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devannm 's review for:
Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History
by Tori Telfer
This was pretty good but just not entirely what i was expecting / am used to. There are only 14 women featured so each section is a pretty in-depth look at their life and crimes, and I probably would have preferred to have more women featured but a little less detail overall. Still, it is a very interesting read because it discusses not only their crimes but also their lives in general, their legacy in history, and which parts of the story are fact vs. which have been embellished over the ages.
I thought this book did a good job of exploring the possible reason for these women's crimes without necessarily making excuses for them; they are serial killers after all. I think the author said it best in some of her notes at the end where she says that she “empathized but didn’t sympathize with every woman in this book", and that's definitely an important distinction to make.
I would have also liked to have some more modern examples. There were are few at the beginning of the 20th century but many were several hundred years ago, but the author explains at the end that she picked older ones because they felt less raw since there is some distance between them and us and also because it allows for better historical perspective, which is a big part of this novel. Also [and I know this sounds awful because this book is about real people who actually got killed in real life] I would have liked a bit more ...variety ...with the murders? I mean I guess if it ain't broke don't fix it, but also there's only so many times I can read about a woman poisoning her family members with arsenic.
Overall an interesting read, but maybe a bit more in-depth than I would have liked. Also just as a note, I have shelved this under 'girls helping girls' because that's my general 'feminism' and adjacent issues tag and although in this particular case 'girls killing girls' would definitely be more appropriate, this book does spend a lot of time discussing the differences in the public's reaction to male vs. female serial killers so it is definitely down the 'gender studies' route at the very least.
I thought this book did a good job of exploring the possible reason for these women's crimes without necessarily making excuses for them; they are serial killers after all. I think the author said it best in some of her notes at the end where she says that she “empathized but didn’t sympathize with every woman in this book", and that's definitely an important distinction to make.
I would have also liked to have some more modern examples. There were are few at the beginning of the 20th century but many were several hundred years ago, but the author explains at the end that she picked older ones because they felt less raw since there is some distance between them and us and also because it allows for better historical perspective, which is a big part of this novel. Also [and I know this sounds awful because this book is about real people who actually got killed in real life] I would have liked a bit more ...variety ...with the murders? I mean I guess if it ain't broke don't fix it, but also there's only so many times I can read about a woman poisoning her family members with arsenic.
Overall an interesting read, but maybe a bit more in-depth than I would have liked. Also just as a note, I have shelved this under 'girls helping girls' because that's my general 'feminism' and adjacent issues tag and although in this particular case 'girls killing girls' would definitely be more appropriate, this book does spend a lot of time discussing the differences in the public's reaction to male vs. female serial killers so it is definitely down the 'gender studies' route at the very least.