Things you shouldn’t Google at work unless you have a Very Understanding Boss and Department Head: Poisoner and Handbook.

Let me explain. So I’m at Company X, innocently laying waste to my work drawer and listening to scary episodes of Stuffed You Missed in History Class like you do because it’s late October. And I’m listening to the “Who Was America’s Lucrezia Borgia?” episode and they mention a book and of course my brain is all “Ooohhh must read book” but I’m busy cranking out the work and don’t have time to write down the title and can only remember it had the words “poisoner” and “handbook” in it once my work day is almost over. And of course, just as I’m checking the library system for the book, that’s when Boss Lady and Department Head walk past my desk…

But like I said, I have a very understanding boss and department head. And if anyone is going to get poisoned it’s me with my bad habit of “well the date on the cheese says X but it’s been in the fridge the whole time and cheese is just spoiled milk so sure I’m going to eat this”. And you don’t need the amazing and dedicated people under the leadership of Charles Norris circa 1918 to figure out why I’m going to be very sick after eating said cheese.

What do you need Charles Norris and his staff for? Well, that’s exactly what Deborah Blum explores in her brilliant The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York. Who needs CSI and it’s ilk when you can read about how one man (Charles Norris) and his dedicated staff turned the lackluster medical examiner’s office into a lean, functioning and crime solving machine. Add in different poisons and cases the medical examiner’s office handled and I am in HEAVEN. It’s all the things I loved in Caleb Carr’s fictional forensic detective novels without the Teddy Roosevelt cameos and John is a drunkalunka LOSER bits. There’s unsolved murders (just who poisoned the dough at the lunchroom? Still unsolved to this day), guilty as heck people, people who might have gotten away with murder (Mary Frances Creighton but don’t worry…she doesn’t learn and gets her eventually), innocent people (the bookkeeper whose family is decimated by poison, you want to give him a hug and better life) and the men who managed to try and solve all these cases of the leanest of budgets in a corrupt city.

If you’ve gobbled up Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America’s Soul (a most excellent book), The Devil in the White City, In the Garden of Beasts, Thunderstruck and Midnight in Peking: The Murder That Haunted the Last Days of Old China, stop reading this review and read The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York ASAP!