In the finale of the Dr. Lily Robinson thriller series, WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE POISON, Lily wakes up in a hospital bed, greeted by a doctor: The doctor sticks a thermometer in my mouth and continues talking. “Ya got a nasty bite from a funnel-web spider.” He holds up a specimen cup with a squashed, dead spider and shakes it. “Usually, the bites occur when the spider is disturbed in its natural habitat. You’re my first patient who has ever been bitten while in their hotel room. Tim

If you’re watching The Count of Monte Cristo on PBS or have read the novel by Alexandre Dumas (1844), you are aware of the potion brucine. The novel takes place during the Bourbon Restoration in France and spins a tale about the unjust imprisonment of young Edmond Dantès. During his incarceration, he meets the learned Abbé Faria, who teaches Edmond many things, including the chemistry of potions and poisons. After his escape, Edmond uses brucine in a diabolical poison plot o

Imagine eating a huge holiday feast and feeling so satisfied that you wouldn’t have to eat for days, maybe even a week. The blueprint for that scenario can be found in the venom of a lizard native to the southwestern United States. This venom is the unlikely model for a medication that suppresses our appetite—a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist. The orange-and-black desert reptile, the Gila monster ( Heloderma suspectum ), produces a unique peptide called exend

Crime writers frequently ask me to suggest a poison that will mimic natural death. The answer to this question provides the premise for the Dr. Lily Robinson novels. As a covert assassin using poison, Lily attempts to mimic her target's underlying medical condition by finding a poison that will kill her foil and yet avoid suspicion that the death is intentional rather than a natural one. Yet some poisons might make someone appear dead when they are not. Putting crime writing