Talking with Serial Killers: A chilling study of the world's most evil people

Product Information

The problem is that it's difficult to know what original research Berry-Dee adds to the more general biographies of these serial killers which make up 80% of the book. There were one or two times when the author stated that certain facts were revealed in his interviews with them. But for the most part, I couldn't tell what information Berry-Dee learnt in his conversations and what he had researched outside the prison walls. Alice Johnson, a somewhat dim-witted, plain woman in her 30s fell for him, and this naive and gullible cleaning woman with few friends thought she'd met a hard-working, decent man." - Yes Christopher, because I'm sure you've never been wrong about a person in your entire life, and surely everybody was on the receiving end of well-intentioned upbringing and education to shield them from predators and con-artists. Definitely. If he is as much of an expert when it comes to serial killers and psychopaths as he claims he is, he would surely be the first one to remind us of how cunning and manipulative these individuals can be, and about how they can sometimes portray the loving husband and father for decades, and credibly so, before their mask slips. But apparently, this victim didn't deserve that little reminder. If you are a big true crime fan like myself, you will find this a fascinating read, but at the same time hard to swallow as it seems to be all about men killing women which is a difficult read for, well, a woman. I'd had nightmares for 3 consecutive nights when I started the book, reading detailed depictions of the crime scenes, how decomposed the corpses were, how manslaughter and body dismemberment were carried out, and even cannibalism. The psychopathy [documented in this book] gets worse to the point that a .22 calibre gun-shot is the most merciful killing method.

A fascinating read about 9 prolific serial killers, many of whom I had not heard of from other documentaries Although interesting I struggled with the fact that he spoke about each killer differently, some of them you got parts of actual conversations with the killers and their feelings but others you didn’t. A lot of the time I wasn’t sure if he was talking about facts or his opinion/own summarised version of things. Horribly written, fantastical, overly dramatic, ADVERBS. SO MANY. Honestly, I'm not even sure this was edited. From the way the author is described, I actually thought he had some credentials in Criminology - that is not the case. It is incredibly patronizing to women - calling them 'the fairer sex' and desperately trying to give some sort of Victorian value to his awful wittering. He describes the female murderers in minute, creepy detail, particularly if they were attractive and takes immense pleasure in the alleged offers of sex or marriage. b) He spends half the book pimping out his other work, or quoting people who have praised him. DUDE, WE GET IT. YOU LOVE YOURSELF. Well written although I would advise a big trigger warning for horrific sexual and physical assaultLike, I don't care. If I'm interested I'll go to the front of the book where most authors list their previous books or are Google your other books. I don't need reminding every five seconds. Cu toții au avut parte de traume în copilărie, dar cel care mi-a rămas în minte este Arthur John Shawcross - a ucis 53 de femei, le-a abuzat sexual atât înainte, cât și după crimă, iar unora le-a mâncat anumite părți ale corpului. This is my first non-fiction, documentary read for years and I have to admit the book is such an 'enlightenment' albeit its dwellings into the darkest minds and their 'modus operandi' which are really disturbing. Mă intrigau motivele unei femei, deși sunt arhicunoscute, de aceea am fost foarte atentă la interviul cu Aileen Carol Wuornos. Se pare că femeile reprezintă doar 2% din numărul infractorilor care au fost condamnați la moarte în SUA, un procentaj mic, dar înfricoșător dacă dai la o parte cortina.

This is a rather harrowing read looking at case study of some of the most awful serial killers to have existed. The interviews raise some important questions about whether these people are sane, how they came to commit this crimes and in some cases, whether they actually committed these crimes or did someone else do it and get away with it. Berry-Dee refers to the subject matters of his book with a range of charming descriptions including "overweight lump", "once attractive", "disgusting and fat" etc. etc. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting he be *nice* about murderers, but I'm not entirely sure why he's so caught up on their looks when there are a plethora of other aspects for which he could be criticising them (for example the murders they committed perhaps...). I swear that I didn’t go out of my way to find mistakes, and yet I managed to notice at least 45 typos/punctuation mistakes/wrong sentence structures etc. This includes jams such as “She because a nuisance to her teachers, disrupted classes and fellow pupils, […].”, “[…] who could reach out to them of they were distressed, […]”, “[…] but, before feeling the scene, […]” and even “[…] 7 May 2105, […]”. This – in addition to a lot of weird, incomprehensible jump cuts and just generally terrible stylistic choices – makes it seem as though not a single editor ever had a look at this book before it was published. Furthermore, Berry-Dee seems to have a hatred for commas, not using them nearly often enough – thus making it very hard to follow his train of thought during his many trademark multi-clause sentences. When he does use them, he more often than not places them incorrectly. The most infuriating abuse of proper punctuation, however, is his seemingly arbitrary comma use when it comes to the word aka. Sometimes he uses a comma after this word and sometimes he doesn’t, making it clear that his peculiar punctuation isn’t a deliberate stylistic choice but rather ignorance in regards to grammar rules. Also, Berry-Dee apparently doesn’t believe in semicolons.

The final thing I want to highlight in this review is the awful editing, throughout the book, there are examples of poor proofreading, spelling errors and sentences that make no sense. While a few punctuation errors are forgivable and expected, no one is perfect, I don't expect to find sentences that make no sense, words that have been repeated, punctuation that is in the wrong place and formatting that wasn't maintained. The format of the chapters seemed to be that the heading was the name of the killer and each section had a paragraph depicting their method of killing, a small section about their method and the victims. This structure was randomly abandoned in later chapters and would then be used again a few chapters later. The inconsistency of this format makes it appear that he knew most of the killers in the book were not serial killers and didn't want to highlight that by stating their number of victims, making it glaringly obvious to anyone that the title is misleading. As I said , it’s a pity as I did enjoy the actual stories of these women (also, be warned: it’s mostly one time killers—- considering how often he defined “serial killers” I found that to be a bit of a let down).

This wasn´t what I expected and, to be honest, it was a bit of a disappointment. It reminded me of those free annual-sized books they used to do for a pound (and maybe still do) with titles like "The Most Evil People In History" or "True Crime". This book is highly misleading and contains information that can be found easily online, however written in a repetitive, often confusing and juvenile way. It is hard to to discern what is a hard fact about a case gathered from the interview and what is just the opinion of the author. There is so many editing errors and only a handful of direct quotes from the interviews, despite this being called ‘Talking with serial killers’.Like his other books, its littered with mentions of his previous books. But in this book he takes it a step further and proceeds to tell us where, when and by who the books have been published by. Sonia Sutcliffe first discovered that her husband, Peter, was leading a secret existence as 'the Yorkshire Ripper' only when he was arrested. Bestselling writer and criminologist Christopher Berry-Dee turns his attention to a new kind of victim: the wives or partners of serial murderers who remained unaware of exactly who they had fallen for until after their other half's arrest or, in some cases, conviction, for multiple murders. Heres what has me torn when thinking about this book. I enjoy reading about true crime and behavioural analysis of serial killers. The mind is an incredible thing so to think it can be so unhinged to drive a person to be like this is something I enjoy reading the how and why behind it. Although the book gives a lot of factual information and some conversations and quotes from the killers I felt it was quite disjointed. The author at times got his facts mixed up, there are grammar errors which were hard to ignore, on many occasions you get a statement from the author stating if it wasn’t for his interviews and the book certain facts about the murder cases would not have been resolved however when you look into these claims they are not entirely true.

TYPOS! This is a published book. Why the hell are there typos? And not just little minor things - it was major things like dates, which meant the chronological sequence of events got really confusing before you realised that they were just plain wrong. This book like his others also has plenty of grammar and spelling mistakes. I'm sure no one reads these before they are published. I really enjoyed hearing Christopher narrating the story and absolutely ADORED the clips from the killers themselves. He seems to think self promoting his other works every other chapter or so is acceptable. While I’m sure this is a great achievement I don’t need to read for the umpteenth time how your book “Monster” was then adapted into a feature film starring Charlize Theron, name drop included each and every time.Oh yes, a book titled 'talking with female serial killers' which includes plenty of women who aren't serial killers. I enjoy a good book about the mind, however skewed that mind is, or how mixed up or evil. It all makes an interesting read, these case studies the author has compiled, as the dots can either be connected or not, and the people behind the masks can be seen. there is hardly any actual TALKING with female serial killers, just information you could find out from google and the small amount of talking that there is hardly worth the read I’m also uncomfortable with the the approach he took in regards to sexual preferences and professions. For example: just because the woman was a lesbian that does not mean her lover was a mud wrestler or that being a “cheap hooker” doesn’t make you less of a person, being a murderer definitely does, though. I found some of the passages to be quite sexist in refering to women as the "fairer" sex and there are a few sentences pointing towards the opinion that women are more likely than men to over react and murder for no apparent reason.