Book Review | Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers

Rating | minus infinity stars forever and ever and ever

Well folks, we have a strong contender for worst book of the year, and one of the worst books I've ever read.

Just looking at the cover is infuriating, because this book was so fucking awful. I absolutely hate hate hate it.

I HATE THIS BOOK.

Now I am just getting angrier about having wasted time even skimming when it became clear that the author thought she was entirely more clever and wonderful than she actually was.

I hate this book.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Here is what the book promised, via Goodreads:

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Prairie Fires comes a terrifying true-crime history of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest - a gripping investigation of how a new strain of psychopath emerged out of a toxic landcape of deadly industrial violence

Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and 80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly nightmarish and gruesome? Why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing?

As Murderland indelibly maps the lives and careers of Bundy and his infamous peers in mayhem - the Green River Killer, the I-5 Killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, even Charles Manson - Fraser's Northwestern death trip begins to uncover a deeper mystery and an overlapping pattern of environmental destruction. At ground zero in Ted Bundy's Tacoma, stood one of the most poisonous lead, copper, and arsenic smelters in the world, but it was only one among many that dotted the area.

As Fraser's investigation inexorably proceeds, evidence mounts that the plumes of western smelters not only sickened and blighted millions of lives, but also warped young minds, spawning a generation of serial killers.

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Sounds fascinating, right? Something I would LOVE!

Well, it's not. For MANY reasons.

She also throws in Dennis Rader (BTK Killer), because he apparently played in some factory waste pits or something in Pittsburgh when he was a kid, and Jack the Ripper because of all the pollution in late 19th century London, plus James Huberty, the mass shooter who killed 21 at a McDonald's in San Diego in 1984, because the hair analysis from his autopsy showed high levels of lead. A couple others get shorter mentions as well - Richard Ramirez, Warren Leslie Forrest, Edmund Kemper, Richard Speck, and a couple others I don't even remember because this was such a mess.

Here's the thing: her theory would have been highly engaging, if she was not such a pompous ass. I was hate-reading by page 100 because she was so flippant and disrespectful with her tone. This book makes me seriously angry.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Here are the notes I took:

Pg 181 | Oh good, another update on how many times Ted has purchased gas in a day.

Pg 188 | Oh, look, now another person, completely unrelated to the narrative, who owns a VW Beetle. This time it's Stephen King, and he's at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park.

Pg 193 | I really should have started counting how many times she calls Ted handsome.

Pg 199 | "Here's a picture for you." No, thanks. Just here for the hate-reading at this point.

Pg 265 | How does it even make sense to add Israel Keyes to this? Although, given the absolute utter nonsense she has thrown into this book already, I suppose it makes sense. But if she's trying to make the case that lead poisoning made all of these men serial killers in the 70s and 80s, including Keyes does NOT make sense because he wasn't even born until 1978.

Pg 284 | "Not everyone has Ted's appeal." Ted doesn't have 'Ted’s Appeal'. He is not attractive or handsome or in any way looking like a Kennedy.

Pg 302 | "Here’s real for you. Six days later, on May 18 at 8:32 AM, Mount Saint Helens blows her head off." Because why not? Of course we should talk about Mount Saint Helens along with serial killers, and Patty Hearst and buying gasoline and who owns VW Beetles, and whatever this dummy did in her childhood and teen years and early adult years.

Pg 315 | "If not for the Green River Killer, murder would be down in Seattle in 1983." Well thank goodness he was there to keep those numbers up! Seriously, what the fuck? This complete disregard for the victims, not writing compassionately about their violent deaths, is so disgusting. Not sure what the author thought she was accomplishing with this tone, but it's gross.

Pg 335 | "...but beginning with the murder of Stacy, he has returned to the United States, where he'll be flying helicopters and killing prostitutes for the forseeable future." Again with the flippancy. This book fucking sucks.

Pg 360 | "We pay attention to the wrong things. We make a mystery of Jack the Ripper. It's not a mystery. It's history." You are not as intelligent or as profound as you think you are.

Pg 392 | "Necrophilia is an acquired test, and not many human beings acquite it." No fucking kidding.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This book was bad, ladies and gents. SO SO BAD.

The biggest issue is the complete lack of scientific evidence to back up her claims, and the fact that she undermines her own argument - specifically with the inclusion of Keyes (born too late), Rader (supposedly poisoned elswhere), Jack the Ripper (wtf) and Huberty (not a serial killer). While the first three ARE serial killers, Huberty was a mass shooter. And she clearly is focused on serial killers with a specific type of psychopathy, involving rape in most cases and sometimes necrophilia in others. Huberty doesn't fit, nor do the others based on her argument that the PNW was a particularly terrible breeding ground for serial killers, given the proximity to the smelters nearby.

Yet there is no comparisons to data from other regions of the country. If the lead smelters were the cause of this specific kind of psychopathy, should we not have seen serial killers developing all over the country, wherever smelters were concentrated? There should have been a rise in serial killers coming out of the entirety of the PNW and West, stretching to the mid/upper Midwest, and down to Texas as well. If there was, we don't know about it because the author did not look into that. It's hard to claim that the PNW had more serial killers in that era, if we don't know the numbers from other regions.

On top of looking at US data, what about the rest of the industrialized world? Did other countries with similar pollution outputs have serial killers in the same numbers? And how about comparing that data to non-industrialized countries? Are there fewer serial killers in parts of the world that did not have lead smelters poisoning the environment in the 70s and 80s?

And let's not forget the girls. Why is it only these disturbed teenage boys who grew into serial killers? Did girls in the 70s and 80s not face the same amounts of lead poisoning and grow up in the same toxic environment in the PNW? Are we just better at hiding our crimes? Probably, but that's not the relevant part right now. If the author's theory is to be given any real consideration, these questions must be answered as well. The author herself grew up in the area, yet did not become a serial killer. Why not?

Back to the inclusion of Keyes. The author says that there was a decrease in serial killers as the 80s went on because lead was being eliminated in all kinds of products, as the smelters were also being shut down due to major environmental concerns. So did Keyes get less exposure to the lead? Yet he was still a prolific serial killers and there are many victims we likely will never know about, due to his committing suicide in jail. But he buried kill kits all across the country, and the number is quite likely much higher than eleven.

There are so many other reasons why there's been a decline in serial killers since the 80s. Technology has come so far in the last forty years and makes identifying criminals (somewhat) easier. Investigators have so many more tools now to solve crimes - especially looking at the nation-wide databases that allow departments to share info across the entire country. The science of DNA has also come a long way, not to mention the fact that there are literally cameras everywhere now. None of this makes it impossible to be a serial killer, but it does make things a bit more difficult.

But who needs data and research and statistics, when you can instead also learn about the author's personal life that is in no way connected to the killers at all? Plus all the random people, also not connected, who drove VW Beetles? Then there's the added bonus of Tacoma's engineers being super terrible at building structurally sound bridges, and Patty Hearst's kidnapping, and Mount Saint Helens erupting.

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TLDR: The author's tone is often flippant, making it disrespectful to the victims. Her writing is pedantic and pretentious. There is ZERO data, research, statistics, etc to back up any claims, or even to simply be able to take the theory seriously. And given how many times she talks about Bundy being handsome/attractive, she seems a little in love with him. Gross.

Highly highly highly NOT recommended. Ever.

NetGalley | The Lake of Lost Girls

I received a free digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Rating | 0 stars foreverrrrrrrr

Initial reaction:

For the life of me, I cannot understand how this book is rated so highly. The writing is so awkward at times and juvenile. The podcast aspect brought nothing to the story. it just seems like the thing to do now in thrillers, and in this case it didn't work at all because it was pointless. It added nothing to the story.

I had a hunch pretty early on who the killer was, and it would've been a fantastic twist had the writing not been so poor. I considered DNF-ing a couple times due to the lackluster and stilted writing, but I wanted to find out if my instinct was correct. It was, hooray for me. But also sad for me because I spent time reading a book that is simply not good.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

I think I dislike the book even more now than when I first finished it. It's bad. So bad. It rivals The Business Trip for one of the worst books I have ever read in my entire life. And if you read that review, you know I haaaaaaaaaaated that book with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.

So, here we go. There will be spoilers.

In 1998 female students at a super small college in North Carolina start going missing. One of them is Jessica Fadley.

Fast forward 24 years and Jessica's younger sister Lindsey is searching for answers to what happened to Jessica. There's a new hit podcast called Ten Second to Vanish, which highlights cold cases. Then the bodies start turning up at a local lake and Lindsey will finally have her answers.

The story is told in two timelines, Jessica's and Lindsey's. Both are idiots and unlikable. Normally, I love an unreliable/unlikable narrator when it is helpful to the plot. Not when the characters and plot are so poorly written, they just turn out that way.

