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2.5 AVERAGE
2.5 AVERAGE
I’d so been looking forward to reading this book - alas it is poorly written, littered with spelling errors and age/date inconsistencies and repeats itself many many times. It contains few actual female serial killers so the title is a bit misleading - most of the women Berry-Dee talks about commit one or two murders therefore not serial killers. I also found it a bit annoying that the author felt it necessary to comment on the women’s attractiveness as if this is important. Most chapters reference another of his works which leads you to think this book was written in a hurry and is more of a publicity thing to get you to buy his other works. Some bits were interesting but I expected a man of Berry-Dee’s knowledge and life-long studies into serial killers to have produced a much more interesting and eloquent read.
This is going to be a very long review, if you don't want to read it all, the summary of my thoughts are; An appalling look at women who kill, a very misleading title with an egotistical and misogynistic author. Do not read.
Most of my reviews are relatively short and sweet, this book calls for a slightly different format. As there are many things in this book I want to talk about each subject will get its own section. Any quotations I use are highlighted in italics with a page number listed
The first thing I want to address is the misleading title and cover. 'Talking with female serial killers' The first issue is that most of the cases in this book have never had any correspondence with the author. There are 36 cases mentioned, of the 36 only 23 are discussed in more detail - of those 23 cases only 6 are classified as serial killers.
The cover itself has a portrait of Myra Hindley, who doesn't feature in this book, except very briefly in the other case studies. This is a tacky marketing ploy in order to increase sales through the notoriety of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady's crimes. The use of Myra Hindley is used in the blurb as well Here too are women who kill under the influence of their male partners, such as Myra Hindley and Rosemary West I feel it is also important to note that Rose West is also only mentioned briefly. Once again using the notoriety of another female serial killer to mislead the reader.
Moving on to the foreword and introductory chapters. The foreword seems to hold very little relevance to the content of the book, discussing his time visiting a women's prison in Russia and his thoughts on the prison; many of which are discussing how inmates in UK prisons shouldn't have the right to complain compared to the conditions of those in Sablino Prison, Russia. This strikes me as a strange point to take away, if you saw people living in extremely poor conditions, while under the care of the state, that would bring you to consider how much human rights mean when they deem it acceptable to retract them as punishment. Instead of questioning how the prison systems treat inmates, he came to the conclusion that those in a UK prison should have no right to complain - even though the UK prison system is also uniquely flawed.
Moving onto the introduction I find that it holds no real weight and if you were so inclined to read this book, could happily skip it and would most likely retain more sanity than if you forced yourself through 21 pages of misogyny and drivel. His opinion of women is already emerging on page 2 where we find the quote At one time he got himself quite worked up - probably over divorce proceedings or some other female sleight. While the wording of this does have negative connotations regarding women and hints to the fact he believes divorce is women's fault it is not the worst sentence, it is probably one of the tamer ones. By page 9 he so aptly reveals that I find most women can be difficult to understand as if that wasn't already glaringly obvious.
Moving away from a chapter by chapter playthrough the above quote brings me nicely into my next point: The backwards and twisted views he has of women. On page 13 he states It would be fair to say that females ought to be instinctively nurturing and maternal. Most reasonable people simply cannot imagine why a woman, being the mother figure, could harbour such evil desires I would suggest that said author changes his perspective and update it to the 21st century. Not all women are maternal, not all women have or want children. A woman is not maternal purely because of her gender; women are more than mothers. To believe a woman should be nurturing a mother figure is to discount a woman as a human, the role of a woman is to be whoever she wants to, her role is not given to her from birth purely because of your backwards ideals. A woman who is a mother is not just a mother, she is so much more than the children she's had. A woman is more than the labels she is assigned. Furthermore, he refers to women as the 'fairer sex' quite often, which is not only an outdated and old-fashioned turn of phrase, it also has connotations of innocence and naivety, which I would argue is out of place when talking about taking another human's life. There is a segment of this book, that I can only imagine was included to boost his own ego and sense of importance, that discusses how many of the women he has interviewed wanted to engage in a sexual relationship with him - how much of this is true, I cannot say, I do imagine a lot of it may be fabricated due to the fact that it is stated Rose West wanted to marry me, with my response being unprintable in this book on my publisher's lawyer's legal advice, for it would certainly upset any lady with an undisturbed delicate highbrow disposition. (Page 19) I would argue that anyone reading a book about murder his response would not cause 'upset' to anyone, I also do not understand how a simple no or in fact no response to such a comment at all could warrant legal advice, does the author truly have so little respect and sense in decorum that what he said was unprintable?
