Women Who Kill : links to reviews of twenty novels by thirteen authors

I was browsing my TBR pile, looking for something fun to read, when I came across Bella Mackie’s wickedly titled ‘How To Kill Your Family’ and thought, ‘That’ll Do.’

Then I realised that, not so long ago, a book like that would have had more shock value than it does today. The idea of a female killer, especially a woman who kills more than once, was once seen as an extreme aberration.

There’s been a lot of blood under the bridge since then. Women writers have gleefully embraced the idea of women as killers.

They have given us women working as modern assassins or spies for whom killing is a job – Kelley Armstrong’s Canadian assassin, Nadia Stafford – Alex Callister’s GCHQ field agent and sociopath, Winter C.S. O’Cinneide’s contract killer trying to retire, Candace Starr and Deanna Raybourn’s covey of CIA killers of a certain age.

They’ve given us women as hired guns in alternative versions of the American West with Charlaine Harris’ crack shot, Gunnie Rose and Justina Ireland’s remarkable graduates of ‘Miss Preston’s School of Combat for Negro Girls‘ fighting the zombie plague that erupted during the Civil War.

Finally, they’ve given us lone women pushing back against the Patriarchy one dead narcissist at a time.

These books have given me a lot of pleasure. I’ve collected my reviews of them here in the hope that you’ll find a few that take your fancy.