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:

ALL THE BLOOD WE SHARE, by Camilla Bruce

Reading this book made me reflect on the fact that we generally consider serial killers a phenomenon of more recent times, while in reality these deranged individuals must always have been among us, their actions gone mostly unreported due to a lack of the kind of information network we enjoy nowadays. Granted, we all know about Jack the Ripper, but he must be the exception that proves the rule…

Before reading All the Blood We Share I was unaware of the existence of the Bender family and their bloody deeds, so that I went online to seek some more information about them, once I finished the novel, discovering that the author had only filled a few unknown angles with fiction, remaining quite faithful to the macabre reality of the events.

The Bender family arrived in Kansas in the second half of the 19^th Century, fleeing from justice after a series of crimes about which the reader will learn as the story develops. The father William and his son John built a house (or rather a shack…) near the town of Cherryvale and were joined at a later date by William’s wife, Elvira, and her daughter Kate.   The family had little to no intention of becoming farmers – which given the arid nature of the territory is hardly surprising – and they transformed the homestead into an inn where travelers headed west could buy some basic supplies, enjoy a home-cooked meal and even spend a night under a proper roof.

The family’s goal was to make some money and be able to buy a better farm in a more amenable location, possibly similar to the one they had to leave behind when running from the law, but their earnings as inn-keepers were far below the expectations, and so they decided to kill and rob travelers of their valuables, burying the bodies on the property.  In those times and places it was hardly surprising that a few travelers never reached their intended destination, but at some point the Benders chose the wrong victims and that brought the attention of relatives and authorities on their inn, forcing them to flee in the night and leave behind everything – including a number of corpses.

This is, in broad terms, the story told in All the Blood We Share, at least as far as the basic facts are concerned: the focus of the novel, however, is on the dynamics and personalities of this family of killers, a family for which the term ‘dysfunctional’ is indeed a big understatement. The patriarch William seems at first the more grounded one among them, but as time goes by we see the darkness under the surface, a combination of gullibility and greed that becomes even more shocking with the onset of what looks like Alzheimer.  His son John is a brooding, introverted person who is easily swayed and manipulated by his step-sister Kate, for whom he harbors possessive and jealous feelings.  Mother Elvira is the more complex of the four characters, and the one who intrigued me most: on one side she is bitterly missing the better life she had to leave behind, almost blackmailing Kate into providing the means for a better one, on the other she is the only one voicing her displeasure for the family’s “business” and her fears of discovery.

But it’s Kate the one who enjoys the more intense focus in the story: outwardly sunny and gregarious, she holds a darkness inside that seems like a separate creature and demands to be satisfied, therefore turning Kate into the instigator for the Bender’s murderous activities. The family looks like a group of people bound by necessity rather than affection, and Kate is the one who dreams of getting away and making a life for herself: to accomplish this goal she reinvents herself as a medium, claiming to be in contact with the souls of the departed and planning to make her fortune thanks to this “talent”.  What she truly accomplishes is to use her tricks to divert the community’s attention from the disappearances and to lull her step-father into believing that the murders are inspired by some higher beings looking out for the Benders.

The way in which Kate is portrayed here highlights all the markers for a serial killer as we have come to recognize them: she is self-centered and totally lacking in empathy, has a high consideration of herself and her cunning, actually enjoys the act of killing and is indeed the one to murder the hapless victims, cutting their throats after William rendered them unconscious with a blow to the head.  There are several passages where we are made privy to Kate’s inner thoughts, and they are exactly what we have come to expect from a serial killer, starting from the sense of power that comes from the very act of murder:

 The darkness is like that: heady and strong. […] I was in awe of the power in my hands

and going on with the practice of collecting the unfortunates’ buttons, which she keeps in a box and handles while revisiting the crimes:

I fondled the buttons one by one, as was my habit. All the while, I thought about their deaths: how they had looked; how I had hurt them; the moment when they went

If the Benders’ story proved to be quite harrowing, I appreciated the author’s way of relaying it in an almost detached way that leaves no space to morbid fascination, and I quite enjoyed her depiction of the small community of Cherryvale, a desolate, harsh place with bitterly cold winters and scorching summers, where ignorance and superstition walk hand in hand offering the perfect terrain for con artists like Kate to take advantage of people’s naiveté.  Equally enlightening – and quite chilling – is the reaction of those citizens once the Benders’ activities are revealed: toward the end of the novel the author offers a classic example of mob mentality that badly needs a scapegoat and looks for it in the wrong direction – but that hardly matters as long as they get their proverbial “pound of flesh”.  I have to admit that this segment of the story had an even harder impact on me than the actual murders perpetrated by the Benders…

This was my first novel by Camilla Bruce, but it will certainly not be the last: I like her incisive, sharp writing and the way she can keep a reader engaged even in the most harrowing of stories, and I look forward to her other books.

