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 story comes from the legal drama: will the scientists be able to figure out and/or prove who dunnit (or at least who’s guilty) based on their science {sometimes invented as they go}, and will the court believe them? Sometimes they win, sometimes, they don’t.
The two main scientists are Dr. Charles Norris, appointed chief medical examiner of NYC in early 1918, and Dr. Alexander Gettler, a forensic chemist who is hired pretty early in Norris’ tenure. There’s some background, but not enough for me, about the politics surrounding the office and the lack of funding; Norris pays for a lot of things at work himself since he’s independently wealthy, and argues with the mayor’s office a lot about budget and incompetence of people in other departments with whom he must interact. The numbers presented about how many people died in NYC alone over about 20 gives the impression that not much else happened in the city but people plotting, sometimes succeeding, and sometimes getting away with murdering each other for all kinds of reasons.
Each chapter describes an incident, usually a murder, and then follows Norris and Gettler as they figure out how to prove who may have been responsible, and how the chemistry of the particular chemical involved works and how it can be detected and proven in a court of law. There is a good bit of experimentation on the organs of dead people and dogs; it’s not as graphic as it could be, but it’s enough to make clear how icky the work could get. Part of me wondered where they got the dogs, since it was pretty obvious that most of them would end up dead.
A main thread throughout the book is Prohibition and how dangerous the resulting substitutes and methods for getting drunk actually could be. There’s also a bit of the theme, especially in the second half about consumer protection and how things would go on the market as cure-alls, but then turn out to be pretty dangerous. The Radium Girls make an appearance too which means that I may have to read their book next, since it physically currently sits on my TBR shelf. I wonder how much Gettler’s role in the resulting litigation might be included; we’ll have to see on that.