The Angel Makers: Arsenic, a Midwife, and Modern History’s Most Astonishing Murder Ring

Journalist McCracken debuts with a compulsively readable account of a group of women who operated a murder ring for years during the early 20th century in the Hungarian village of Nagyrév. At the center of the ring was a squat, pipe-smoking midwife known as Auntie Suzy, who carried arsenic in her pocket and doled it out to women who were tired of their abusive spouses and sickly children. After a series of anonymous notes to authorities in 1929 and decades of mysterious deaths, 16 women went on trial for poisoning their husbands and sons in a case that riveted the world press. They were all convicted: three of them were hanged, and three—including Auntie Suzy—died by suicide rather than face life in prison. It’s thought, the authors writes, that over the years hundreds of men of Nagyrév were slipped arsenic into their brandy, soup, or goulash by the women in their lives. McCracken grounds the work in archival documents and trial transcriptions, and dramatically recreates scenes for which there’s no documentation, a liberty, she admits in a note, she has taken “with deep respect for the integrity of this case.” This is a must for true crime fans. Agent: Joe Veltre, Gersh Agency. (Mar.)