Poisoner's Handbook / Deborah Blum 545 p.

The subtitle, Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, tells concisely what the book is about.  CSI, NCIS, and even Perry Mason, would be nowhere without the efforts of  toxicologists and medical examiners, specifically, Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler.  Together these two elevated forensic science in this country.  Nowadays, it is expected that the medical examiner be a trained professional.  Dr. Norris was Manhattan's first trained medical examiner and Dr. Gettler, its first toxicologist.  In the 1900's, poisons were everywhere and readily available to everyone, chloroform, arsenic, and cyanide.  They were used in patent medicines, face creams, and rat poisons.  These two worked to establish the science.  For Dr. Gettler this meant not only finding the poison but also working out just how much was absorbed, how much was needed, and developing the tests to find the poisons.  Such was his research that his papers are still quoted today.

Drs. Norris and Gettler feared the predicted deaths would increase when Prohibition was enacted.  And they were correct.  The movies made speak-easies of prohibition, to be fun places.  In truth, these were dispensers of poison.  Death rose during prohibition. The federal government sought to ever increase the poisons in alcohols, while the bootleggers sought to remove the poisons; but they were never 100% effective.  Poisons were always left behind.  Patrons of speak-easies flirted with death.

Blum's style was fast-paced and read like a suspense novel.