True Crime: Lady Killers by Tori Telfer

I read this book around the month of May as a Paperback. It's also available as an ebook and there is an audio cd on Amazon but it's like £96 so a bit expensive, it would be nice to have a more reasonable price audiobook but qué sera qué sera.

This interesting, informative and witty read about women who killed from Elizabeth Bathory or as book uses the Hungarian spelling as Erzsebet which I found hard to say with my learning disabilities but who I also found through an ancestry test that I'm somewhat related too through a elite Hungarian noble. It also features Nannie Doss, Kate Bender, Mary Ann Cotton, Marie-Madeleine de Brinvilliers and Tille Klimek who I've heard about as I'm a true crime junkie who watched and read many true crime shows and books. There were a few that I was not familiar with such as Lizzie Halliday, Elizabeth Ridgeway,Raya and Sakina Egyptian sisters who killed the women who worked for them in a brothel why they became useless to them and also to keep the money they made off of them. Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova a Russian noblewoman who was brutal with her Serfs and for a while was protected by the system that felt the serfs were just property of they masters and not people but with Catherine the Great and the obvious violence and deaths she was soon to be punished. Anna Marie Hahn who killed five men in Cincinnati to steal their money who seemed not to for anyone but herself and her son who she had young and lied about the father being a famous doctor but this is most likely a lie and she was know to be a habitual liar. Oum-El-Hassen whow was also know as Moulay Hassan was a Moroccan brothel owner who liked Raya and Sakina killed the girls working for her. Alice Kyteler the first recorded person to be accused of witchcraft in Ireland and The Angel Makers of Nagyrév a seemingly large network of women in a small village using poison to deal with husbands and anyone else they seem as an annoyance or whatever.

This book puts a feminist and wry lens on women serial killers that have been overlooked in favour of their male counterparts, or have been given rationalizations for their behaviour when sometimes they were just cold hearted murderer such as Elizabeth Bathory who had been portrayed in media as a sexy vampire when she was a just a murderous,sadistic noblewoman who probably was mentally deranged. Tillie Klimek who as she was seen as ugly was sent to jail where she would die for killing her husband where other husband killers had been acquitted as they were prettier. 

This was such a great read and I'm interested in getting the other book by Tori Telfer which is Confident Women: Swindlers, Grifters, and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion. That is available as an ebook, paperback, hardcover and audiobook.

Five ⭐