When Women Kill: Four Crimes Retold - Alia Trabucco Zéran

True Crime

Rating: 7/10

A fascinating look at four murders committed by women that blends a novelist’s flair for narrative cadence and an academics focused intelligence to discern what happens when women kill. 

Do not go into this book under the presumption that you will be enlightened to the why of it.  This author tells us about what happens to the killers and society around them when they kill.

How are women treated and depicted when they commit a murder? How are their actions construed?  Or should I say misconstrued.

I found it very interesting that the author continuously had people mishearing her when she stated the topic of this book.  They heard when women are killed, rather than when they do the killing.  Apparently, many find it easier to imagine a woman dead than that a woman was prepared to kill. 

And if one is caught having done the deed?  Then we assume she is suffering from hysteria rather than anger.  Or she is possibly under the spell of misplaced passion, a whorish woman engaging in adulterous behavior.  Whatever false justification we attach to it; she must not pose any further threat.

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”

With all the cliché’s that exist in the world that are referenced in regard to our thoughts about woman, I am shocked that this one seems so easily dismissed.

Book Pairing(s): Chase The Darkness by Billy Jensen, Savage Appetites by Rachel Monroe, Killer Across The Table by John Douglas