No surprise, Jessica killed the other girls. Dad killed Jessica. It's all very ridiculous and completely predictable because the author does not know how to use red herrings, clues, foreshadowing, or anything necessary to craft an intelligent thriller.

And remember how I said it was a small college. It's so small that only two people in the whole book are connected to all four missing girls. It's ridiculous. No college could be that small and still, you know, FUNCTION AS A COLLEGE OF ANY KIND.

One of the biggest icks ever was the possibility that it was going somewhere incest-y and gross. There are multiple times that there is such a special bond/connection between one of the sisters and their father. Once was okay, but every time after that made me wonder where this was all really going. And in the end, there wasn't, at least nothing confirmed. Why bother hinting at it, then ignore it? OH, RIGHT. Another pointless red herring? Or just another thread that wasn't tied up at the end?

Luckily, we will never know.

Ultimately, I hated everyone. I genuinely did not care what happened to any of them by the end and I wish each one of them would've gotten what they deserved. I didn't care that Lindsey found out what really happened. I didn't care about the pointless podcast that actually could have been used in a meaningful way but ended up just being filler. I didn't care about the stupid social media posts scattered throughout. We get it. You're so cool because you're using the latest societal/cultural trends.

100% DO NOT recommend.

NetGalley | The Orphanage by the Lake

I received  a free digital ARC from the pubisher in exchange for an honest review.

Rating | 0 Stars forever and ever

Initial thoughts upon finishing this dumpster fire: Such a gorgeously gothic cover deserves a better plot, better writing, a better main character, and a twist that's actually a twist. Had the villains figured out pretty early on. Further confirmation that men can't write female leads.

But now, after sitting with this for a couple of days?

I am pissed as fuck. Truly, completely, irrevocably DISGUSTED that this was ever published. There will probably be spoilers because I am so angry as I type this, that I don't even care.

Long story short, Hazel is a 30-year-old PI down on her luck and months away from her business folding. Then one day filthy rich Madeline Hemsley breezes into Hazel's office and wants her to find a missing teen who disappeared from a local orphanage. Chaos ensues in the form of terrible writing, I was correct about the villains, there are obscene amounts of references to sexual violence at the end when all is 'revealed'. and basically I want to vomit.

Hazel was written so poorly and made to be SO insufferable - and top of THAT we get this thinly-veiled gross Asian-fetish-extremely-offensive representation bullshit happening. It's no wonder that her business is failing - she's a mess, is repeatedly unprofessional, complains about having no money and little income but is always late to meet with Madeline, and seems to lack any kind of expertise in her chosen field. She makes stupid mistakes, acts impulsively, and is irresponsible. Madeline gives her a week to solve the case with the promise of a huge payday if she does so, yet Hazel takes time out of her "busy" sleuthing schedule for dates with a dude she just met and she does not at all question how he just happened to pop up in her life when he did.

On top of all of that, she does literally nothing to protect herself while she is investigating, and is saved at the end only because her male roommate really did call the police when he didn't hear from her, something she told him to do kind of as a joke as she was leaving.

Seriously, when we first meet Hazel, she has an angry client who refuses to believe the evidence that his wife is cheating, and threatens Hazel over it. Then as she investigates the disappearance for Madeline, she is followed and accosted by two men with a knife, and she still just wanders around outside like a weirdo. No mace, no knife of her own, no gun, no apparent training of any kind to protect herself.

My biggest issue, however, is a man writing from the point of view of a woman, relaying HER experience being sexually assaulted.

ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOT.

EVER.

Not only has Hazel experienced this trauma in her past, she shares it with with her new man, the one who she just happened to meet while she was poorly trying to sleuth at a fancy rich-people event. If your alarm bells are not yet ringing, you might be braindead.

BECAUSE, it turns out, he is (one of) THE BAD GUY(s) and is fully ready to assault her at the end when she has walked right into the lion's den and had no idea that's what she was really doing. It was one of the worst things I have ever read in my life and all the violence on top of the completely juvenile writing just made it The. Worst.

I can not understand how this book is rated so highly. I will never read another book by this man and I highly recommend you do not, either.

NetGalley ARC | The Business Trip

I received a digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: negative infinity stars

Absolute dumbest, most illogical fucking book I have ever read. In fact, it is number one on my list of super shitty books I wasted time on in 2024. You can find that whole list HERE.

Stephanie and Jasmine are two women who don't know each other but board the same flight for different reasons. Stephanie is on a work trip and Jasmine is escaping from her abusive douchebag boyfriend. Pretty soon crazy texts are flying everywhere to all these other pointless characters, then nothing. Complete radio silence. But both women mentioned a man named Trent McCarthy to those pointless other characters and he becomes the focus in their disappearances.

On the surface, this book seems like something I LOVE. But it was all a trick because this book was SO, SO, SO bad. Like, truly a contender for one of the worst books I've ever read.

Here is my initial reaction on Goodreads, followed by an edit when someone commented about the checking-in-to-the-hotel thing. I was so mad, I didn't even care about capitalization, punctuation, or grammar:

"Absolute dumbest fucking book I've ever read in my life. Completely would never happen in a million years because everything just manages to work out so perfectly for jasmine. the whole way through. ***So she just is able to check in to the same hotel toom that 'Stephanie' has already checked into? That's not how check-ins work and it would show in the system that Stephanie had already checked in.*** And jasmine's not even an unreliable narrator, because everything is just so stupid. A million useless points of view, all telling and no showing. Absolutely awful writing, sounded like high schoolers talking instead of adult 40 yr old women. Easily one of the worst books of 2024. From about 40% in I was hate-reading, just to see how stupid it would get. Spoiler: it got reeeeeeal stupid, illogical, predictable, and more stupid.

***EDIT: Apprently she just used Stephanie's ID to get into the room. At that point I was already skimming because it was so bad. But, gien how terrible the rest of the book was, it made sense from my skimming that the author would do something so stupid. God, this book was awful."

Ugh. So, so bad.

As for the hotel check-in thing, I honestly can't remember the scene exactly. But Jasmine swiped Stephanie's credit card and ID on the plane. So even if I misremembered, how was Stephanie able to check into her hotel? How did she not notice those things were missing?

Jasmine is AWFUL. We are supposed to feel sorry for her because she is supposedly stuck in this abusive relationship with her dumbass boyfriend, Glenn. There is no single reason to root for her, because she can apparently murder people withouta second thought, but couldn't manage to come up with a way to just kill Glenn and make it look like an accident? She could have done that in the year it took her to save up money to escape. All the framing and murdering was way more work, and he was the only person in the book who might have actually deserved to be killed. This book would've been a lot shorter, maybe even never unleashed on the public.

Along the way we find out she killed a girl in high school and framed the boyfriend. Being rich as a reason to be murdered will come up more than once in this stupid book.

She frames Trent in the present. AND murders Stehanie to steal her identity and justifies it by basically saying that Stephanie has a lot of money and has probably lived a decent life. But THEN also has the nerve to call herself a champion of women? What in the actual fuck?

I think another reason I am so mad about this stupid book is that it started out strong. I was engaged in the story, until all the different POVs started popping up. So many were unnecessary. And then Jasmine retells the same thing, from her POV. Essentially you read the same thing twice, but the second time Jasmine explains why it's okay for her to murder people who she thinks have it coming because they had the audacity to be rich.

Trent, the guy Jasmine choses to take the fall for her, was also seriously awful, in a different way. It felt like his disgusting behaviors were exaggerated so greatly, so that no one would feel bad when he was accused. He was seriously a charicature of the worst type of narcissistic frat-boy mentality type of guy.

The so-called plot twists are not actually plot twists, because they make absolutely no sense whatsoever. There have to be clues, for it to truly be a good twist. But here it was just Jasmine jumping from one perfect set-up to another and everything working out magically for her almost the entire time.

In the end, there is not even any good, logical reason for Jasmine to steal Stephanie's identity. She escaped the moment she was on that flight. She could have stayed in Denver and started over. Do we really believe Glenn was going to come looking for her? And how would he even be able to do that? Again, a much shorter book, or the possibility of it not existing at all.

And yet, here we are.

Awful. Do not recommend.

Book Review | I Know Who You Are

Rating ZERO BIG FAT STARS

This is my second Feeney book and after the first one, and while waiting for Daisy Darker, I wanted to read as much of her work as I could because I liked His and Hers (mostly, it was not perfect).

But after this absolute trash book, I will never read another one of her books again. What a fucking dumpster trash clusterfuck fire.

Spoilers ahead.

So Ciara is from Galway and her mom dies in child birth and her dad blames her and is horrible to her and her brother and one day they are slaughtering chickens and the brother has to kill one and the dad gets mad about something and something else blah blah and the brother yells at Ciara and threatens to chop her head off too if she doesn't stop talking so she runs away. She's I think six at the time.

