Pretty Evil New England: True Stories of Violent Vixens and Murderous Matriarchs

Nurse Jane Toppan, one of five 19th-century New England women poisoners surveyed in this chilling if middling account from Coletta (Crime Writers Research), began murdering patients in nursing school, administering overdoses of morphine and other drugs to the elderly and those seriously sick. During her 20-year killing spree, she admitted to have poisoned 31 people. Arrested in 1901, Toppan was declared insane and spent the rest of her life in an asylum. Lydia Sherman poisoned three husbands and her own children. Sentenced to life in prison, she died there of cancer in 1878. Nellie Webb wiped out two families in rural New Hampshire with arsenic, but a grand jury failed to indict her in 1881, and she disappeared soon afterward. Harriet Nason, who was arrested for poisoning her son-in-law for insurance money and suspected of poisoning three others, also walked free, in 1885, and was never heard of again. Sarah Jane Robinson, who poisoned her son, was sentenced to death in 1888, but that was commuted to life in prison. Coletta draws on a wide range of original sources to bring her subjects to life, but her prose is only serviceable. This is not a must for true crime fans. (Nov.)