Triflers Need Not Apply Review
Trigger warnings: child death, brutality, murder, domestic violence, and dismemberment.
When I saw this title in the Netgalley-verse, I was immediately intrigued, as I remembered the My Favorite Murder episode about Belle Gunness. Bruce makes an imaginative deep dive into the background and crimes of the real Belle Gunness and I really enjoyed it, despite the heavy subject matter.
Brynhild is a young woman in rural Norway, eking out an impoverished existence in the late 1800s. She gets an invitation from her married older sister in Chicago to come live with her and her husband. Before leaving, Brynhild commits her first murder. After her arrival in Chicago, she changes her name to Bella to fit in with her new surroundings and begins to socialize with the Norwegian community there. The story is told through the perspectives of Belle and her sister Nellie. You can see the progression of Belle’s thought process about what she needs for survival, as well as Nellie’s growing horror as notices that the men who know her little sister often mysteriously disappear.
The corruption arc of Belle’s struggle for survival is really sad and it is clear that in the beginning, Belle feels trapped by her situation, the patriarchy, and the men in her life and sees the removal of those men as the only means to gain freedoms for herself. As she accumulates more wealth and agency, she ramps up her killing frequency — she still sees murder as the only way to move forward, even though there are several better ways to get around obstacles. Belle’s victims and Belle’s process for getting rid of bodies are described, which are upsetting, but they do not feel overly salacious.
