Book Review: Triflers Need Not Apply
& What Makes the Structure of a 3-Act Thriller Work
The most disturbing thing about this novel is that it’s mostly true.
If anyone is curious about all the morbid details, there was a documentary made on the real Belle Gunness:
More details at IMDb.com
Plus, since the total bodycount of her crimes is still disputed, they also made a movie about her that came out in August of this year. The film is titled “The Farm” and has quite a different-looking Belle from the original one:
First I’ll get into the review, (**there will be spoilers**), and then I’ll look at the overall story shape in this version of Belle’s story vs. the traditional 3-act thriller plot structure.
The Review
This novel is NOT for the faint of heart. One of the book blurbs implied there was dark humor in here — normally I love dark humor and hoped to find some — but this story is a tragedy. Adding humor to a tragedy is counterproductive at best.
However, since I personally feel deprived of the dark humor I’d hoped for, I’ll sum up the events here with my own dark humor as a little treat for you:
In Norway where she was born, Belle was known as Little “Brynhild,” a strong girl who was just a bit too good at killing and skinning game for dinner, but you have to remember, that was a useful skill to have on a farm in the middle of nowhere. After she falls for a guy on the farm who knocks her up and then refuses to marry her (the guy in fact decides to do the exact opposite and KILL her instead), Brynhild escapes and survives…although her child dies. She gets even by poisoning the bastard’s evening drink and killing him. 😈
At this part, no one is really upset that her first victim died because essentially, he was an asshole and only his family seemed to care about him. Plus, in the country there was no court, police, or consequences to punish anyone if they owned land as the victim’s family did.
☠️Yet for Brynhild, revenge was never enough. ☠️
She saved up money to immigrate to America, where her sister Nellie helps her meet people and gives her a place to stay until she finds a husband. However, after changing her name to Belle and doing all the “right things” like going to church and such to find her meek husband, she still can’t get pregnant. She knows it’s because of the trauma she suffered that she can’t have children, so she begins adopting kids…and meets a man (ahem, criminal) who can bring her as many children as she wants.
Ever wonder what happened to the children of prostitutes, criminals, or those who had an affair with a woman that no one was supposed to know about in the early 1900s? Sometimes an orphanage wasn’t enough to make an unwanted child disappear. Sometimes, men like this fellow James Lee would bring the child to a nice home for you as long as you paid for the child’s expenses while they were raised by another.
Belle practically had a foster home with all her new kids. It was so easy to pretend you were pregnant back then. Belle would just wear some cushions under her clothes for a while, wait until James showed up with a newborn, and pull out the cushions and go tell the neighbors you’ve got a new kid!
Eventually though, Belle wants more money 💰. She takes her anger out on her husband who has “failed to provide her with enough,” and she eventually poisoned him with a piece of lemon cake. 🍰☠️Great to know that lemon filling is a strong enough flavor to mask cyanide. Oh, the things we learn while reading.
Belle delightedly cashes in his life insurance, then burns down his house to cash in on the home insurance, and becomes committed to finding ways to get rich quick from other insurance schemes and duping men seeking to take advantage of widows.
By the end, Belle moves to the country and buys a big farm (because you need a lot more land to bury more bones), marries a butcher to learn how to dismember bodies “the right way,” and gets rids of the butcher when he becomes annoying…because hey, who doesn’t want more life insurance money?
All the while, Belle’s sister Nellie is suspicious but struggles against finding out the truth that Nellie really doesn’t want to know anyway:
pg.76 from her sister Nellie’s POV:
Little Brynhild - Bella - had never been easy.
I was hoping: … that a few years at Rode had stead her some, but that does not seem to be the case. She does as she pleases. If anything, she was worse. Her mood would dip and turn for no reason, and she did not seem to notice when someone did something nice for her. Her anger, like our father's, had always been like thunder: loud and sudden, blazing with heat, but now it seemed that it never quite dissolved but always moved and shifted under the surface, ready to erupt.
She was never calm - always restless.
"How does she get along with the other women, besides Clara?”
