Book Review - 'The Poisoner’s Handbook - Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York,' by Deborah Blum - Review - NYTimes.com

Book Review - 'The Poisoner’s Handbook - Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York,' by Deborah Blum - Review - NYTimes.com

Murder by the Drop

By ELYSSA EAST

Published: February 25, 2010

At the beginning of Deborah Blum’s “Poisoner’s Handbook,” a murderer named Frederic Mors gets off virtually scot-free after confessing to multiple killings by poison, then disappears without a trace. Though Blum leaves the reader with the impression that Mors — whose adopted surname means “death” in Latin — will return, she never comes back to his story. But death moves throughout her latest book via myriad poisons administered by impatient heirs, unhappy spouses and psychopaths — or innocently ingested, because the science of forensic toxicology has not yet caught up with these deadly chemicals.