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Silent Killers - From Arsenic to Strychnine: A Compendium of Poison
The Ultimate Resource for Writers!
As a murder mystery writer I was constantly looking up poisons and wanted a book that would instantly tell me where to aquire different poisons, what the symptoms were, how traceable were they, and how long it took the victim to die!
So, I wrote one.
If you write mysteries, thrillers, crime or suspense, then you probably need this excellent compendium of 'to the point' information.
Journey through the intriguing stories of history's most infamous poisons and poisoners. Each chapter unveils the facts of substances such NightshadeToxic MushroomsHemlockStrychnineAnd many more!
Blending scientific detail with historical context, this book offers a fascinating glimpse into the deadly art of poisoning.
Learn about the groundbreaking discoveries, the development of life-saving antidotes, and the ongoing battle between poisoners and detectives. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the lethal yet captivating world of poisons.
As a murder mystery writer I was constantly looking up poisons and wanted a book that would instantly tell me where to aquire different poisons, what the symptoms were, how traceable were they, and how long it took the victim to die!
So, I wrote one.
If you write mysteries, thrillers, crime or suspense, then you probably need this excellent compendium of 'to the point' information.
Journey through the intriguing stories of history's most infamous poisons and poisoners. Each chapter unveils the facts of substances such NightshadeToxic MushroomsHemlockStrychnineAnd many more!
Blending scientific detail with historical context, this book offers a fascinating glimpse into the deadly art of poisoning.
Learn about the groundbreaking discoveries, the development of life-saving antidotes, and the ongoing battle between poisoners and detectives. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the lethal yet captivating world of poisons.
158 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 11, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 14, 2026
I really wanted to like this book, after all it had all the hallmarks of a book I would really enjoy. In-depth explanations of poisons, identification, and notable deaths in history. However, what I got instead was an amalgamation of bullet points that made it feel like I was reading the notes of a high school presentation rather than an in depth research book.
These are only some of the issues I faced while reading this book, presented in a similar fashion to how it is written because contrary to what the author believes bullet points are better used for summarization than an entire book.
Formatting:
Holy goodness gracious, the entire book is in one paragraph chunks with meaningless titles in every new paragraph that break up the text. It is written like they actually wrote a book with your typically format and then went back in and added a bunch of headings.
The conclusions for the chapters are a mess. The typical chapter being anywhere from 5-15 pages has 3 parts. The history, the science, and facts. There is normally a conclusion after both the history and science which takes up a lot of words given that the book is 156 pages of bullet points. However, my main issue is that some chapters have the heading conclusion before the actually conclusion while others don’t, it’s inconsistent and confusing. If you’re going to pad out your book with 2 conclusions per chapter I think they should at least be formatted consistently.
Remember how I said the history is before the science? That’s all fun and games until you’re reading about how a poison was used to incapacitate someone and you have no idea what they are saying because, again, the science part has not been covered yet.
This book repeats itself many times in a short span of time, there are some parts of the book where they will mention the same fact twice in the span of 2-3 pages which doesn’t sound to bad until you remember those pages are only about 4-6 paragraphs with only about 2-4 sentences per paragraph. There is one part that really sticks out to me where at the end of the chapter on foxglove they say that digoxin is a derivative of digitalis. We know, we’ve been talking about this for an entire chapter!
In some chapters the science is entirely omitted like in chapter 13 on ricin. There is a part for facts, cases, incidents,popularity, extraction, and ancient use but nothing about the actually science so the entire chapter I had no idea what they were saying when they were talking about the attempted murders.
I’ve found parts that contradict one another like how in some cases they will say how they won’t mention them due to the lack of validity and sources and then turn around and site cases that they state are theories, I understand some of these are ancient cases and we have no real way to verify but if we’re speculating on some then why not speculate on all?
There is also some parts where I wish more data was shown, on page 44 it talks about the difference of lethal dosage and therapeutic dose being “razor thin” and then doesn’t give any figures. It’s not like it’s a hard thing to find the LD50, I would just appreciate some numbers.
This book is part of a true crime series which is honestly disappointing, I would rather have had a full science book or a full crime book this book tries to do both and ends up doing neither.
Overall I give this book a 1.2 rounded down. I had really high hopes for it and I’m just kind of disappointed.
These are only some of the issues I faced while reading this book, presented in a similar fashion to how it is written because contrary to what the author believes bullet points are better used for summarization than an entire book.
Formatting:
Holy goodness gracious, the entire book is in one paragraph chunks with meaningless titles in every new paragraph that break up the text. It is written like they actually wrote a book with your typically format and then went back in and added a bunch of headings.
The conclusions for the chapters are a mess. The typical chapter being anywhere from 5-15 pages has 3 parts. The history, the science, and facts. There is normally a conclusion after both the history and science which takes up a lot of words given that the book is 156 pages of bullet points. However, my main issue is that some chapters have the heading conclusion before the actually conclusion while others don’t, it’s inconsistent and confusing. If you’re going to pad out your book with 2 conclusions per chapter I think they should at least be formatted consistently.
Remember how I said the history is before the science? That’s all fun and games until you’re reading about how a poison was used to incapacitate someone and you have no idea what they are saying because, again, the science part has not been covered yet.
This book repeats itself many times in a short span of time, there are some parts of the book where they will mention the same fact twice in the span of 2-3 pages which doesn’t sound to bad until you remember those pages are only about 4-6 paragraphs with only about 2-4 sentences per paragraph. There is one part that really sticks out to me where at the end of the chapter on foxglove they say that digoxin is a derivative of digitalis. We know, we’ve been talking about this for an entire chapter!
In some chapters the science is entirely omitted like in chapter 13 on ricin. There is a part for facts, cases, incidents,popularity, extraction, and ancient use but nothing about the actually science so the entire chapter I had no idea what they were saying when they were talking about the attempted murders.
I’ve found parts that contradict one another like how in some cases they will say how they won’t mention them due to the lack of validity and sources and then turn around and site cases that they state are theories, I understand some of these are ancient cases and we have no real way to verify but if we’re speculating on some then why not speculate on all?
There is also some parts where I wish more data was shown, on page 44 it talks about the difference of lethal dosage and therapeutic dose being “razor thin” and then doesn’t give any figures. It’s not like it’s a hard thing to find the LD50, I would just appreciate some numbers.
This book is part of a true crime series which is honestly disappointing, I would rather have had a full science book or a full crime book this book tries to do both and ends up doing neither.
Overall I give this book a 1.2 rounded down. I had really high hopes for it and I’m just kind of disappointed.
April 6, 2025
Kind of feels like I’m reading an early college student’s essay on poisons for their chemistry course. Interesting and some new knowledge gained but very repetitive.
July 3, 2025
I really liked this book for the way she broke down each item into where it was from, what it was used for, etc. it was short, sweet, and told me everything I needed to know.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews