After The Nazi and the Psychiatrist
The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum
If El-Hai hooked you with Göring's psychiatric charts and the uncomfortable intimacy of wartime interrogation rooms, Blum delivers the same archival rush—this time from Jazz Age autopsy tables and vials of poison catalogued in New York coroner's offices. She reconstructs early toxicology case by case, letting lab notes and courtroom transcripts do the storytelling, never pausing to editorialize. It's forensic history as procedurally meticulous and morally ambiguous as anything in The Nazi and the Psychiatrist.