It is hard to believe that this was a true story. It was narrated with the help of historical accounts on the events and have given the characters a voice. The tale I felt gave balance to the thoughts at the time where the treatment of women in that era and attitudes of men towards them meant that they were not considered capable enough to commit these crimes.
The book was well written if a bit long winded at times and provided an interesting insight to life then.

I don’t read a lot of true crime, but the title, cover and blurb of this one all intrigued me. Subtitled The True Story of the Most Astonishing Murder Ring in History, the book narrates in dramatic detail the tale of a group of serial killers in a Hungarian village who murdered over a hundred men during a fifteen year period. The killers were all women and their ringleader was a midwife known as Auntie Suzy.

The village of Nagyrév, a farming community in central Hungary, may seem an unlikely centre of crime, but actually it’s easy to understand why the events described in the book happened where and when they did. The murders took place between 1914 and 1929, a time when Hungary was in a state of political turmoil and preoccupied with war and its aftermath. The government didn’t have the money or resources to look into reports of suspicious deaths in a small rural village. Not only did Nagyrév have no police presence, but also no doctor, meaning that Auntie Suzy, with her limited medical knowledge, was the person to whom everyone turned for help with their own and their family members’ health problems. This put Suzy in a position of power, made stronger by the fact that she was the one who dictated to the clerk the causes of death to be put on the death certificates.

Auntie Suzy’s method was poisoning; she would soak sheets of flypaper in water to leave a residue of arsenic which could then be fed to the victim in small doses until they eventually became ill and died. Women came to buy bottles of Suzy’s potion for all sorts of reasons: maybe they had an abusive husband, an unwanted child they couldn’t feed or an elderly father they’d become tired of and wanted dead. Suzy herself would sometimes have reasons for wanting the murder to take place – if a wealthy woman was widowed, for example, she would then be free to marry Suzy’s own son, or perhaps a house would become vacant that Suzy could take for herself.

In The Angel Makers, Patti McCracken tells the story of Auntie Suzy and the other female poisoners of Nagyrév in a style that is as easy to read as fiction. In fact, the whole book feels much more like a novel than a work of non-fiction; I liked this as it made it easy to get to know the characters and follow what was happening, but it wasn’t what I’d expected and it may not appeal to readers who prefer their non-fiction to be more formal and academic. There’s a section of notes at the end of the book and a bibliography, but apart from occasional extracts from newspaper articles or other documents, McCracken doesn’t interrupt the flow of the story to provide any commentary of her own. She has also anglicised the names of most of the people in the book – Auntie Suzy’s real name was Zsuzsanna Fazekas.

One thing that struck me about this case was how easily the crimes could have been stopped and the culprits brought to justice, yet they were allowed to continue for many years because the authorities either didn’t have the resources to investigate or just didn’t seem interested. The poisonings were an open secret in Nagyrév and Suzy and the other women grew more and more confident over time, hardly bothering to cover up their actions. You can feel sorry for some of the women, pushed into arranged marriages at a time when divorce was not an option, but others were committing murder for cruel or petty reasons. Suzy, as the ringleader, was particularly complacent and unrepentant about the deaths she was causing and her behaviour is quite chilling to read about. However, McCracken seemed to have an obsession with Suzy’s weight; the constant descriptions of her chubby hands, fat feet and waddling walk quickly became very repetitive and unnecessary.

The Angel Makers is a fascinating story and I would probably recommend it to people who have enjoyed Kate Summerscale’s books such as The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, although the informal style won’t be to everyone’s taste. Despite some flaws I found it entertaining and informative and feel that I’ve not only gained some knowledge of a very unusual ring of criminals but also some insights into life in Hungary between the wars and the various elements that enabled crimes like these to take place.

This book is beautifully written and from the very first pages you get sucked into the story.

The author is a really clever storyteller with the ability to make facts and historical accounts come to life as if they were a novel and it almost made it more shocking every time I reminded myself that these events were real.

