I love true crime books. I find it fascinating to read about crimes that really happened. I know that makes me weird, but so be it.

For a person who has similar (morbid) tastes, "The Poisoner's Handbook" perfectly fits the bill. These crimes take place in New York City during the Jazz Age. The author carefully describes various poisons, such as wood alcohol, arsenic, and radium and the various effects it had on the victims. If your knowledge of poisons is based on tv shows or movies, you will be surprised to find out a lot you (probably) didn't know already.
As you can guess, forensic science was in its infancy at the time. This book focuses on Charles Norris, the New York City coroner, Alexander Gettler, Mr Norris' lead chemist and Harrison Martland, the New Jersey coroner. These people are for real, not like the old "Ouincy, ME" television show of long ago.
When you see old movies of people drinking "bathtub gin" during Prohibition, it looks so carefree and fun. But it wasn't. Many deaths were caused by the "hooch" that was made from renatured industrial alcohol. It wasn't a pretty death, either. It makes me wonder why anyone would be willing to take the risk of drinking homemade booze, but plenty of people did it, I guess thinking "It won't happen to me".
When you see what types of ingredients were in the common ordinary household items, you will wonder how anybody managed to stay alive in that type period. You think toxic products are bad now, when you read this book, you will be surprised how far (or maybe not) we have come.
One of the more interesting sections (to me) was the part about radium. You wouldn't think of ingesting a radium laced "health elixir" now. But it was very common during that time period. It also made me think of the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz. It makes me wonder what happened after the end of the story.
I had heard the story of the radium watch factory workers from my father. I was pleasantly surprised to see it told in full in this book. It seems somebody might have thought about the possibility of poisoning in the factory workers, but apparently the company didn't realize what radium is capable of doing.
I strongly recommend this book for any fans of true crime or the "CSI" roster of shows. It's a great read and you will learn a lot about poisons,

Share/Like this Review?

Excellent! Fascinating discussion of various types of poisons and the discoveries of the tests used to determine them.

Share/Like this Review?

Blum's history of New York City's forensic medicine department is fascinating. The book had three primary narrative streams: 1) professional biographies of Norris, the department head, and Gessler, chief toxicologist, 2) discussions of popular poisons, such as arsenic, cyanide, carbon monoxide, and 3) some specific details of criminal cases or particularly tragic accidents. Since she was also putting the information into a timeline, the narrative was occasionally forced, as an example a major trial involving murderers from the past ends up in a chapter devoted to a totally different poison because of the timeline approach.
Any structural defects are at best minor. The book is highly readable and may even jog some memories of a high school chem class at a few points.

Share/Like this Review?

Really liked this book! Very informative.

Share/Like this Review?

First Line: It would, of course, be in the cursed winter of 1915-- when ice storms had glassed over the city, when Typhoid Mary had come sneaking back, when the Manhattan coroner was discovered to be skunk-drunk at crime scenes-- that the loony little porter would confess to eight poison murders.

For centuries, poisoners knew that they could commit murder and walk away scot-free because no one knew anything about how the evidence of poison could be proved without doubt in a body, or even exactly what the poisons did. Combine this knowledge with the fact that coroners in the United States had no real training and often got their jobs because they "knew the right people", and it was easy to see that things were rapidly getting out of hand.

To the rescue came two men: chief medical examiner Charles Norris (who loved to get in the faces of his superiors and demand that things be done right) and toxicologist Alexander Gettler, who demanded perfection from himself and his staff, no matter how many times (or how many years) the research and experiments took. Both men had seen poisoners commit murder and get away with it because of shoddy investigative work. Both were committed to seeing an end put to it. No matter what it took.

I am no expert in chemistry, so I can't attest to how accurate Blum's descriptions and facts are. (There are extensive notes and an index at the end of the book.) What I do know is that this book is fascinating. Ignoring poisoners who got away with murder, when you take into account that hydrogen cyanide gas was regularly used to fumigate buildings, that arsenic was commonly found in such things as cosmetics and wallpaper, and that workers were routinely expected to handle lethal poisons-- it's easy to wonder how on earth anyone survived the time period.

Then along came Prohibition, and drinking and arrests for public drunkenness went through the roof. Evidently no one liked being told they couldn't have a beer now and then. As the "good stuff" came to be in very short supply, unscrupulous people looking to make a quick buck started turning out all sorts of booze-- a lot of which contained lethal poisons. If the stuff didn't kill you outright, you could go blind or walk funny the rest of your life. Towards the end of Prohibition, the lethal booze was mostly ignored by the government. After all, these people were breaking the law, so they deserved whatever they got. Nice, huh? The fledgling Food and Drug Administration couldn't do a thing because no one knew anything about proving how these toxins worked in the human body. No one, until Norris and Gettler, that is.

This book fascinated me from beginning to end. Blum knows how to make facts and history come to life. If you like watching "CSI"-type programs, you should think about reading The Poisoner's Handbook. It's an eye-opening, and entertaining, experience.

Share/Like this Review?

As a fan of historical nonfiction crime thrillers, I couldnt wait to read Pulitzer Prize winner Deborah Blums new book, The Poisoners Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York. Broken down into chapters named after different poisons, each containing several true mysteries, it has many captivating accounts from a very intriguing time and place in our countrys history.

Packed with Progressive Era facts and findings, The Poisoner's Handbook was almost as much about Prohibition, the Great Depression and political wrangling as it was about forensic medicine. The book did, in fact, explore Alexander Gettler and his ground-breaking toxicology experiments more than Charles Norris administrative skills, which is contrary to what the blurb led me to believe. Thats not necessarily a bad thing, as Mr. Gettlers work was definitely more fascinating and hands-on. As someone who knows next to nothing about chemistry, I found this book to be incredibly comprehensive and well researched, with extensive endnotes.

What I didnt care for was how the narrative bounced back and forth, from case to case and poison to poison. It made it difficult to keep all the information straight. For example: Ms. Blum would be writing about a methyl alcohol poisoning case one minute, then shed switch to a chloroform case for several pages (or more), then switch back to the previous methyl alcohol poisoning. This happens several times and although she usually does a good job of tying the cases together to make her point, it gets tedious trying to remember all the details within the book. Also, as this was a work of nonfiction, a few photographs taken by the newspapers at the time or borrowed from the family's estates would have been nice to include.

Overall, I thought The Poisoner's Handbook was very interesting and it kept me entertained. I would recommend it to others who like this type of genre/subject. 4 stars

Share/Like this Review?

Very interesting. Learned a lot about the start of forensic medicine and prohibition.

Share/Like this Review?