How The Pale Horse May Have Inspired A Murderer

From The Guardian: 

This year’s big Agatha Christie adaptation, The Pale Horse, is one of her less well-known murder mysteries – but in some ways it has had a much greater impact than the others. The novel is credited with saving two lives and has also been cited in a murder trial.

The novel centres around a series of apparently unrelated deaths that have all been attributed to a wide variety of natural causes. Mark Easterbrook becomes suspicious when a young woman dies just weeks after he saw her in a cafe, apparently in the prime of life, and he decides to investigate. Christie’s tale of contract killers, witches and black magic is a fantastic example of her brilliant plotting and superb ability to keep you guessing whodunnit right until the very end.

The novel, as would be expected of Christie, is packed with poisonous information and killer clues. It is sufficiently detailed that on two occasions readers recognised symptoms in people who were being poisoned and were able to intervene. It seems reading Christie could save your life. But the same novel has also been accused of inspiring a murderer.

Christie often used real life cases of murder as sources for her plots but on this occasion it was allegedly the other way round. There are certainly some uncomfortable parallels between The Pale Horse and the crimes committed by Graham Young. The novel was published in 1961, the year before Young began his poisoning activities, but at his trial in 1971 he denied having read it. It is doubtful that Christie, scientifically accurate though she was, could have taught him anything anyway, as Young had made his own extensive and detailed studies of all things toxic.

read more here @ The Guardian