Wow. This is crime thriller meets medical history. Deborah Blum's immensely entertaining book starts off by telling us just how ubiquitous murder by poison was by the early 20th century. I joked that every self-professed libertarian should read this book--it is a shocking account of how often people would resort to murder in order to solve their problems--money, an unwanted relative, a coworker, you name it, people were being poisoned without fear of consequences, at least not legal consequences.
At the time, the coroner of New York was an alcoholic, a man so uninterested in going to crime scenes that finally he had to be fired. In his place they hired a man who changed the job forever, and created forensic medicine. This is the tale of New York City's first chief medical examiner, Charles Norris, and his toxicologist, Alexander Gettler. After their extensive scientific evidence failed to bring a conviction in a 1922 cyanide case, Norris and Gettler were told that "toxicology was such a new science, it was awfully hard to educate and convince a jury simultaneously." But by early 1936, defense attorneys were arguing just the opposite: "that the city lab's reputation was too strong, and that Gettler was so well respected that jurors tended to accept whatever he said."
The book appears to be aimed at the murder mystery readers in the audience--there are tales of mass murder, accidental death, and crimes of passion that will keep the interest of those fans, but the story of what happened during Prohibition is a sobering tale (pun intended) of just how wrong public policy can go. I highly recommend it.
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