Description: A beguiling concoction--equal parts true crime, 20th-century history, and science thriller--"The Poisoner's Handbook" is a fascinating Jazz Age tale of chemistry and detection, poison, and murder, and the birth of forensic medicine.
Review Quotes: "The Poisoner's Handbook breathes deadly life into the Roaring Twenties." --Financial Times
"The Poisoner's Handbook is an inventive history that, like arsenic, mixed into blackberry pie, goes down with ease." --The New York Times Book Review "Deborah Blum has not lost the skills of good storytelling she honed as a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist." --Chicago Sun-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 "Fans of those TV forensic shows or of novels by Patricia Cornwell, Kathy Reichs or Jefferson Bass will find plenty to satisfy their appetites here." --The Washington Post "Blum's combination of chemistry and crime fiction creates a vicious, page-turning story that reads more like Raymond Chandler than Madame Curie." --The New York Observer "The Poisoner's Handbook opens one riveting murder case after another in this chronicle of Jazz Age chemical crimes where the real-life twists and turns are as startling as anything in fiction. Deborah Blum turns us all into forensic detectives by the end of this expertly written, dramatic page-turner that will transform the way you think about the power of science to threaten and save our lives." --Matthew Pearl, author of The Technologists and The Dante Club"With the pacing and rich characterization of a first-rate suspense novelist, Blum makes science accessible and fascinating." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) 9780143118824