How long does it take to read The Poisoner's Handbook?
murder and the birth of forensic medicine in jazz age New York
The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum takes about 6 hours 1 minute to read at 250 words a minute.
About 6 hours 1 minute
A weekend read
First published 2010. 328 pages, about 90,200 words.
13 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 10 hours 1 minute |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 6 hours 1 minute |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 46 minutes |
The page count is the median across 7 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
The untold story of how poison rocked Jazz Age New York City. A pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime. Chief medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler investigate a family mysteriously stricken bald, factory workers with crumbling bones, a diner serving poisoned pies, and many others. Each case presents a deadly new puzzle and Norris and Gettler create revolutionary experiments to tease out even the wiliest compounds from human tissue. From the vantage of their laboratory it also becomes clear that murderers aren't the only toxic threat--modern life has created a kind of poison playground, and danger lurks around every corner.
Subjects: History, Poisoning, Forensic science, Forensic toxicology, Forensic sciences, Toxicology