A seemingly nice lady in town named Maggie finds her and basically kidnaps her, takes her to Essex, and Ciara is now Aimee, the dead daughter of Maggie and John. They run a betting shop, everyone almost dies a couple times because these guys keep trying to rob them. I am not sure if it is the same guys every time, but probably. Or maybe not. Who even knows. And then they all do die except Ciara/Aimee. Maggie taught Aimee how to shoot a gun just in case, since she'd almost been killed twice in the less-than-a-year she'd been with them. These guys come into the shop and shoot Maggie and John. Maggie whispers their code word to Aimee to tell her to get the gun, and Aimee shoots the guys a bunch of times. Maggie is barely hanging on, tells Aimee to put the gun in John's hand, and then when the cops come, to tell them she was hiding.

This incident is the stupid reason why she previously kept ominously referring to how she had "killed before" BIG FUCKING EYEROLL.

Grown up Aimee has been married for two years to Ben, who is super terrible and abusive and has raped her (mostly implied, described once) and she thinks no one will believe her because he's her husband. She's focusing on her career since he doesn't want to have a baby, they have a big fight and then disappears after she says she wants a divorce.

OBVIOUSLY SHE MURDERED HIM.

She's also had a stalker, which is weird since she is hardly famous.

There's another bitchy actress who needs her eyes clawed out, and a gossip reporter who is also stupid and just adding to the list of things I hate about this book.

So Aimee has stayed Aimee all this time even after her fake parents were murdered in their shop. Turns out her "dad" didn't actually die. At that time anyway. She was in foster care and never went back to her life or tried to find her real family. Don't really blame her, but still, weird.

She eventually has an affair with her co-star in whatever movie she is filming, which was obviously going to happen.

The husband is still missing and the detectives just know Aimee did it based on all this evidence and video footage of Aimee, who has no idea how it all got there.

Until the body they discover under the deck or whatever is the REAL Ben Bailey who died before "he" and Aimee met.

Turns out her husband "Ben" is her FUCKING BROTHER.

YES.

HER BROTHER.

He found her, assumed the name of Maggie and disguised himself as a woman to stalk Aimee, and also impersonate her when he was buying the necessary supplies to frame her for "his" murder.

Side note: The real Ben Bailey has lost his newspaper job and killed himself two years earlier. He was buried somewhere else, and HER BROTHER went off and dug him up and re-buried the body under the deck in their backyard.

WHAT?!

AND DON'T FORGET!!!!!

SHE WAS UNKNOWINGLY HAVING SEX WITH HER BROTHER AND THEY WERE MARRIED.

HE WAS KNOWINGLY HAVING SEX WITH HIS SISTER, WHOM HE MARRIED.

Fucking what the fuck?!

AND! At the end when Aimee confronts "Maggie", only to discover he is her brother, whom she previously knew as Ben, SHE HAS SEX WITH HIM AGAIN TO BUY HERSELF SOME TIME TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET AWAY FROM HIM. After he goes on this random tirade about how she abandoned him or whatever, and he had always protected her from their dad, blah blah whatever.

He also had plastic surgery done to look like the co-star she is having an affair with, but I guess it is not an affair after all since she married her brother and that's not legal.

Whatever, because even more shit is coming.

So when she pretends to agree with him and has sex with him because she says they can have a baby and be a family, she then waits for the perfect chance to CHOP HIS HEAD OFF AND ESCAPE.

And now she's pregnant, and lives with the co-star and I guess is passing it off as his baby?

Good luck with that.

What a fucking trash book.

DO NOT RECOMMEND AT ALL EVEN TO MY WORST ENEMIES.

Book Review | This is How I Lied

 

Rating NO STARS! NEGATIVE STARS! NOTHING!

This book was absolutely atrocious and an insult to everyone who read it. I do not understand how it has such high ratings because it is without a doubt one of the worst books I have ever read in my whole entire life.

There will be major spoilers from here on out to showcase what an absolute shit show this book was, so if you want to read it at any point, you should stop here.

********************************************

The premise was decent, intriguing even, although basic - small town, big secrets, unsolved murder of teen girl, a handful of (obvious) suspects, new evidence. I was looking forward to a quick read, a nice little thriller to cleanse my palette after some heavier non-fiction reads.

Things were going along decently, even if a bit tedious at times. The story is told from three points of view - Eve in 1995, the teen who was murdered; Eve's best friend Maggie in present day; and Nola, Eve's sociopathic sister also in present day.

