“This true-crime narrative does justice to the larger-than-life Belle Gunness and her fascinating context, keeping the reader immersed in the story even as we recoil from its many horrors.” -CrimeReads “The best books regarding criminality involve serial killers, and that is certainly the case for the best true-crime books of 2018.Harold Schechter delivers a full-length background and overview of one of the worst murderers in American history that no one has heard of.” - Criminal “In Harold Schechter’s lucid and well-researched Hell’s Princess, Gunness-his ruthless, devious protagonist and, according to the book’s subtitle, a ‘butcher of men’-deserves a prominent place in the annals of America’s serial killers.” - Wall Street Journal “Schechter’s deep research and storytelling flair ensure readers will hang in to see if he can solve this century-old puzzle.” - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. The only definitive book on this notorious case and the first to reveal previously unknown information about its subject, Harold Schechter’s gripping, suspenseful narrative has all the elements of a classic mystery-and all the gruesome twists of a nightmare. Hell’s Princess is a riveting account of one of the most sensational killing sprees in the annals of American crime: the shocking series of murders committed by the woman who came to be known as Lady Bluebeard. When their bodies were dug up, they hadn’t merely been poisoned, like victims of other female killers.

Between 19, she lured a succession of unsuspecting victims to her Indiana “murder farm.” Some were hired hands. She was the rarest of female psychopaths, a woman who engaged in wholesale slaughter, partly out of greed but mostly for the sheer joy of it. In the pantheon of serial killers, Belle Gunness stands alone. “A deeply researched and morbidly fascinating chronicle of one of America’s most notorious female killers.” - The New York Times Book Review

Hell's Princess by Harold Schechter