Another common theme present throughout the book is his need to comment on the appearance of the women, more specifically how attractive he finds them. We are introduced to serial killer Cathy May Wood and he describes her as This overweight lump of disgusting humanity (Page 29) If the part of her you find easiest to hate is her appearance and her weight then you need to reevaluate what you find so offensive about her looks instead of the crimes she committed. Pick issue with her actions, her manipulation and murder, not with how she looks or the number on the scale. This isn't the only time he describes a killer with their looks, not their actions. It is also seen on page 228 with killer Virginia Susan Caudill where he states her date of birth and then the ugly and overweight Virginia Caudill Where once again he feels that the most important thing to let you know is that she is overweight and that he doesn't find her attractive. Throughout the book, there are many more instances where he deems it necessary to comment on how attractive he finds a woman. Attraction is subjective and differs with every person, his opinion of their looks holds no weight, not that any of the words he writes hold any real importance as they are mostly metaphors strung together with some opinions and connectives.
While discussing his writing style and choice of words I cannot ignore the way he described one of the victims in his book, Louis 'Buddy' Musso. Buddy had an intellectual disability, or developmental disability depending on the preferred term. Instead of using the correct terminology, the author decided it was appropriate to use mentally retarded (Page 102) Not only is this incredibly offensive and a term that hasn't been used for many years now it is shocking that his editor and publisher didn't find any issue with this term; the book was first published in 2018, so he has no excuses of not having access to more compassionate and accurate terminology and language.
When discussing his language towards disability I'd like to bring up the quote Dennehy who, before she started snuffing out lives, had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act - twice! (Page 11) The use of the exclamation mark and the need to state how many times with such shock indicates that he believes the act of being sectioned makes a person inherently dangerous. There are many people who suffer very severely with their mental health and require hospitalisation to help them cope and regain control of their lives. If the fact she was sectioned twice is shocking to him, it only highlights his ignorance, many people who are sectioned are sectioned multiple times over the course of their life, mental illness can be completely debilitating, it doesn't make someone dangerous or evil, just ill and struggling. In this instance the fact she was sectioned and still went on to kill I would argue shows how the mental health services failed her and she received inadequate care resulting in her mental health completely taking over. Her mental health does not diminish the pain she caused but it is an explanation as to why those lives were lost.
The final thing I want to highlight in this review is the awful editing, throughout the book, there are examples of poor proofreading, spelling errors and sentences that make no sense. While a few punctuation errors are forgivable and expected, no one is perfect, I don't expect to find sentences that make no sense, words that have been repeated, punctuation that is in the wrong place and formatting that wasn't maintained. The format of the chapters seemed to be that the heading was the name of the killer and each section had a paragraph depicting their method of killing, a small section about their method and the victims. This structure was randomly abandoned in later chapters and would then be used again a few chapters later. The inconsistency of this format makes it appear that he knew most of the killers in the book were not serial killers and didn't want to highlight that by stating their number of victims, making it glaringly obvious to anyone that the title is misleading.
Overall this book is a poor excuse for a study of serial killers. It is full of errors, inconsistency, misogyny, bragging and ego. It is not worth your time and it doesn't do the women talked about justice, and it certainly doesn't do the victims any justice. The women are defined by their looks, their careers and not their character or actions. The victims are mentioned in passing and usually not in an intelligent and compassionate way. I am disgusted by this author, twisting his opinions into fact. Don't bother reading, you'll come away from it with fewer brain cells and a lot of regrets.
Most of my reviews are relatively short and sweet, this book calls for a slightly different format. As there are many things in this book I want to talk about each subject will get its own section. Any quotations I use are highlighted in italics with a page number listed
The first thing I want to address is the misleading title and cover. 'Talking with female serial killers' The first issue is that most of the cases in this book have never had any correspondence with the author. There are 36 cases mentioned, of the 36 only 23 are discussed in more detail - of those 23 cases only 6 are classified as serial killers.
The cover itself has a portrait of Myra Hindley, who doesn't feature in this book, except very briefly in the other case studies. This is a tacky marketing ploy in order to increase sales through the notoriety of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady's crimes. The use of Myra Hindley is used in the blurb as well Here too are women who kill under the influence of their male partners, such as Myra Hindley and Rosemary West I feel it is also important to note that Rose West is also only mentioned briefly. Once again using the notoriety of another female serial killer to mislead the reader.
