Petra It's a year now, still in a dark place's Reviews > A Taste for Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them

Review "The 'Final Solution". Fill in the missing word: "During World War II, hydrogen cyanide was used to gas thousands of [*] in the death camps of Aushwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek as part of the so-called Final Solution." That was an excerpt of the book. Did you think the missing word was Jews? I did. It wasn't, it was prisoners. And what's all this "so-called Final Solution"? It does make you think, doesn't it? Writing of any book is as much about the author as the subject.

The subject of the book is all about eleven different poisons, their derivation, their effect, how they have been used and on whom. It is an interesting book and the blurb which actually reads like a review, so thoroughly does it describe the book, makes a further review seem redundant.

Goodreads rating scale says that 3 star is good, quite enjoyable. And that fits this book. But since the writing was really rather good, that would be closer to 3.5.
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The deadliest plants in the world bloom happily in the wild of my garden Where I live, one of the tallest and actually quite beautiful of the weeds is the castor oil plant. It's very tall with red spiky, fuzzy seed pods. The seeds are made into castor oil. Or ricin, the deadliest poison known to man. This is a pic of me with a young castor oil plant in the foreground, and no I am not stooping down.

We also have the stunningly pretty and related angels' trumpets which are 12-15" long white bells whose scent at night can be smelled a long way off. The second night they turn peachy pink. Also deadly. And a third, I think American's call it Jimson Weed, we call it Stinking Toe (that's what it smells like) is equally pretty, a ground level plant.

I had a friend, a guy kill himself with that. He was a local guy, a pharmacist, a professional, and said he knew the exact amount and preparation for hallucinations. So he did it quite often, lost his mind so his parents sent him to the US, to a mental institution to try and help him, but he was going in and out of a hallucinatory state for months. Eventually he went and laid down on a railway track. It was really, really sad.

Then there are the beautiful red and black jumbie beads, which children play with and people make necklaces of for the tourists.

All the above grow in my garden (bush, cloud forest, unmanageable secondary growth after the devastation of hurricane Irma that left maybe 1 tall tree in 200 standing. My 1 in 200 was the breadfruit tree, which is good because I like roast breadfruit**) The deadliest most poisonous tree in the Caribbean only grows on the shores and has mostly been cleared from the island. It is so deadly that sap dripping on you, or even rain going through the fruit and leaves can poison and kill you. that's the manchineel tree. It looks quite a lot like a crab apple tree with apples. Some sites sa y this tree is rare. It isn't. (view spoiler)[It's extremely common but has been cleared on most islands from the main tourist places, but if you go to island groups like St Vincent & the Grenadines, the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands or Turks & Caicos it won't have been cleared from the out-islands. (hide spoiler)]

So really, if I wanted to poison someone, I'm spoiled for choice. I've never heard of anyone using the plants though.

**Roast breadfruit is slang for pussy in the Caribbean. I had a friend who was a judge in St Lucia, her email was roastedbreadfruit@ We all used to laugh, but I guess lawyers from the UK and US had no idea.

(view spoiler)[This review will either get knocked down or hidden in Community Reviews I'm pretty sure. That first paragraph... but my friends will see it (hide spoiler)].