My heart sank in my chest, just from thinking of Laura's raised eyebrows behind Bella's back, and the latter's silent smile, as if she had no use for any of them. “Well enough,” I said, though I could tell that my friends were not impressed with the new addition to our household, not even those who knew little about how things had unfolded since she arrived. It had always been hard to express just why it was that people did not take to Little Brynhild. Was it because of the way she never looked another in the eye, because she sometimes said things that made her seem mean, or because she never seemed to share in other people's joy? Did people even notice those things or was it just me, looking at her with love, wishing so desperately for her to find her place?
Perhaps they did notice without even knowing, the knowledge like a silent whisper in their minds. She could be as sweet as sugar when she wanted to, which she rarely did. It was as if she did not see or understand how a little effort could help her reach through to other people.
It was as if she did not care.
And that my friends, is the textbook definition of a psychopath.
Most people believe Belle faked her death by the end when her last house burned down and she disappeared because “her body” was headless…for no apparent reason.
⚠️Warning:
If you do read the book, brace yourself for violence against children toward the end of it. I skipped over it because that’s where I draw a hard line.
Now for the Thriller Structure Plot Overview:
In this great article “The 6 Scenes Every Thriller Novel Needs” by Book Coach Savannah Gilbo, she lists these key turning points in the plot that make a thriller feel satisfying and complete. These points are what the thriller audience is craving when picking up the book:
Discovery of the crime
Stakes become personal
Protagonist learns the goal of the antagonist (killer)
Our hero becomes the victim
Protagonist finally fights the killer
Justice prevails or fails
This novel was SO CLOSE to matching the thriller structure by setting up the sister Nellie as the “detective” questioning Belle as she moved from one incident to another, and yet, the ending turned into something like literary fiction that almost defies belief. Here’s what I mean:
🕵️♀️ The “detective” protagonist role here is filled by Nellie, the sister of Belle. This sister was a fictional creation of the author to give readers perspective on how “average and normal” women in Belle’s time would’ve thought and behaved, so she also acts as a foil to Belle. However, Nellie chooses to assume the best about Belle in all circumstances, so Nellie actually dismisses all evidence of the Belle’s murders for most of the book because she doesn’t want to believe Belle is a serial killer. This choice works well to keep the tension up so that readers keep wondering, “When is Nellie going to see the truth and do something?”
🪓The first crime portrayed in the novel is when the Norwegian farmer’s son Anders beats up Belle and tries to murder her, but someone scares him away before he can finish the job. Thus, the first death of the book is the death of Belle’s unborn child in this attack. You could say Belle spends the rest of the book seeking revenge for this murder, and her view of herself as the real victim is part of her justification for her killing sprees.
🌟Bonus points to the author for setting up Belle as if she were the protagonist in the beginning, which can almost make you want to cheer for her as she begins her murders. This introduction is what makes this book a true literary serial killer novel.
When do the stakes for Nellie become personal? In most thrillers, you feel the suspense increasing as the killer strikes closer and closer to the detective. For example, in BBC Sherlock, it’s a moment when Moriarty comes after John, and Sherlock is instantly motivated to do everything he can immediately to save John. In this book, we see Nellie letting Belle do whatever she wants…until Belle marries a husband wealthier than Nellie’s. Then Belle uses that as an excuse to ask if she can raise one of Nellie’s children (since Belle is lonely and upset that she cannot have children).
❌Nellie instantly refuses. Though she won’t admit to anyone that she believes her sister is capable of extreme violence, Nellie knows in her subconscious that her child would never be safe with Belle (and Nellie is right). Belle goes on to adopt children instead. Meanwhile, Nellie grows more suspicious of Belle’s behavior, and how Belle’s husband gets so sick while Belle hardly seems to care about his suffering.
When does Nellie learn Belle’s goal (or why she’s killing others)?
📝 Nellie finally writes back to their family in Norway and asks for an outside account of what happened there that had made Belle so excited about coming to America. When Nellie learns Belle had become a target of Anders because she was a teen girl pregnant with his child (that he wanted to disappear), suddenly Nellie shows more compassion to Belle. She instantly understands how and why Belle would’ve poisoned him, and Nellie even admits that “maybe he deserved it,” to try and connect with Belle. However, Belle won’t tell the full story, refuses to admit she has problems dealing with her trauma, and insists that Nellie let it go. Nellie understands why Belle wants kids now and continues to hope that being a foster parent might help heal Belle’s trauma.
Does our hero Nellie put herself on the path of becoming the victim later?
🚧 Nellie’s flaw is that she keeps believing Belle will change and get better. As the older sister, Nellie feels responsible for preventing Belle from going too far and cleaning up Belle’s messes (Yes, Nellie is 100% an enabler). Finally, Nellie suspects something is wrong when her niece, Belle’s eldest girl Jennie, stops writing letters after she “went away to school.” Nellie writes to the school and receives a letter that Jennie never came to school at all. At this point, Belle’s last 2 husbands have “mysteriously” died already, and Nellie finally realizes Jennie probably caught Belle in one of her murder schemes. She knows Belle must’ve killed Jennie (which in this novel, is true). Nellie is FINALLY furious and goes out to the farm where Belle is living to confront her.
Does Nellie finally fight Belle?
😱Yes and no.😐 Everything in the book had been building up to this climax, so as a reader, I expected it to be a tremendous moment with huge consequences. Yes, Nellie finally admits she knows Belle is a killer. Belle never admits it, but only indirectly implies that Nellie might be right about some things. In fact, Belle only gets more and more angry at Nellie, singing around this kettle so much that I kept waiting for Belle to throw it at Nellie.
Yet what does Nellie do? She threatens to go to the cops and expose Belle, “if Belle ever does it again.”
Yes, really.
And then, Nellie just leaves. That’s it. Nellie doesn’t investigate further, doesn’t ask the neighbors to send her a letter if they see something else go down, nothing. Nellie simply seems to believe that she has scolded Belle well enough to make her stop, and that’ll be the end of it.
Let’s consider the gravity of the situation to really let that sink in for a minute, shall we?
A skull like this one, buried in Belle’s backyard, could have been HER NIECE’S BONES:
…and all Nellie says is, “Don’t you dare do it again, or I’ll tell on you.” As if they are kids and all Belle did was take an extra cookie out of the cookie jar.
Now tell me, does that sound like a realistic response to you? Does that satisfy you as a reader, waiting for someone to at least really give it their all to catch Belle⁉️
Sure, you could argue that even Ted Bundy’s long-time partner Elizabeth insisted he was innocent even while he was in prison for some time…but as far as we know, Ted never killed one of Elizabeth’s relatives, and especially not a child that Elizabeth was responsible for.
For me, this is where the book fell flat. You can change a lot of the plot to twist genre expectations, but changing the climax to make it anti-climactic does not do the story any favors.
Justice fails.
True to life, Belle does get away with all these murders. Her sister’s counsel doesn’t scare her, nor stop her from killing again, nor even inspires her to go after Nellie next! Thus, we have no big consequences.
Key point to remember while writing:
If your big conflict has no big and lasting consequences, then you can expect reader frustration and disappointment.
The novel does adhere to the facts of her farm burning down and the bodies of Belle’s children being found inside, along with what was presumably Belle’s corpse. Yet, it is likely that Belle escaped. This ending is what makes it a tragedy, and Nellie sheds tears for Belle’s demise, even though by the end when you see what Belle did to her children, you as the reader certainly won’t feel like crying for Belle.
If the novel’s goal is to make readers upset that Belle gets away with it all, then yes, it succeeds at that. Sometimes the goal of a book is simply that: to make you feel something.
My Writing-Life Update:
I am deep in the waters of structural revisions to my gothic romance (“romantasy,” actually) in 1938 Paris. Still, I’m not drowning, thankfully due to the book-coaching support of Rachel May & E.B. Golden and the Tenacious Writers community. I’m closer to finishing a book up to the standards of real, respectable-publishing-quality levels now than I’ve ever been as I work through their courses, brainstorm in workshops, and listen to their podcast (Story Magic, now on Apple Podcasts). A lot of people try to take shortcuts and rush through developmental story edits, but these are the most important ones! Stay tuned for more news on this front later as my first big book baby grows and prepares to face the world.
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