Lady Killers audiobook

3.5 starsI've read many true crime books over the years but this is actually only the second or third time I have had the opportunity to read one featuring female serial killers. There's just not that many books like that on the market so I am glad the author decided this was a subject worth writing about. For the most part I thought the author chose an interesting group of women to feature in this book. The women were from all over the globe and represented many different time periods. I don't have a copy of the book in front of me to double check but I believe one of the women featured was from the 1200s and quite a few cases took place in the 19th or 20th century. Arsenic by far was the preferred weapon of choice by these females. It was interesting to see that so many women would have gotten away with murder if they just would have dialed it back a few notches. Instead it was like they had to kill anyone who had ever done them wrong. After awhile people started to catch on and that's how they would eventually get caught. The topic of how society views female serial killers vs. male serial killers is discussed but for me the real appeal of the book was learning about each woman. The vast majority of the book contained cases I had never heard of before and that was certainly a factor in why this book held my interest. If you enjoy books from the true crime genre, you might want to take a look at this one.

This review appeared first at: https://powerlibrarian.wordpress.com/...Tori Telfer has compiled this compelling compendium that features female serial killers throughout history.  Each murderess is illustrated with an absolutely gorgeous pen-and-ink portrait done by Dame Darcy.Telfer opens the book with a well-researched discussion of female serial killers. In 1998, it was infamously stated by an FBI profiler that female serial killers simply do not exist. This is clearly not the case. Telfer talks about how men in power have carefully constructed their own narrative around each of these female killers. Uncomfortable with the idea that a woman could kill in cold blood, they rewrite the story. For instance, infamous Erzsebet Bathory was a "vampire" or a "seductress", when in reality she probably just enjoyed murdering people.  Even the names given to certain killers, like Nannie Doss, the "Giggling Grandma", is meant to lessen the impact of what they did.  Telfer provides a critical analysis of why humanity is tempted to reason away the acts of female killers, and it's really quite fascinating a read for those interested in sociology and psychology.Telfer doesn't just write about the murderesses, what they did, and the punishment they may or may not have faced for it. She delves into the historical context, providing information about the world that the women grew up in, which in more times than not, greatly impacts the decisions each killer made. Telfer dives in to the potential motives for each of the killers.  Some of the killers were trying to survive economically, and others could have been simply sadistic. This is likely the case for certain murderesses, like the aristocratic killers Erzsebet Bathory and Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova.Some reviews complain about the book having excessive amounts of detail, but I must argue against this point. The detail provides critical information about what could possibly have motivated these women to kill.  It gives us the full picture. It's what makes reading a book like this different from scrolling through a Buzzfeed article.  Readers can come to their own conclusions, because they know more than just a cursory amount of information about the situation. I personally enjoyed the little tidbits of information about each time period. For instance, how aristocratic women living in Erzsebet Bathory's time period plucked their hairlines, so that they would have high foreheads. This little detail is something that will stay with me for a while, as a woman in 2019 with an unusually high hairline.  I would have been aristocratic back then. Sigh.Some parts of this book got a little grotesque.  Telfer does not shy away from describing what some of the more disturbing murderesses were accused of doing.  She does not mute the effects of arsenic on the body. I'd had no idea how painful it was, having grown up watching movies like Arsenic and Old Lace, which romanticize a horrible poison so commonly used by women throughout history. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in true crime, but wants to know more about female serial killers.  As I said before, it's highly detailed, so if you're not interested in learning about the time periods that each murderess lived in, this might not be the book for you.  There's a broad selection of women throughout history, including infamous killers like Elizabeth Bathory and Mary Ann Cotton, to lesser known killers, like Raya and Sakina, sister killers in 1920s Egypt.*Thank you to Harper Perennial for the book for review*

An in-depth look at the female serial killer throughout history. Numerous cases and women that are not well known. In fact I only read about two of them before so I enjoyed this book. I found the writer quirky and I loved her writing style considering the dark history she was covering. Excellent book.

My obsession with this reminded me of how I felt reading The Five. I never wanted it to end. Top 3 of the year so far for me!

Finally, the ALL female serial killer book I’ve been waiting for! Now don’t get me wrong, I love the male serial killer true crime novels I’ve read but I’ve wanted a female one for SO long and to finally find it was amazing. We don’t get enough stories of female serial killers and I wish we had more because all of these were bloody damn horrifying and fascinating all in one. I know that sounds strange wishing for more females to commit serial murders but that’s now what I’m saying, I’m sure there’s so many more already out there that no one has dug into yet! I like how it’s divided into a different section for each lady killer, that way you get to absorb the details of each story individually and get a firm idea of each terrifying woman. I also really appreciated how it didn’t get too bogged down with unnecessary details as some true crime novels can be. My only complaint and why it gets 4 stars instead of 5 is that I really would have loved to have some modern lady killers featured instead of just focusing on ones from the distant past. I still thoroughly enjoyed it despite that minor detail and I highly recommend you pick it up if you’re into true crime!

