Truth is reality often surpasses fantasy and crimes of the "jazz age" in NY can be as enthralling as any good crime fiction book, or even better since you can research some of the main characters later on the Internet and discover a lot more horrid facts about them (or good ones, depends on who you choose to research!). But the best of all is learning how forensic medicine evolved and learning a lot about poisons and exactly what makes them deadly (or not). Furthermore, I also discovered that the US government chose to poison people who drank during the dry years - I'm still in shock with this discovery and I'm not even american. Very good book, gives you a great insight not only to poisons and how they work, but also to real-life heroes who devoted their life to learn about poisons' chemistry in order to unravel a series of previously unpunished crimes and hopefully save future lives. Very well written and extremely entertaining, I had a wonderful time reading and learning.