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A Novel
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Laurie Notaro comes a haunting true-crime novel about Winnie Ruth Judd, one of the twentieth century's most notorious and enigmatic killers.
It's October 1931. When Winnie Ruth Judd arrives at the Los Angeles train station from Phoenix, her shipping trunks catch the attention of a suspicious porter. By the time they're pried open, revealing the dismembered bodies of two women inside, Ruth has disappeared into the crowd.
The search for, and eventual apprehension of, the Trunk Murderess quickly becomes a headline-making sensation. Even the Phoenix murder house is a sideshow attraction. The one question on everyone's lips: How could a twenty-six-year-old reverend's daughter and doctor's wife―petite, pretty, well educated, and poised―commit such a heinous act on two people she'd called "my dearest friends in the world"? Everyone has their theories and judgments, but no one knows the whole truth.
What unfolds in this gripping work of true-crime fiction is a collision of jealousy, drug addiction, insanity, rage, and inescapable choices. At its heart, a condemned and tragic mystery woman whose trial―and its shocking twists―will make history.
"Fans of Notaro's essays will identify and appreciate the vein of absurdity and irony running throughout this novel, but there is also a pulsing brutality and shocking tragedy at its heart that will appeal to true crime fans. Fact may still remain stranger than fiction, but Notaro's compelling novel gives truth a run for the money." —Library Journal (starred review)
"As complex as it is deftly crafted―this is a pulse-pounding, page-turning, heartbreaking account of the misunderstood woman behind a sensational news story that gripped a nation. A haunting novel that never lets the reader go." ―Kirkus Reviews
This information about The Murderess was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
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Photo: Cat Dosset
Laurie Notaro has been fired from seven jobs, laid off from three, and voluntarily liberated from one. Despite all that, she has managed to write a number of New York Times bestselling essay collections, including The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club, Autobiography of a Fat Bride, and Housebroken. She lives with her husband in Oregon, where—according to her mother, who refuses to visit—she sleeps in a trailer in the woods.
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