Craved Stiff's unflinching macabre dives into cadavers and Mary Roach's dark wit? Let Deborah Blum's The Poisoner's Handbook satisfy your forensic obsession next.

If Stiff taught you to revel in the body's post-mortem secrets, The Poisoner's Handbook escalates that thrill to murder. Blum trades autopsy tables for Jazz Age crime scenes where arsenic, cyanide, and radium turned New York into a toxic playground. The forensic pioneers who cracked these cases—armed with test tubes and audacity—deliver the same unflinching science-meets-dark-comedy energy Roach perfected, but with killers lurking in every speakeasy shadow.

Expect chemistry lessons that read like noir thrillers, plus Blum's wry asides on bungled investigations and corrupt officials. It's rigorous toxicology served with a smirk—exactly how you like your macabre nonfiction.

This is what happens when forensic science gets its origin story in blood and wit.