My main criticism is the constant descriptions of Auntie Suzy as being fat. We get it, she was a big lady but not almost every chapter needed to tell us how big she was or how she moved her chubby hands etc.

At first, I wanted to give the the author the benefit of the doubt, after all this was a woman who took whatever she wanted as payment by literally taking items from the poorest people who had next to nothing and making sure she was always well cared for on top of her wage. So in a sense I think the author wanted the reader to understand that greed was a motivation and so understanding her size added to this description. However, it was just overdone and I do not think it was needed so often.

The book was also really descriptive. I really enjoyed this side of the storytelling. The sights and especially the smells really made you feel like you were there this is something that you often don't get any understanding of in non fiction books or in historical writing on the whole. But I really felt like the history was coming off the pages reading the stink of some of the characters, the smell of the houses and the atmosphere of the village. However, I would add that at times this did slow the pace of the book down. I really wanted to get down to the nitty gritty of the interrogations but the last third of the book slowed quite considerably.


The author touches upon several important topics which really created a disasterous cocktail in this case. Firstly, the treatment of woman at the time. The beatings, rape and their treatment by some men was atrocious and add the fact that family planning was little to nothing meant that often unwanted pregnancies happened yearly. Is it little wonder that some women sought to end their suffering in the only way they could? Having said that, it also showed how women could use and manipulate the men in their lives and even at times when there was no evidence of poor treatment, these women could kill loved ones in the most awful way. In my opinion, they got away with it for so long because the men thought too little of the women to find them capable of these crimes.

It was also interesting to see some of the medical developments that were happening at this time right across Europe. We see this movement from the Victorian period and into the post-war era where many in the medical community wanted to end the traditional "wise woman midwifery" and see all midwives trained under Drs, Male doctors, who often had little to no experience in midwifery and even though women had been doing this job well for millennia.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, it was engaging and cleverly written and it kept me wanting more to the very end. Although it had it's downsides I would still recommend it to anyone who loves history and true crime with a touch of looking into social issues as well. That is of course if you can get past the fat shaming.

I want to thank the author, publishers and Netgalley for the ARC of this book. This review is my own opinion.

Imagine a group of women (crows in this book) poisoning men left, right and centre and getting away with it for so long. To be honest, in those days life expectancy/health wasn't great so I would have probably ignored it too but the fact is Midwife Suzy was a cunning and manipulative serial killer. She was so good at it, no-one knew until women started getting a bit too casual with it.

This book was easy to read, no complicated sentences but I did find it a bit long winded. A good deal could have been chopped out and still made for a good book. The author did say they had to add some fiction to make up for it but the dog and her pups should have been omitted - it was horrible!

I enjoyed it but, like I said, could have been a bit shorter.

Smalltown midwife Aunt Suzy is the spider at the centre of one of history's biggest murder rings in this fascinating historical true crime.

The Angel Makers has all the elements of a rich history and a gripping crime drama - however, sadly the story is let down by the telling. While the structure is largely chronological, McCracken confusingly drifts between perspectives and characters, and the pace varies dramatically. The prose is often bogged down with description, including constant fat-phobic comments about Aunt Suzy, which detract from an otherwise interesting characterisation of a proud, audacious murderer.

The Angel Makers captures a compelling moment in history, but its potential pathos gets lost in the weeds.

The story, whilst excellent, is too long to hold the readers attention throughout. It’s almost unbelievable that these events really happened, and I think the author deserves commendation for bringing these events back to life, and retelling them in an understandable manner. That being said, there are too many unnecessary details that drag the story out and I must admit to growing weary of it 2/3 of the way through. If the boring bits were removed, this could be a 5 star book

3.5 upped to 4
Even if I wasn't a fan of the style of writing I was fascinated by the story and the investigation. I think it was something happening also elsewhere even on a smaller scale: women married very young, they had to do everything their father or husband told them to do.
Abuse, violence, no way to control the number of children.
The portrait of an era more than a pure true crime.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

Ps; sorry I already read and reviewed it. My fault