My Rating:

THE ASHES OF LONDON (Marwood & Lovett #1), by Andrew Taylor

This novel proved to be one of those precious finds that offer, besides an intriguing story to follow, a peek into a historical period I know next to nothing about, so that I feel compelled to search online more details and learn something new in the process.  The background for The Ashes of London is that of the Restoration, the time in which King Charles II ascended to the throne of England after the execution of his father, Charles I, and Oliver Cromwell’s rule: in September 1666 the city of London was devastated by fire, and it’s during the final days of this disastrous occurrence – and its aftermath – that the book’s events take place.

James Marwood is a civil servant trying to keep a low profile in the hope that his masters forget he’s the son of one of the revolutionaries whose movement brought about the demise of the previous king: saddled with the difficult task of caring for his ailing father, whose time in prison after the conspiracy’s failure left him weakened in both body and mind, Marwood is torn between his filial duties and the need to further his career so that he can tend to what’s left of his family in reasonable comfort.  Catherine Lovett is the daughter of one of the conspirators as well, her father being a wanted fugitive: she’s been left in the care of an uncle who is keen on marrying her off to a very unsavory character, while all she dreams about is architectural design, an unheard-of pastime for a woman in those days.   The paths of these two characters are destined to cross, in part due to various circumstances and in part because of both their fathers’ affiliations, while the city of London tries to recover from the still-smoldering fires and a series of bizarre murders reveals the dangerous undercurrents running through the political and social fabric of the realm.

I very much appreciated the intriguing mix at the roots of this book, where historical fiction blends with a crime investigation and a good dose of political plotting and conspiracies, but most of all I enjoyed the “time travel” opportunities offered by the story, thanks to the descriptions of the day-to-day life of 17^th Century England and the great social turmoil lurking under the surface. What I found particularly fascinating were the details of the city of London, which the author was able to depict with a cinematic, quite evocative quality that brought to life the sounds, sights – and unfortunately smells – of a bustling city which was grievously wounded by the Great Fire.  There is an intriguing parallel here between the precarious political situation, in which the new King knows he still has to deal with the remnants of the conspiracy which prompted his father’s downfall, and the daily struggles of the citizenry, whose houses have been destroyed by the fire and have to live in ramshackle hovels or in the ruins of their burned-out homes, with no certainty about the immediate future.  This is the background on which the main themes of civil unrest and inequality stand, together with a look at the social mores of the times and their consequences on people, particularly the two main characters.

James Marwood was soon able to inspire my sympathy, not least because his POV is written in the first person, allowing us to be instantly privy to his thoughts and troubles: as he deals with his professional duties, which are carried on through the double difficulty of being effective while keeping a low profile, we understand he’s a decent human being gifted with a good heart, and if sometimes he struggles with the frustration of having to care for a father who tethers between dementia and the dreams of a “new order”, he does so with such a deeply ingrained affection and respect for the old man, that it’s impossible not to feel for him.

Catherine, on the other hand, is more feisty and combative (often, and with reason, very fiercely so), and she’s also very “modern”, character-wise, because of her keen interest for architecture, which leads her to dream of a more unfettered life – practically an impossibility in those times. She is no frivolous dreamer, though, and when circumstances require her to adapt to change, sometimes through harrowing events, she shows a resiliency and an inner strength that are nothing if not admirable.  Both Cat and Marwood suffer for the sins of their respective fathers, offering the opportunity for a commentary on a society that visits those sins on the innocent offspring of past conspirators.

Alongside these two main characters move a number of intriguing figures which help depict quite clearly the atmosphere of the times through their greed and depravity, cunning and coarseness, without forgetting the proverbial movers and shakers – some of them real-life persons – who complete this fascinating picture of an era of turmoil and change.  Among them I want to mention Mistress Alderley, Cat’s aunt, who under her unprepossessing exterior shows great skills in being the proverbial power behind the throne in more ways than one; or the ruling monarch Charles II, who in a very human moment shows his desire to know more about the father he barely knew before he was killed; and again Edward, Cat’s despicable cousin who represents the entitled attitude of the lesser nobility who believes nothing and no one can stand in their way.