Maggie was the absolute worst and I could not stand her narration because they were just painful and terribly written and nothing made sense. I don't know if the author meant for her to be unreliable early on due to her being heavily pregnant - blaming hormones or something? Whatever the reason, it totally did not work because no one could be that stupid and still make Detective, no matter how small a town, right? We are talking about a small town in Iowa though, and we all know what I.O.W.A. stands for... (If you are not from the US, we like to say it stands for Idiots Out Walking Around.)

Anyway, by 39% I was struggling. Like, I get she was emotional because this was her best friend, she is pregnant now, she is in charge of the case (how would this even be allowed, really? She's way too close to the case - and in more ways than one, but we will get to all THAT bullshit in a minute). I decided to keep going, against my better judgement.

So, I am trucking along from that 39% mark and BOOM! suddenly around 60% the book gets very, very stupid. Turns out not only is Maggie a moron, she is a BIG FAT LIAR. We find out that, "Oops, I left out key information in the first 60% of the book because I WAS THE ONE WHO HAD A FIGHT WITH EVE AND LEFT MY BEST FRIEND FOR DEAD INSIDE THE CAVE WHERE HER BODY WAS LATER FOUND...ALSO BY MEEEEEEEE!"

For fuck's sake, that is not a plot twist. That is lazy fucking writing. How are readers supposed to attempt to unravel anything if HUGE pieces of information are purposely withheld in a pathetic attempt to make them some sort of, "OmG i DiD nOt SeE tHaT cOmInG!"

Under normal circumstances, I LOVE unreliable narrators. But that nonsense the author pulled with Maggie's "big reveal" was so cheap. It did not make her unreliable, it made her a sociopath too, but low-key compared to the other sociopath in the story, Nola, who needed to be locked up. I mean, both should have been locked up, but we will get to that in a minute.

So much of the story was utterly bland and even when characters were described, there was only one thing that made them distinguishable from one another. For example, Maggie the pregnant detective. Nola is the sociopath. Eve's high school boyfriend is abusive. The pedophile is a pedophile. Maggie's husband is just there; I can not recall a single thing about him except that he is incredibly trusting to remain married to a low-key sociopath who left her best friend to die in a cave. I guess that was somehow supposed to make Maggie a complex character? It didn't. She's flat as a pancake, just like every other character in this book.

More on Maggie being awful: Somehow she never managed to have her gun when she needed it. I don't know how many times she went for it, but it was not there. Seriously? She also witnessed things that would potentially lead to the grooming and rape/molestation of a young teen girl by the pedophile. She literally watched from her car as her former abuser (who she was in love with when she was a teen, and was pregnant by - that's what the argument with Eve was about in the cave and what they fought over) singled out one of the girls on the softball team he coached, then DID NOTHING and DROVE AWAY. A POLICE OFFICER, who KNEW this man was a PEDOPHILE, DROVE AWAY. Probably because she was so pregnant and had to pee again, and she was just so uncomfortable, and she had to throw up again, and her belly was ginormous and blah blah fucking blah. Plus, don't forget about the times she trespassed by entering private property without a warrant. Hell, without probable cause even. Then there are also the parts of the story where she contemplated framing someone else to keep her role in Eve's death a secret. That was swell, too.

Let's talk specifically about Nola now, the incredibly NOT low-key sociopath. How this person was not institutionalized as a child is beyond me. She eventually holds Maggie hostage at the end in the cave (because she witnessed the fight Maggie and Eve had the night Eve died), where Maggie then gives birth. Prior to this point in the story, we also know that she planned to kill her mother but held off so the woman could suffer for a longer amount of time; she was constantly harassing/terrorizing Maggie's father, who had dementia. Maggie's brother Colin was another stupid, one-dimensional character who could never keep track of their dad and the poor man just wandered around most of the time; she became a veterinarian and was just as psycho to animals as she was to people - we see her meet with a patient (a horse), and gives it something to help speed death along, while telling the owner to bring the horse in to the clinic under the guise of  possibly being able to save the animal. She did fucked up things to animals and insects when she was a kid also, yet there she is, just out walking around as an adult. We also can't forget the part where Maggie discovered human bones in Nola's home, on one of her illegal walkabouts. Awesome. I'm totally sure the bones were not a trophy of some sort.

The ending was absolute bullshit. Maggie suffered no consequences for her role in Eve's death. Zip, zero, zilch, nothing. I get it that she was not the one who actually killed Eve, but she left out the fact that their fight left Eve severely weakened and she stood no chance against her actual murderer. Nola was charged with 'simple assault'. REEEEEEAAAALLLLLYYYYYY? Holding someone hostage in a cave while they're in labor and wanting to kill them and their baby is simple assault? Sure, okay.

