Equal parts true crime, twentieth-century history, and science thriller, The Poisoner's Handbook is "a vicious, page-turning story that reads more like Raymond Chandler than Madame Curie." —The New York Observer
“The Poisoner’s Handbook breathes deadly life into the Roaring Twenties.” —Financial Times
“Reads like science fiction, complete with suspense, mystery and foolhardy guys in lab coats tipping test tubes of mysterious chemicals into their own mouths.” —NPR: What We're Reading
A fascinating Jazz Age tale of chemistry and detection, poison and murder, The Poisoner's Handbook is a page-turning account of a forgotten era. In early twentieth-century New York, poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime. Science had no place in the Tammany Hall-controlled coroner's office, and corruption ran rampant. However, with the appointment of chief medical examiner Charles Norris in 1918, the poison game changed forever. Together with toxicologist Alexander Gettler, the duo set the justice system on fire with their trailblazing scientific detective work, triumphing over seemingly unbeatable odds to become the pioneers of forensic chemistry and the gatekeepers of justice.
In 2014, PBS's AMERICAN EXPERIENCE released a film based on The Poisoner's Handbook.
This first came to my attention as a show on PBS and I was fascinated by it, not only for the subject of poisonings, but also how forensics and medical examiners offices came about. The book has all the same information but was able to go a little more in depth. A little dry in parts (and I confess, I had to skip over any parts where they talked about using dogs as test subjects; yes I understand the importance but it's something I really don't want to have to think about.) but the case histories were fascinating, compelling and horrifying. The one story that will always stay with me is about The Radium Girls, a group of young women who were employed painting watch faces with Radium. One of the first women to die, a woman in her early 20s, had a jaw so degraded that the dentist "lifted it out with his fingers."
Try to get that image out of your head.
Overall a fantastic, haunting and memorable book and one I recommend to anyone interested in forensics.
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24 September, 2015:
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24 September, 2015:
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