A Taste For Poison
The last books have been a bit heavy, so how about something bubbly and light, something still full of science and history but much easier to digest?
A Taste For Poison is all that. Perhaps not quite a light-hearted romp but an interesting read on eleven deadly poisons and the killers who used them. All the favourites of whodunits and dictators are here, Cyanide, Insulin and Polonium plus some new ones you might not have considered. Not that I am suggesting you were considering poisons.
Now the poisons and the real-life murder attempts are dealt with in some detail [how to employ, the medical affects, how the poison actually impacts the operating systems of our body] so if you were of a mind to do mischief then this book would have been bloody handy say 150 years ago. Back then when a lot of the symptoms of common poisons like Arsenic looked just like symptoms from any of the nasty diseases that were rife at the time.
It was actually relatively hard to be convicted as a poisoner if you managed the leadup to and post poisoning well. Unfortunately, as the cases in here prove, most criminals are really not thinking things through before they slip that powder into the hot chocolate. Funnily enough doctors and nurses like to use poison to kill, but even given their additional knowledge they still get caught relatively easy now days.
Doesn’t matter anyway, because the book is just a good read because modern science should and probably would catch you out. Still there are lots of interesting facts and figures, all in a highly digestible form. The author, Neil Bradbury is a US Professor of Physiology and Biophysics, he is no Bill Bryson but he does a reasonable job of telling us how different poisons work without making things too scientific. I would have liked a few more bad puns like the ones I have been sprinkling like Strychnine through this review but to some they are like, well, poison.
So for a fun read on deadly substances without in any way condoning illegal activity this book might just be to your taste. Plus it was a $12 buy so that is value when compared to Ratsak.
Two Fun Facts –
Dying by Strychnine Poisoning is distinctly unpleasant.
You only need to ingest 0.0005 mg of Polonium to die and there is no antidote.
A Taste For Poison – Eleven Deadly Substances and the Killers Who Used Them
Neil Bradbury
Harper North Publishing 2022
291 pages