The Ashes of London is a very immersive portrayal of a time and a place I know I will enjoy visiting again through the next books, and it represents one of the best bookish finds of this year so far.

My Rating:

THE LAST KINGDOM (The Saxon Stories #1), by Bernard Cornwell

Several times I’ve been encouraged by fellow bloggers to read Cornwell’s Saxon Stories, and the first book of the saga, The Last Kingdom, had indeed been sitting on my TBR for a while, being always pushed down the queue by other titles, even though my curiosity had been heightened by watching the first season of the TV series with the same title. What finally prompted me to start was my choice of gifting the first five books in the saga to my niece, who loves historical fiction: at this point I felt I could not lag behind, and I finally picked up this first volume.

These novels follow the story of Uthred, the younger son of a Saxon minor noble: born as Osbert, he is once again baptized as Uthred – the name of every firstborn and inheritor of the title – once his older brother is killed by marauding Danes, or Vikings. At the tender age of ten, Uthred dreams of becoming a warrior and avenging his brother, but he is instead imprisoned by Danes and raised as one of them by his captor, Earl Ragnar, who quickly turns into a surrogate father.  When tragedy strikes his adoptive family, Uthred is compelled to go back to his Saxon roots, and determined to regain the rule of Bebbanburg, the home fief that was stolen by his uncle.  Pledging his services to King Alfred, who shrewdly understands the value of the young man, Uthred struggles constantly with his dual legacies as he grows toward adulthood and the land undergoes great upheavals when the two mighty forces – the Danes and the Saxons – battle for control of the territory and its resources.

As I read, the comparison between the beginning of this saga and the first season of the TV series became inevitable and of course the book proved far richer and more nuanced than its screen version, particularly where Uthred’s formative years are concerned: the book delves far longer on that time, showing how the boy’s evolving mindset does not come from a form of Stockholm syndrome, but rather from the huge cultural and personal differences between his birth family and the adoptive one.  What we are shown of Uthred Senior is the figure of a harsh, uncompromising man who does not seem to like his son very much and imparts what scant knowledge and advice he doles out with something approaching resentful reluctance – and very little shows of affection, if any.  On the other hand, Earl Ragnar, like most of his compatriots, is a larger than life individual, one who faces bloody battles or boisterous feasts with the same hunger for life, ready to enjoy it all to the fullest. And more importantly he becomes the kind of father figure young Uthred sorely needed, perceiving in the boy a kindred spirit from the moment when he’s ferociously attacked on the battlefield by this 10-year old boy he watches with a mixture of amusement and admiration for such pluckiness. 

Uthred is indeed a fascinating character, even in his early years: it’s easy to understand his fascination for Danes and their culture when we see his penchant for learning how to wield a sword and become a warrior, while he keeps dodging poor Father Beocca’s attempts at teaching him how to read and write.  One could say that the dichotomy is there from the beginning, even before he find himself torn between two worlds: Saxon society, as described by Cornwell, represents well the situation of the early Middle Ages, where poverty and harsh living conditions (not to mention the constant “barbarian” raids) met with the profound impact of religious beliefs which strictly regulated many of the everyday activities and often saw the trials faced by the populace as a form of punishment for people’s sins.  On the other hand, Dane society put its emphasis on personal deeds and the search for fame, allowing for a greater freedom than the one Uthred had enjoyed so far, so it’s easy to see how the call from both sides of his roots would be the ever-present theme of his life. 

Through Uthred’s constant search of a moral compass and a way of life we see the mirror of the struggle the world of those times was undergoing, between the drive for a more organized, and civilized, society united under common goals, represented by King Alfred in his pursuit for a unified England, and the unruly and fractured Danes whose wars of conquest focused only on gaining more territory in which to expand, with little planning for the future.  All this is shown in a quite immersive narrative where the background comes to life in vivid shades and through detailed – but never boring – description of bloody battles whose cinematic quality manages to always bring you at the heart of the action.  Moreover, other characters besides Uthred come to the fore with the same degree of depth and substance, gifting this story with a compelling, realistic quality that helped me fly through the pages with never a moment of boredom.

