A review by sevaspeto
Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History by Tori Telfer

2.0

I'm not going to sugarcoat this: this book was kind of a struggle to get through. Part of that isn't really Telfer's fault -- about 80% of the murderers chronicled in this book are poisoners. That sort of comes with the territory when discussing female serial killers, but the unfortunate reality is that after awhile, the stories all just kind of bleed together. Different locations, but with slight variations on the motivations and temperaments and details, but not enough to really firm more than a couple of them in my head. And my other main gripe is probably owed more to the format, spending a chapter per killer -- 15 to 30 pages is enough to give you some context for each killer profiled, but not enough detail to give you a rich understanding about their history, their upbringing, their motives, etc. Telfer does provide that, but in regularly Spartan detail, it just continues to blur the lines between one killer and the next. I don't know -- it's well-written enough, but to me, it's in that grey area where each chapter is too long to be entertaining, but not long enough to be informative and retentive ¯\_(ツ)_/¯