Teeth and fists clenched, it felt every muscle flexed without pause, as though a bolt of lightning ripped through her spinal chord, igniting every fiber, raping the nervous system. Her back arched, muscles contracting violently, teeth pressed together as though in a vise, freezing her face in a grotesque mask. Risus sardonicus was the Latin name the old forensic pathologists gave it: The sardonic smile. The death grin.

Poison begins with a beautiful Indian-Canadian woman collapsing in front of her family at home dying an agonizingly painful death. Police are not called to the scene, and a renowned forensic pathologist is stumped over the cause of Parvesh Dhillon's demise.

But soon another gruesome death strikes the Indian community in the city known as "Steeltown" - Hamilton, Ontario. This time it's a young man. Again, the cause is a mystery. The beneficiary of his life insurance policy is a close friend named Sukhwinder Dhillon, a native of the Punjab in India and the same man who received a payout for the death of his wife, Parvesh,. Veteran insurance claims investigator Cliff Elliot is dispatched to interview Dhillon. Elliot has his suspicions and calls Hamilton Police, who assign a charismatic homicide detective to the case, setting in motion an incredible international manhunt to catch a serial killer.

Jon Wells, an Award-winning journalist, tells a gripping and exotic true story of multiple murder, exhumation, bigamy, and courtroom twists and turns. It is a story that took Jon into the blazing heart of the Punjab so he could walk in the footsteps of the investigators who sought to bring to justice a black-hearted and cold-blooded predator.