IN THE GARDEN OF SPITE (a.k.a. Triflers Need Not Apply) by Camilla Bruce

When hearing the term “serial killer” our minds usually conjure the image of a man whose cruel and perverted nature pushes him toward such heinous acts, since both recent and past history have presented us with many such examples.  But women can be serial killers as well, even though the phenomenon is rare: the case of Bella Gunness is one such example and it’s no less horrifying than those of better-known serial murderers with whom we are more acquainted. Author Camilla Bruce once again explores a real-time personality to which she adds some narrative extrapolation, creating a riveting – if appalling – tale of descent into madness.

Brynhild is a young Norwegian woman working as a scullery maid for a wealthy farmer, whose son has attracted her attention and fueled her dreams of a better life. Pregnant with the man’s child, she confronts him only to be viciously beaten within an inch of her life, which also causes a miscarriage. Embittered and full of repressed anger, not assuaged even by the murderous vengeance she is able to visit on her attacker, Brynhild sails to America, where her older sister Nellie has been living for a while with her husband: changing her name to “Bella”, Brynhild sets out to fulfill her dreams of wealth, but with a shocking twist, since she has tasted the flavor of murder, and discovered that it gives her pleasure just as much as material comforts do.

Her first husband meets an untimely death that allows her to commit both murder and insurance fraud at the same time, all too easily evading any suspicion raised by the unclear circumstances of the event, so that she feels emboldened by this first “success” and moves on toward further liaisons and killings whose only goal is to insure financial security.  But it’s not only money that drives Bella toward murder, because once she moves to an isolated farm she discovers that the act of murdering her hapless victims is a reward in itself – her life’s experiences having spawned a hatred of men and a depraved enjoyment in their destruction.  At the same time, however, Bella progressively loses contact with the reality of things and her madness does not spare even the children she professes to love, accelerating a descent into Hell that will force her to choose a tragic path…

I have tried to keep the details of this story to a minimum because Bella’s story is both fascinating and repulsive, even more so when considering that she is not a fabricated character but a real-life individual: Ms. Bruce takes us deep into her mind and leads us, step by step, along the journey that transforms a young, hopeful woman who simply wanted to escape a dreary life into a disturbed killing machine devoid of any feelings.  At first it’s easy to empathize with her, particularly when witnessing her home life, bracketed between a distant, harsh mother and a drinking, abusive father; the brutal assault at the hands of her lover enhances that sympathy, because you see Brynhild’s inner strength and will to survive – and the way she exacts her revenge on the man does have a slight flavor of… rightness, for want of a better word.

But once she reaches America, everything changes and you see how she takes advantage of everyone – including her doting sister Nellie – to further her own goals.  It’s interesting to note that the story is told from two different points of view: that of Bella, where we are made privy to her inner musings and to her psychological motivations; and that of Nellie, who observes those transformations from outside and is torn between the love for her younger sister and the dread for what she suspects Bella might truly be. 

What impressed me, in Camilla Bruce’s story, is the depiction of Bella as a sociopath: all the elements of this personality disorder are there – self-centeredness, no sense of guilt or remorse, a controlling, violent nature that often shows lack of planning, and so forth. She can fake (even to herself) a deep love toward her children, but ultimately they are simply props for the world to see, the outward sign of Bella’s “goodness”: when necessity arises, she has no qualms in using them to fulfill her goals, or even worse…  What makes Bella the horrifying person she is are not so much the murders she is guilty of, but rather the cold, calculating way in which she performs them – even the so-called pleasure she derives from annihilating these men is observed in a detached manner that is beyond chilling.

And here lies, at least for me, the basic fault of the story that prevented me from giving it a higher rating: following Bella’s long “career” in murder becomes somewhat repetitive, to the point that I felt both repulsed and numb and at some point I was ready to put down the book because I could not take anymore of that bloody account of entrapments and killings. I endured only because I wanted to discover if she was apprehended or not, but – as it happened with the other Camilla Bruce book I read – her destiny remains a mystery and we readers are left to wonder if the Black Widow of Laporte did indeed die in the fire that burned her farm to the ground or if she really used that as a smokescreen to disappear forever. Even history gives no certainty about it.

So, I’m glad to have learned something about a real-life person I knew nothing about, but at the same time I’m even happier to be done with her…

My Rating: