Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Deborah Blum has written a book about ladies who spiked cocoa with thallium, cooks who dosed huckleberry pies with arsenic, and kindly grannies who poisoned figs. Blum notes incompetent medical examiners ensured that these murderers all too often got away with their crimes until a new generation of forensic scientists emerged who recognized the signs of poison. The Poisoner's Handbook is the story of two forgotten scientists — Charles Norris, the first medical examiner of New York City; and Alexander Gettler, the brilliant chemist that Norris hired — and their crusade to make forensics a legitimate science.