"To relieve your fears of chemistry, let me point out that Dorothy L. Sayers, the queen of mystery writers,
wrote a very fine novel (The Documents in the Case) "

Yes! I read that, and that may very well be where I first encountered the concept. It's a very good novel, and one of the most interesting things to me was that I read it in college, and again some 20 years later. By the time of the second reading my sympathies had completely realigned to different characters.