The Poisoner’s Handbook is one of those rare non-fiction books that reads more like fiction. The basic narrative follows the head medical examiner of New York City and his chief toxicologist as they essentially help invent forensic science during Prohibition. Each chapter focuses on the problems, mostly murders, that revolve around a particular chemical compound including chloroform, wood alcohol, arsenic, radium, carbon monoxide, and thallium. There’s a lot of chemistry involved but it’s explained in a way that someone who hasn’t taken the subject since high school in the late 90s can still follow. Most of the tension in the […]