Listened to the Audible audiobook which was very well read, and enjoyed this a lot. It's a fascinating look at how New York city changed from a city full of corrupt and incompetent coroners to lead the way in forensic toxicology. The book is both a chapter by chapter look at different poisons that were popular over the years, and the story of New York's new Chief Medical Examiner Charles Norris and his head toxicologist as they reform the corrupt city system and race to keep up with the poisoners who are moving on to new types of poison as soon as the researchers figure out how to detect the use of the previous poison.

Besides being a fascinating look at the history and some case studies of poisoning, it's also a striking history of Norris, who was clearly a passionately dedicated man whose reforms to the system must have saved more lives than can possibly be counted. In addition to reforming the city coroners and establishing a world class forensics team and related procedures, he also campaigned against the use of poisons such as arsenic and cyanide in common household products (everything from beauty creams to wallpaper), pushed for regulations to require corporations to list the ingredients in their products and to be held legally accountable for injuries caused, and was far ahead of his time in warning about the dangers of car exhaust and smoking, among other things.

He was also an outspoken opponent of prohibition and the book is an interesting look at prohibition from the point of view of toxicology, as Norris and his team watched in horror as the number of accidental poisoning cases escalated sharply due to the unregulated ingredients of moonshine, the way prohibition converted casual drinkers to binge drinkers, and the way the government actually actively poisoned (with extremely dangerous and known to be lethal compounds) all other sources of alcohol that might be used to create moonshine. This was a side of prohibition I hadn't ever heard of and it's shocking to believe the government was directly responsible for so many horrible deaths by poison of its citizens.

All in all a very interesting audiobook and left me wishing the story had continued past Norris's era and closer to the modern day.