But wait! It gets better!

Nola only had to spend a month in an institution so she could be stabilized, whatever that means. This bitch has been a sociopath her entire life and there are witnesses to this. But sure, a month will totally cure her. Not to mention you can't actually cure a sociopath but again, small details. Once she is out of the place that is supposed to stabilize her, Nola will have to follow the directives of a restraining order that says she must stay away from Maggie. Right. Because that will also be effective.

This book. So bad. So, so bad. Do not waste the brain cells.

Queen of Thieves: The True Story of "Marm" Mandelbaum and Her Gangs of New York

EDIT: 10-3-19

Rating: 0 Stars

Author Behaving Badly Alert

I love when authors throw around 'credentials', as if that somehow exempts others from having opinions about their trash books. As for the movie option...hopefully they have a great screen writer to deal with horribly sexist and repetitive source material 😂

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Original review posted 12-4-18
Rating: 1.5 Stars

Such a wholly fascinating woman deserves a much better book.

Prior to reading this, I had never heard of Fredericka Mandelbaum, described as a "poor Jewish woman who rose to the top of her profession in organized crime during the Gilded Age in New York City" (from the book page on Goodreads). When I found this one, it was a no-brainer, OF COURSE I would read it. Gilded Age New York is on of my favorite periods to read about and I am always on the lookout for new subjects from the era.

The problem then, is literally everything else. I can not count the number of times her appearance is referenced. We are told as many ways as possible that she was a large and unattractive woman. Finally the author gave in on what he seemed to be waiting for the whole time and simply called her fat. It was truly gross how often her physical characteristics were mentioned - as though it is somehow unusual that supposed ugly people find success in whatever avenue they pursue for their career of choice? Whatevs, I've no time for that. And normally, I would have chucked this to the DNF pile after the fifth, twelfth, zillionth time her appearance was mentioned. But I persevered because I know of no other books about "Marm" and wanted to glean as much information as I could, despite a completely sub-par attempt to give this woman a proper biography. One might be able to shrug this off despite the ABSURD amounts of repetition, except the author then goes on and does the same thing to one of Mandelbaum's proteges, Sophie Lyons, who he mentions time and again as being beautiful, using her looks to get out of trouble, etc. The complete and utter reliance on talking about appearances was not only ridiculous, but repetitive, repetitive, repetitive. Like, almost word-for-word repetitive sometimes, as we will get to in a moment in regards to the other colorful characters who fill the pages.

I am trying to not be a total negative nelly in reviews because writing is hard, and authors pour so much of themselves into their books. But said book has to be edited, it just does, there is no way around it. I feel like perhaps another couple of rounds with a good editor could drastically improve the text. I was at first impressed by the use of contemporary sources, but for quite a stretch there it seemed that those sources were taking up more room than the author's own commentary and/or analysis of said sources. I feel like this book has potential, but will never see that as long as the book remains as-is. Mandelbaum's story is practically THEE American Dream. She reached a height of wealth that others could only dream of, with the protection of the police, judges, and Tammany Hall. While it was not by honest means, for a Jewish woman to do so, while her husband turned a blind eye and knew "nothing" of her fencing stolen goods, is an honest to goodness miracle.

Despite all the repetitiveness, I did learn quite a bit about Mandelbaum's life, family, and her career. Her trial is covered as well, and on top of that, her escape to Canada. We are also, again REPEATEDLY, reminded of who her attorneys were, that they are partners, that she retained them for several thousand dollars a year, that she aided her circle of thieves in getting out of charges, who her attorneys were, that they are partners, that she retained them for several thousand...oh wait, sorry, I just realized I was REPEATING MYSELF.

I did select a few quotes of interest, because I do feel like Mandelbaum's story is worth telling, worth knowing. It just needs to be in the hands of a better editor, and possibly writer as well.

"At the height of her criminal career, every New Yorker knew their best chance to realize a profit from their ill-gotten gains was to trust "Marm" Mandelbaum. She was also partial to helping young women get a foothold in the criminal world. She was once quoted as saying that she wanted to help ant women who "are not wasting life being a housekeeper." Because of her efforts to help women find work, even if it was in the world of crime, some contemporary feminist historians view Mandelbaum as a Gilded Age heroine for her willingness to assist women finding work and helping them make more money than they could have as housekeepers, maids, seamstresses, or factory workers" (2%).

More than a couple times, the author mentions that Mandelbaum opened a "school for crime". How would this even work? Like, seriously, the logistics simply are not there. How does one go about opening a school for crime, and operating la-di-da like it is no big deal. Obviously police officers on the beat would have to be paid, but how was this ever a thing? We are given almost zero other information about it, which I expected because it would have had to have been pretty secretive - but how do we then have any knowledge of it to begin with? The story concludes with the author stating Mandelbaum "...allegedly had to close the school when it was discovered that that son of one of the city's most prominent police officials was enrolled in it" (3%). Really? Later the author comes back around to this topic, as he often and repetitively did, but this time at least added further information about this so-called 'crime school'. He detailed the 'courses' offered and marveled at the fact that the school was quite near the police headquarters. Mandelbaum apparently offered all kinds of classes to any aged pupil, and both male and female students. They learned about burglaries, safe-cracking, and blackmailing rackets. Additional advanced classes were taught as well in those areas, while supposed "doctoral level" classes were offered in confidence schemes and blackmail. Students who were particularly astute were given free advanced courses, and the "best and brightest graduates were offered salaried positions with Mandelbaum, but they had to turn over everything they stole directly to her and no one else". The school operated for roughly six years according to the author, until again we are told that the son of a police official was discovered as being enrolled, and thus Mandelbaum closed the school. I suppose when you pay the right people, anything is possible.

I did appreciate the author really setting the backdrop for how and why a life of crime might be necessary for survival in this period. it might sound a little sensational to someone unfamiliar with the city at the time, but I do feel like this quote sums up quite accurately what life what like at that time for those not part of the 'gilded' set.

"The worst of all the slums was the villainous Five Points in the Lower East Side, a den of almost unspeakable gore and horror. It was the home to the city's most vicious criminals, robbers, prostitutes, and confidence men. Five Points derived its name from the crisscrossing intersection of Anthony, Cross, Mulberry, Orange, and Water Streets. There were no legitimate businesses in Five Points except for a very few grocery, dry goods, and clothing shops. It was filled with narrow streets alleys running every which way...the nearly falling down tenements and sheds there housed hundreds of poor immigrants who were at the mercy of the gangs, many of whom worked for absentee landlords collecting rent...Day or night Five Points was the scene of an uncontrolled abundance of murder, mayhem, robbery, and theft. No one, including the police, dared to venture into this den of thieves and murderers..." (7%).

Here I have also chosen to include some of the many instances where the author refers to Mandelbaum's appearance. I did not include all of them, as there were so many. By 8% her height and weight had been referenced three times.

"At close to six feet tall and 250 pounds, she was a formidable presence. She was easy to pick out of any crowd" (8%) Not so bad, right? But then...

"...her clients, both sellers and buyers, knew that this huge, dark-eyed, corpulent woman didn't question whether the merchandise she traded in was legitimately or illegitimately acquired" (10%).

Also: "...as an outcast herself, both physically (her height and weight making her stand out)..." (10%)

And "Already an imposing physical presence, she kept her outward appearance unobtrusive...despite her criminal vocation and her height and her girth..." (20%)

And still more. "Mandelbaum saw in the young and beautiful Lyons the image of how she wished she had been. Mandelbaum, tall, fat, and unattractive was drawn to the waif-like beauty of Lyons" (37%). There are others also, but I think by this time one gets the point. The author is utterly fixated on what he perceives as her grotesque appearance and can not leave it for a moment. It is a constant throughout and totally unimportant.

While on the whole, this book is in need of some serious changes for it to be a worthwhile read, there is valuable information in there if you have the patience to wade through the rubbish and find it. Mandelbaum was no saint, but she was an unique woman living in difficult times. She managed to stay out of jail throughout her entire career, not for lack of trying on the part of reformers seeking to end the corruption at all levels. Even during the trial that would effectively end her career in NYC, she managed to elude the Pinkerton detectives who had so painstakingly built a case against her for months. Mandelbaum was highly intelligent and a more than capable foe for those seeking to put her and similar operations out of business for good.

"On February 26th, 1894, Fredericka Mandelbaum died in her home in Hamilton surrounded by her family and Stoude. The cause of death was reported as Bright's Disease, described in modern medicine as a chronic form of nephritis or kidney disease. She was sixty-five years old.  Although the obituary notice that appeared in the Hamilton Spectator took note of her criminal past, it called her 'a woman of kindly disposition, broad sympathies, and large intelligence'".

Mandelbaum deserved a much better biography than this.