(Published by Gill and Macmillan)
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Deadlier Than The Male – subtitled Ireland’s Female Killers – outlines sixteen cases of murder in Ireland committed by women. The first murder was committed just after the famine and the most recent three years ago.
In many of the cases the women were driven to murder by abusive partners. However, that was not always the case. In 1938 Mary Somerville from Monaghan was found guilty of disposing of her grandchild, born to her teenage unwed daughter, a crime that at that time still carried the death penalty. Mary appealed her sentence and it was commuted to life imprisonment, a sentence she served in full.
Without a doubt, the most interesting case recorded is that of Bridget Waters, a war bride who became something of a celebrity in the United States where she travelled with her young son to contest her husband’s divorce action. She had the support of the Married Women’s Association, established in 1938 to campaign for equality for women. The former Bridget McCluskey from Dublin, who had been nursing in Liverpool, won her case for support from Frank but decided to stay in the US to ensure that payments were made on a regular basis. It was when he took up with another woman that he sealed his fate, for Bridget shot and killed him, but once again her good looks and innocent demeanour stood her in good stead and the jury returned a verdict of involuntary manslaughter.
With each of the sixteen cases, Kiely has endeavoured to look into the minds of the female killers and to try to fathom the motives which led them to commit the ultimate crime. Grippingly written, these stories tell of moments of madness, panic and evil. 
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