xixizhou

Anyone who enjoys forensics, mysteries, true crime, and/or US history will enjoy this book. Since I check all of those categories, it was damn near impossible for me not to like it. The Poisoner's Handbook is essentially the story of the creation of the first Medical Examiner position. It is also a look into forensic procedure almost a century before CSI popularized it, back when the science was still taking its first fledgling steps. The author uses an interesting device, each chapter is titled with the poison which will feature prominently in it. Each covers a certain span of time and features one or two notable cases from the period. In and of itself, this material would be fascinating, but the Blum peppers the book with fascinating tidbits of information including Prohibition (The fact that there were no "light" alcohols for new drinkers to start on never occurred to me), politics, sociology... The only thing which detracted from the experience was the narration of the audio version. While passable most of the time, there were occasional pauses or full stops which popped one out of the experience. There are a couple of attempts at accents which I found more intrusive than useful.

2022-09-30 15:16