My 52 Weeks With Christie: My 2014 The Pale Horse Review

Interesting Facts: **Spoiler Kind Of** While I reveal the murder weapon this will not give you the delivery method or the culprit!**

“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You have killed my father; prepare to die!””

Alas I cannot relate Christie to this quote. (I am hoping for that day.) However, The Pale Horse does contain a slightly more sinister similarity to this 1987 film classic. In The Princess Bride (I am speaking of the movie here not the book, as I have not read it yet, blasphemer I know) Vizzini (played by Wallace Shawn) claims, “What you do not smell is called iocane powder. It is odorless, tasteless, dissolves instantly into liquid and is among the more deadlier poisons known to man.” The perfect poison for a battle of wits or for the occasional mysterious murder. Happily enough this iocane powder is completely fictional, a poison like that would be disastrous if obtained by the wrong person…

While The Princess Bride relies on a fictional poison to move the story along, Christie decided to use a real one in The Pale Horse. And just like in The Princess Bride this poison is orderless, colorless, tasteless, difficult to trace, hard to diagnose and dissolves easily in liquids.

Making Thallium a perfect poison — so to speak.

Though, unlike iocane powder, you cannot build up a tolerance to thallium. Thus making it less desirable for a duel of wits, as generally it’ll kill you stone dead.

But I digress.

Thallium is a highly toxic metal and like arsenic was once used as a rat poison and some medicines (Seriously there has to be some sort of symbolism to the number of people poisoned by something meant to kill rats…) If administered in large enough doses thallium can kill with in 24 to 48 hours after it is administered. However, poisoners generally dole it out in smaller doses, invoking a whole other set of symptoms. Which in turn mimic a whole plethora of other ailments. So when death occurs it appears to be natural causes.

The one tell thallium possesses? Rapid and clumpy hair loss.

Christie’s description of said symptoms in The Pale Horse is so good, it is credited with saving a number of lives. In 1975 a woman sent a letter to Christie stating she figured out her husband was poisoning her with thallium after reading the book. Second, a hospital nurse in 1977 diagnosed a baby’s illness (due to thallium) while reading the book. Most astonishing The Pale Horse is credited with stopping a serial killer dubbed The Teacup Poisoner. Graham Fredrick Young was convicted in 1972 for murdering two of his fellow co-workers while poisoning seventy others in the factory where he worked. As the story goes, a doctor consulting for Scotland Yard correctly identified the poison being used by Young thanks to Christie’s mystery.

On a complete side note the absolutely best treatment for thallium poisoning is a pigment called Prussian Blue (taken in pill form). It is even better than activated charcoal in removing the heavy metal from the victims system – due to the complex chemical nature.

Not sure what Prussian Blue is?

It is the pigment used to make blueprints, well, blue! It is also one of the colors which makes Vincent van Gogh’s painting Starry Night so vivid. It was one of the very first synthetic pigments to be created, around 1706. (FYI — do not eat blue prints if you think someone is poisoning you. Seriously there is lab grade Prussian Blue without the other chemical associated with paper & paint!)

Christie is often called the Queen of Poisons and The Pale Horse I think is the flawless jewel set in this crown.

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