And what’s more important, this book encouraged me to learn more about the historical period it’s set in, which is something I always appreciate in a story and adds more value to my reading material – truly a win-win situation…

My Rating:

Review: THE HUNGER, by Alma Katsu

 

While the fateful journey of the Donner Party is a matter of record for American history, it’s not as well known outside of the U.S.A. so I was not familiar with this event apart from having heard it mentioned once or twice in passing, and as soon as I encountered the first reviews for Alma Katsu’s book I went in search of more information about it: what I found was a tale of hardship and horror whose reality seemed to surpass any fictional tale of the supernatural I might have read until now.

The Donner Party was a group of hopeful pioneers headed to California to start a new life in what was the new frontier for the times, the middle of the 19^th Century: they set out from Missouri in the late spring of 1846, but instead of following the tried and tested trail other adventurers had successfully traveled on, they decided to attempt the newest Hastings Cutoff, named after the explorer who had first opened it.

Unfortunately, Hastings had not specified either that the cutoff would add a considerable number of miles to the trek, or that the way was more suited to men on horseback rather than oxen-driven wagons loaded with supplies, so that a series of accidents and drawbacks cost the travelers precious time – not to mention the loss of several animals and even wagons – and at the start of a particularly hard winter they were stranded and snowbound on the Sierra Nevada, as their supplies ran out and they found themselves with little shelter and no food.  The survivors who were rescued by a search party in the early spring of 1847 had had to resort to eating the flesh of their dead to keep alive.

The historical events of the Donner Party look horrific enough in their stark reality, and yet the author decided to insert a supernatural twist to the story, in the form of a disturbing presence stalking the wagons from the very start and at times grabbing some hapless victim whose remains hinted at something inhuman and terrifying at play.  While this choice added a further (and maybe unnecessary) layer of dread to an already ghastly situation, it worked as a sort of mirror for the overall darkness that progressively fell on the colonists, one that seemed to come from them rather than from the outside, a force that was freed once the people were removed from the moral and spiritual boundaries of civilization.

From the very start we see how the relationships among the 90-odd people of the caravan are subject to strain, mostly due to the different social backgrounds and mindset of the various individuals, so that they fall prey to arguments that end up dividing the group into smaller factions, at odds with each other.  Once the true adversities start piling up on them, these divergences flare up, sometimes with dramatic consequences.  George Donner’s wife Tamsen, for example, is a practitioner of natural medicine though her knowledge of herbs and remedies, and therefore the subject of mistrust that quickly turns into the belief she might be a witch, with the consequence that the Donners are shunned and treated like pariahs.  Or once the supplies start dwindling, those with more refuse to share with the less fortunate, all too easily forgetting the principles of Christian charity that everybody seemed to profess.

As the journey becomes more harrowing and takes its toll on people, animals and supplies – the crossing of the salt desert being one of the most heartbreaking segments – whatever shred of humanity the group might have held on to seems to disappear, each wagon, each individual becoming a world unto itself, focused on its own survival to the exclusion of anything, and anyone, else. And once that humanity dwindles or is silenced forever, once any residue of acceptable social behavior evaporates under the hardships, it looks far too easy for the pioneers to let go of their more enlightened habits and to fall back to more primitive patterns.  First they stop caring about appearances:

They were all starting to neglect themselves, losing the will to keep themselves clean and tidy. To remain civilized. Day by day they grew wilder, filthier, more animal.

Then there is a scene in which the starved group is forced to kill one head of cattle to have some food, and the people partaking of that flesh look more like a bunch of cavemen rather than city born and bred individuals:

 

..no laughter or songs or shared bottles of whiskey […] Now it was just the sound of ravenous eating, the smack of lips and teeth tearing flesh off bone.

 

With this particular sentence I was strongly reminded of Tolkien’s description of Gollum, about his “furtive eating and resentful remembering”, and it was a chilly comparison, one that emphasized the regression of these pioneers to a more primeval state, one that was much more horrifying than the shadowy beings haunting the group from the encroaching darkness.  And for this very reason, once the supernatural element in the story is revealed, it looks almost mundane, far less frightening than the mindless savagery consuming the group of settlers.

The Hunger is not an easy book, and certainly not an uplifting read, but despite its bleakness I could not tear myself from it: the author has a way of relaying even the most horrific of details with a blunt clarity that never slips into morbid gratification, and for this reason offers a compelling tale of the heights and pitfalls of the human soul when subjected to intolerable stress.  Like the colonists’ own, this was not an easy journey, but it taught me a great deal about humanity, and I would not have missed it for the world.

 

 

My Rating: