Poison and Poisoning - a compendium of cases, catastrophes and crimes
Incredibly comprehensive! - Lothar
Rating:
Clearly this isn't a book that is going to appeal to everyone, or even to the majority, but if you suspect that it may appeal to you, I guarantee you it will. This is an astonishingly well-researched volume, detaing pretty much everything you could ever want to know about poisons, their sources, their antidotes and the nefarious characters who have used them for their own malevolent goals. It is artfully written and treads the line between reference book and entertainment perfectly. There is plenty of scientific knowlege, to make the reader feel like they're engaging in a lofty academic purusit, but also plenty of grittier detail about the horrific effects these poisons have on the human body, which of course is what most of the readers will actually have come for. I have seen other books of this kind, but to my mind this is the authoritative volume. If you are a budding crime writer, a morbidly obsessed oddball, or an aspiring poisoner with a woeful lack of knowledge in your chosen career path, you could do a lot worse than starting here.