4.5/5

I got this book because Telfer wasn't satisfied with retreading the same Caucasian Anglophone ground over again. She avoided the standard line-up, including American serial killers I'd never heard of, and branched out and found female serial killers in Morocco and Russia and Hungary (and not just the Countess Bathory, either, although she's in here) and Egypt. (She has a note at the end that says she was thwarted in her attempts to include "Clementine Barnabet, a young black girl from New Orleans, and Miyuki Ishikawa, a Japanese midwife" because she simply couldn't find enough information (271-2).Telfer includes chapters on:Erzsebet BathoryNannie DossLizzie HallidayElizabeth RidgewayRaya & SakinaMary Ann CottonDarya Nikolayevna SaltykovaAnna Marie HahnOum-El-HassenTillie KlimekAlice KytelerKate BenderThe Angel-Makers of NagyrevMarie-Madeleine-Marguerite d'Aubray, Marquise de BrinvilliersIn fact, of the women in this book, I knew about Erzsebet Bathory, Mary Ann Cotton, Kate Bender, and the Marquise de Brinvilliers, so it definitely broadened my horizons.(I'm not sure how reliable Telfer's research is; she and Wikipedia disagree about what evidence the Marquise de Brinvilliers was convicted: Telfer says it was the testimony of a person the Wikipedia article doesn't seem to know existed, and while I don't trust Wikipedia, I'm also dubious about something that it completely doesn't know about. Also, a quick Google of this witness, Jean-Baptiste Briancourt, brings him up--so he did historically exist--but one of the two books in Google Books' repertoire is the one Telfer cites and the other says that Briancourt's evidence was short and not new and damning testimony. So proceed with caution.)This is an easy read; Telfer's style is light, colloquial, and morbidly humorous, and she does a good job of presenting her subjects as three-dimensionally as she can. She is interested in the question of evil and humanity, although she never really goes much farther than ankle-deep.

I really enjoyed reading about these female serial killers!

Qué gran labor hace la autora del libro con esa redacción desapasionada. De una manera amena y sin aspavientos nos adentra en el mundo de unas mujeres que de una manera u otra acabaron matando a sus semejantes..Muy buena labor de documentación . Un tema complejo de tratar...es difícil escribir estas cosas sin caer en la compasión o el linchamiento

This is better than the usual true-crime dross - Telfer is clearly a good writer, and I really liked her attempts to reframe how we think of female killers. I wish the essays had all gone a little more in-depth. But it’s still a fun, easy read that’s not too trashy, but not super-serious either.

Livro suuuuuper divertido e interessante. Gostei muito das diferentes assassinas em série que Telfer colocou em foco--muitas delas eram desconhecidas pra mim, então eu adorei esse processo de descoberta. Admito também que a quantidade de arsênico nesse livro me deixou bem espantada.Parte favorita são as recomendações de filmes, séries, documentários e livros nos últimos capítulos. A lista de referências também é maravilhosa e eu sempre adoro quando livros trazem essas sugestões de bibliografia complementar.

WARNING: THIS REVIEW IS SLIGHTLY POLITICAL!Okay... this was even more fascinating than I expected.What’s it about?Basically this book tells about various female serial killers throughout history. Not just their murders and hearings but also their lives in general.Pros:The people talked about in this book are all interesting. My interest ranged from “Hmm okay interesting” to “HOLY SHIT THIS MIGHT EVEN HELP INSPIRE SOME OF MY FICTITIOUS VILLAINS!”This book is well written. I often complain of nonfiction being too dry, that’s not the case here. The author tells of these events in history like it’s a story, not a class, I think that’s the right approach. This book has a couple of brief quips and bits of humor sprinkled throughout.This book reveals some stereotypes and such I never noticed before that leads me to think society is sexist when it comes to serial killers. Everyone just assumes serial killers are male based on stereotypes and beliefs that are kinda bigoted towards both males and females so I found that very interesting.The narrator of the audio edition I listened to did a good job.Cons:So at a few points this author complains about sexualization of female serial killers in art, saying that it’s to make them seem “less scary” and a lot of what she’s on about is a stretch. A particularly notable example is when she notes a horror manga with an extremely sexualized character based on Elizabeth Bathory... I couldn’t help but shake my head because there’s a big difference between artistic expression, especially a fictional horror story inspired by true events vs. a history book. If the History Channel depicted Bathory that way I’d agree but in non-education artistic expression it is a big stretch.Another poor argument is that joking about female serial killers is the same thing, this I actually have to be completely blunt and say it’s stupid. So I have a pretty fucked since of humor, there’s several jokes, memes, episodes of certain cartoons (especially South Park, one of my favorite shows) that joke about various things such as school shootings, Hitler, rape, racism, pedophilia, sexism, suicide, 9/11, homophobia, and a wide variety of other fucked up things but just because I find a twisted joke funny doesn’t mean I’m trying to make these things seem less bad, I acknowledge that they’re awful. I always get annoyed when someone tries to analyze people’s since of humor, it’s kinda dumb IMO.The last argument that I found flawed is when talking about nicknames for female serial killers, how they supposedly are meant to make them seem less scary. This falls apart the second you really start to think about crime history though, almost every gangster has a nickname and most of any gangsters I’ve heard of are male so... yeah, I’m gonna have to go ahead and say no to that argument.Overall:Good but expect a few very flawed arguments about society’s interpretation of female serial killers. While I agree that society has some terrible gender stereotypes, it is quite silly to think that artistic expression, dark humor and nicknames have some sorta sinister anti-female agenda as this book more-or-less suggests.Other than that this is a fascinating and educational book about some very interesting parts of history. I would definitely recommend it to fans of true crime stuff, if that’s not your thing though this might not be for you. For someone like me who is sometimes interested in true crime even if not obsessed this is definitely interesting.I can’t help but place it into a good, not great category though I think I would be interested in more books similar to this one.4/5