful fruit will further damage their kidneys and can lead to seizures and even death.

It doesn't seem plausible to have a character eat peach pits (who does that?) with the amygdalin that turns into hydrogen cyanide during digestion. Instead, be creative with the up to sixty pesticides that come on commercial peaches. Pretend that your victim in the story has never heard the word "organic."

3. Don't live off the land! Send your book's cast of characters on an adventure: hiking, camping, exploring nature. That way there's ample opportunity for the "bad guy" to substitute a perfectly edible root or berry for a poisonous one. For example, elderberries eaten unripe can cause nausea and severe stomach pain due to the high concentration of sambunigrin. How can you tell ripe from unripe? Squish the berry! If it's a lovely wine-red, your character's safe. If the juice is clear and greenish, uh-oh!

That wild carrot would be great to munch on in the outdoors except it's a wild parsnip. The sap causes painful burns and blisters. Since the blisters don't show up for 24-72 hours, your suspect might be able to get away with it!

Throw the wild onion the sidekick found in a stew over the campfire. When everyone starts vomiting, getting tremors, loss of control over body movements, and one of the group ends up in a coma, your evil character has substituted death camas instead.

The above tips for a "plant-based" mystery can give you the "howdunnit" for your book. The "whodunnit" and "whydunnit" are still up to you. Bon Appetit! (with caution!)