Poisoners

Thirteen crimes. One invisible weapon.
Poisoners—13 Criminal Cases of Poisonings from around France—reconstructs real 19th-century cases with the pace of a thriller. From Marseille’s “poison shops” and Tarbes’s fatal pastries to a high-society trial in Antwerp, each short chapter pairs motive—lust, pride, debt—with the birth of forensic toxicology. Marsh’s arsenic test, Orfila’s chemistry, and exhumations turn rumor into proof while courtrooms become public theaters of justice.
Meet lovers who coo while a wife dies next door; an apprentice who doses his boss’s water; a baker whose flour sickens a neighborhood; and a rare case where a condemned young woman is later acquitted, the anomaly that statistics can’t explain. Clear, documented, and impossible to put down, Poisoners is for readers of true crime, dark history, and legal drama—thirteen compact shocks that linger.