Moving on to the foreword and introductory chapters. The foreword seems to hold very little relevance to the content of the book, discussing his time visiting a women's prison in Russia and his thoughts on the prison; many of which are discussing how inmates in UK prisons shouldn't have the right to complain compared to the conditions of those in Sablino Prison, Russia. This strikes me as a strange point to take away, if you saw people living in extremely poor conditions, while under the care of the state, that would bring you to consider how much human rights mean when they deem it acceptable to retract them as punishment. Instead of questioning how the prison systems treat inmates, he came to the conclusion that those in a UK prison should have no right to complain - even though the UK prison system is also uniquely flawed.
Moving onto the introduction I find that it holds no real weight and if you were so inclined to read this book, could happily skip it and would most likely retain more sanity than if you forced yourself through 21 pages of misogyny and drivel. His opinion of women is already emerging on page 2 where we find the quote At one time he got himself quite worked up - probably over divorce proceedings or some other female sleight. While the wording of this does have negative connotations regarding women and hints to the fact he believes divorce is women's fault it is not the worst sentence, it is probably one of the tamer ones. By page 9 he so aptly reveals that I find most women can be difficult to understand as if that wasn't already glaringly obvious.
Moving away from a chapter by chapter playthrough the above quote brings me nicely into my next point: The backwards and twisted views he has of women. On page 13 he states It would be fair to say that females ought to be instinctively nurturing and maternal. Most reasonable people simply cannot imagine why a woman, being the mother figure, could harbour such evil desires I would suggest that said author changes his perspective and update it to the 21st century. Not all women are maternal, not all women have or want children. A woman is not maternal purely because of her gender; women are more than mothers. To believe a woman should be nurturing a mother figure is to discount a woman as a human, the role of a woman is to be whoever she wants to, her role is not given to her from birth purely because of your backwards ideals. A woman who is a mother is not just a mother, she is so much more than the children she's had. A woman is more than the labels she is assigned. Furthermore, he refers to women as the 'fairer sex' quite often, which is not only an outdated and old-fashioned turn of phrase, it also has connotations of innocence and naivety, which I would argue is out of place when talking about taking another human's life. There is a segment of this book, that I can only imagine was included to boost his own ego and sense of importance, that discusses how many of the women he has interviewed wanted to engage in a sexual relationship with him - how much of this is true, I cannot say, I do imagine a lot of it may be fabricated due to the fact that it is stated Rose West wanted to marry me, with my response being unprintable in this book on my publisher's lawyer's legal advice, for it would certainly upset any lady with an undisturbed delicate highbrow disposition. (Page 19) I would argue that anyone reading a book about murder his response would not cause 'upset' to anyone, I also do not understand how a simple no or in fact no response to such a comment at all could warrant legal advice, does the author truly have so little respect and sense in decorum that what he said was unprintable?
Another common theme present throughout the book is his need to comment on the appearance of the women, more specifically how attractive he finds them. We are introduced to serial killer Cathy May Wood and he describes her as This overweight lump of disgusting humanity (Page 29) If the part of her you find easiest to hate is her appearance and her weight then you need to reevaluate what you find so offensive about her looks instead of the crimes she committed. Pick issue with her actions, her manipulation and murder, not with how she looks or the number on the scale. This isn't the only time he describes a killer with their looks, not their actions. It is also seen on page 228 with killer Virginia Susan Caudill where he states her date of birth and then the ugly and overweight Virginia Caudill Where once again he feels that the most important thing to let you know is that she is overweight and that he doesn't find her attractive. Throughout the book, there are many more instances where he deems it necessary to comment on how attractive he finds a woman. Attraction is subjective and differs with every person, his opinion of their looks holds no weight, not that any of the words he writes hold any real importance as they are mostly metaphors strung together with some opinions and connectives.
While discussing his writing style and choice of words I cannot ignore the way he described one of the victims in his book, Louis 'Buddy' Musso. Buddy had an intellectual disability, or developmental disability depending on the preferred term. Instead of using the correct terminology, the author decided it was appropriate to use mentally retarded (Page 102) Not only is this incredibly offensive and a term that hasn't been used for many years now it is shocking that his editor and publisher didn't find any issue with this term; the book was first published in 2018, so he has no excuses of not having access to more compassionate and accurate terminology and language.
When discussing his language towards disability I'd like to bring up the quote Dennehy who, before she started snuffing out lives, had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act - twice! (Page 11) The use of the exclamation mark and the need to state how many times with such shock indicates that he believes the act of being sectioned makes a person inherently dangerous. There are many people who suffer very severely with their mental health and require hospitalisation to help them cope and regain control of their lives. If the fact she was sectioned twice is shocking to him, it only highlights his ignorance, many people who are sectioned are sectioned multiple times over the course of their life, mental illness can be completely debilitating, it doesn't make someone dangerous or evil, just ill and struggling. In this instance the fact she was sectioned and still went on to kill I would argue shows how the mental health services failed her and she received inadequate care resulting in her mental health completely taking over. Her mental health does not diminish the pain she caused but it is an explanation as to why those lives were lost.
The final thing I want to highlight in this review is the awful editing, throughout the book, there are examples of poor proofreading, spelling errors and sentences that make no sense. While a few punctuation errors are forgivable and expected, no one is perfect, I don't expect to find sentences that make no sense, words that have been repeated, punctuation that is in the wrong place and formatting that wasn't maintained. The format of the chapters seemed to be that the heading was the name of the killer and each section had a paragraph depicting their method of killing, a small section about their method and the victims. This structure was randomly abandoned in later chapters and would then be used again a few chapters later. The inconsistency of this format makes it appear that he knew most of the killers in the book were not serial killers and didn't want to highlight that by stating their number of victims, making it glaringly obvious to anyone that the title is misleading.
Overall this book is a poor excuse for a study of serial killers. It is full of errors, inconsistency, misogyny, bragging and ego. It is not worth your time and it doesn't do the women talked about justice, and it certainly doesn't do the victims any justice. The women are defined by their looks, their careers and not their character or actions. The victims are mentioned in passing and usually not in an intelligent and compassionate way. I am disgusted by this author, twisting his opinions into fact. Don't bother reading, you'll come away from it with fewer brain cells and a lot of regrets.
dark
tense
I was so hopeful when I picked up this book but unfortunately was entirely dissapointed. The writing is terrible, with the author continuously self promoting his other books, and even spelling mistakes throughout. It was a real struggle to read to the end.
dark
informative
medium-paced
This was my first true crime book and I did find out that I like reading about true crime. So why did I give it 3 stars? Stephen King and Alfred Hitchcock were mentioned WAY to many times. Also, the amount of typos and grammatical errors in this book are also a crime. I am not sure if I will pick up other books by this author, but it did kickstart something.
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Tried something different. It was fine, but I wouldn’t read it again.
dark
funny
informative
medium-paced
The title of this book to me, is a bit of a misnomer because not all killers featured in this book are serial killers, and sometimes they are not even male. Still, to me, this made for a good read.
I have read Talking with Psycopaths and Savages by the same author before and like I mentioned in my review of that book, I really like the approach and the tone of voice that he used in telling us about these criminals. The same applies here. Unlike most other media, he reduces these criminals to less than average human beings instead of heralding them as some enigma or someone to fear. His words are sometimes steeped in sarcasms, the kind of mischievousness that I really enjoy.
What I did not like about the book is how inaccurate the title is and also the shoddy editing job. Too many spelling errors and grammar mistakes that sometimes make the sentences quite confusing. I also wanted to know more about female serial killers, but I guess there are just not too many, so the author had to pad the book to make it of a similar length as his other books from the same series.
If you like books about true crime, I do still recommend this one despite its flaws. I think the subject matter and the author’s style make up for the book’s shortcomings.
I have read Talking with Psycopaths and Savages by the same author before and like I mentioned in my review of that book, I really like the approach and the tone of voice that he used in telling us about these criminals. The same applies here. Unlike most other media, he reduces these criminals to less than average human beings instead of heralding them as some enigma or someone to fear. His words are sometimes steeped in sarcasms, the kind of mischievousness that I really enjoy.
What I did not like about the book is how inaccurate the title is and also the shoddy editing job. Too many spelling errors and grammar mistakes that sometimes make the sentences quite confusing. I also wanted to know more about female serial killers, but I guess there are just not too many, so the author had to pad the book to make it of a similar length as his other books from the same series.
If you like books about true crime, I do still recommend this one despite its flaws. I think the subject matter and the author’s style make up for the book’s shortcomings.
dark
informative
slow-paced
While this book did cover a number of female murderers that I haven't heard of before, although I'm sure a few were covered by a series I watched on Netflix (Deadly Women), I found the book to be a bit of a disappointment overall. The title, more so the sub-title is rather misleading as while there is a little bit about his conversations with female serial killers (and one-off murderers), there isn't much in the way of an actual study of them, more a running commentary of their crimes and how wicked they are (not surprising really). I did like his use of more relaxed and colourful language and his unforgiving approach to some of the excuses made for their crimes but I did feel that it was unnecessary to keep referring to them as 'monsters' since this is an entirely subjective view and one that undermines the fact they did know better and lessens their crimes, they are people that did evil things not monsters that didn't know any better. I also found the repeated references to his various other works increasingly tiresome, particularly the book and subsequent film adaptation. I also wonder at the use of Hindley and West on the cover as both of these women are only ever referred to and not actually covered in any of the chapters.