Roberta Writes – Halloween Book Festival: Pretty Evil New England by Sue Coletta

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Sue Coletta horrifies with a true crime story about female serial killers, Pretty Evil New England.

What Amazon says

For four centuries, New England has been a cradle of crime and murder—from the Salem witch trials to the modern-day mafia. Nineteenth century New England was the hunting ground of five female serial killers: Jane Toppan, Lydia Sherman, Nellie Webb, Harriet E. Nason, and Sarah Jane Robinson.

Female killers are often portrayed as caricatures: Black Widows, Angels of Death, or Femme Fatales. But the real stories of these women are much more complex. In Pretty Evil New England, true crime author Sue Coletta tells the story of these five women, from broken childhoods, to first brushes with death, and she examines the overwhelming urges that propelled these women to take the lives of a combined total of more than one-hundred innocent victims. The murders, investigations, trials, and ultimate verdicts will stun and surprise readers as they live vicariously through the killers and the would-be victims that lived to tell their stories.

My review

I have always been interested in true stories about people behind ghost stories. Most myths and legends about ghostly sightings involve a person who has died badly at the hands of a third party, although a few are suicides. It seem that people who die as a result of murder are generally believed to become vengeful and become trapped in the spirit world due to a desire for revenge on their murderer.

Recently, I have turned my attention from the murdered to the murderer and I have been reading a few true story style books about serial killers and child murderers. I am particularly interestedin the psychology of people who kill.

When I saw this book, Pretty Evil New England, it fitted exactly into latest reading craze and I was most interested to read the histories of these five women who all murdered continuously and without any remorse.

All of the stories in this book were detailed and well researched and I thought there were a couple of very interesting revelations about the nature of female serial killers crimes. All of them murdered their nearest and dearest including husbands and children. The unmarried women and those without children killed relatives and close friends. I thought that was very intriguing. What kind of a woman kills her own child or son-in-law?

Another interesting fact was that they all used some sort of poison, mainly arsenic, which causes a painful and horrible death. Imagine watching your own daughter suffering from cramps, vomiting and dehydrations as they suffer a horrible death. It was also amazing that none of the attending doctors initially realised the deaths of the victims were due to poisoning. It does seems rather unobservant and surprising, even in those days. I wondered if men’s erroneous concept of all women as homemakers and caregivers was responsible for this lack of vision.

As I read the book, the similarities in the illnesses of the victims became very apparent. Many of the women killed a number of people living in the same house or within the same family, which increased their risk of being caught significantly. If your husband or husbands and your children all die, that is bound to raise suspicion. I can only assume that having got away with murder a few times, these women became over confident and this led to their down falls.

This book covered information that interested me greatly, but it is a non-fiction book and some of the content is a bit dry, especially the detail around the court scenes. The last story also jumped between two different cases which, although there were some similarities, were not connected in any way. Moving between the cases made following the two separate stories confusing for me and, as there was no connecting thread at the end, I didn’t understand why the author chose to write this section in that manner.

This book us a fascinating read and lovers of true crime and historical serial killers will enjoy it.

Amazon US purchase link: https://www.amazon.com/Pretty-Evil-New-England-Matriarchs/dp/1493052330

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Published by robertawrites235681907

I am a writer of young adult fiction and poetry

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26 thoughts on “Roberta Writes – Halloween Book Festival: Pretty Evil New England by Sue Coletta”

  6. Robbie, great review of what sounds like a grisly/compelling book by Sue Coletta. The subject matter reminds me of Caleb Carr’s excellent novel “Angel of Darkness” — the sequel to Carr’s “The Alienist.”

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  7. I’m freaky about true crime stories and will almost always avoid them, but I was given an ARC of this book and thought it was fabulous. I think I was able to read it because it was historical in nature. Congratulations to Sue.

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    1. Hi Teagan, I think people are more shocked by female serial killers than men serial killers. Women often kill husbands and even children. Men seem to go more for strangers. Murderinf so called loved ones seems really terrible, doesn’t it?

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    1. If Sue ever decides to do another book about female serial killers in New England, I’d put Sheila LaBarre at the top of the list. She is a serial killer who lived one town over from us. I’ll spare you the details.

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