NNO Book Club: The Poisoner's Handbook

Updated 10/01/17:

With our September Book Club cancelled for the hurricane, we will be discussing both books at this book club. If you didn’t read September – no worries. If you’d like to read our selection, it was “Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things” by Jenny Lawson. Also – I will not be able to attend this book club so we have a new host and location. Please take a minute to check the new location and update your RSVP if you will not be attending!

Original Posting:

For October 2017 we are going a little spooky and diving into the beginnings of criminal forensics with “The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York” by Deborah Blum.

From Goodreads.com:

In The Poisoner's Handbook, Blum draws from highly original research to track the fascinating, perilous days when a pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime.

Drama unfolds case by case as the heroes of The Poisoner's Handbook—chief medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler—investigate a family mysteriously stricken bald, Barnum and Bailey's Famous Blue Man, factory workers with crumbling bones, a diner serving poisoned pies, and many others. Each case presents a deadly new puzzle and Norris and Gettler work with a creativity that rivals that of the most imaginative murderer, creating revolutionary experiments to tease out even the wiliest compounds from human tissue. Yet in the tricky game of toxins, even science can't always be trusted, as proven when one of Gettler's experiments erroneously sets free a suburban housewife later nicknamed "America's Lucretia Borgia" to continue her nefarious work.

A beguiling concoction that is equal parts true crime, twentieth-century history, and science thriller, The Poisoner's Handbook is a page-turning account of a forgotten New York.

Not sure about book club or never been to one before? Read the book (or some of the book). Come to the Meetup. Eat yummy food and chat with folks about what you thought about the book. REPEAT!

Having trouble finding the book? Hillsborough County Library has this in numerous formats – hardcover, digital and audiobook

Didn’t finish/hated this book? Come to the Meetup anyway! We have some of the best conversations ranting about what we didn’t like about the book.