Camilla Bruce

This book was a revelation. Being an avid true crime fanatic, I came across this novel whilst working in my local library. I'd read a previous book which had a passing mention of this particular murderess, but this work provides the full, gory details.

The story is constructed from true facts about a murderess active in the 18-1900's called Brynhild Paulsdatter Storset, a Norwegian woman who ends up in the USA and changes her name to Bella Sorenson. The plot unravels rather slowly at first with a lot of detail about Bella's young childhood in Norway and it is only a third of the way through (or less) that you realise the significance of her early experiences. The latter are what makes her do what she does and towards the end of the novel, you understand her motives even if you can't understand her as a human being.

The writing is quite dense and hard to follow at first, but it is a slow build to extraordinary, detailed descriptions of each bloody murder and the consequences on Bella, her family, the victims' family and society in general. Underlying it all is a covert criticism of the authorities and the poor state of criminal investigation at the time which ultimately works in the perpetrator's favour.

The author, Camilla Bruce, cleverly interjects Bella's sister, Nellie, into the story by giving her a voice on everything that happens, thereby providing the reader with a respite from seeing the shocking events unfold from Bella's viewpoint only. What happens at the end will not only alarm and distress the reader but puts a question mark over the adage that crime does not pay.

This is one of the best true crime stories I've read, and it’s left me wondering what more there was to say about this relatively unknown murderess. Soon afterwards I devoured all the information I could find on Bella Sorenson.
Give it a read.... I dare you!!… (meer)

My third foray into Camilla Bruce’s works proved to be quite different from the previous experiences, which were novels based on historical figures of serial killers on which the author had construed a partly imagined story. You Let Me In is quite different instead, being based on totally fictional characters, and in particular that of Cassie Tipp, a successful novelist with an obscure past: the book starts a year after her mysterious disappearance, as her niece Penelope and nephew Janus visit their aunt’s home with the instruction to read her last manuscript, at the end of which they will find the key to retrieve Cassie’s considerable inheritance.

The manuscript is addressed directly to Penelope and Janus and tells Cassie’s life-story, or at least the woman’s version of it, since it becomes apparent after a while that she might be an unreliable narrator: always something of an outsider in her own family, Cassandra grew up isolated from her judgmental mother and picture perfect younger sister, from an indifferent father and absentee brother; her only constant companion was Pepper Man, a creature only she could see and who created a predatory relationship with her, drinking Cassie’s blood like a vampire.

Later on, as the relationship between Cassie and Pepper Man moves toward sexual intimacy, he introduces her to his faerie domain, peopled by weird and terrifying creatures in whose company Cassie feels more at ease than with true human beings. Even her courtship and marriage with a local boy is tampered with by the intrusion of these otherworldly beings, to the point that his gruesome death lays heavy shadows on Cassie who is suspected of his murder. And that’s not the only dubious occurrence, because a few years later Cassie’s father and brother die in what looks like a murder-suicide, but also presents some bizarre details that once again shine some unwelcome light on her person.

All of the above, of course, comes from Cassie’s perspective, because readers are also made aware of a psychiatrist’s evaluation which labels her outlandish stories as a way to cope with domestic abuse, processing this trauma through the lens of the fantasies that to Cassie have become a world within the real one - a version that Cassie constantly repudiates as a flight of fancy on the doctor’s part. And here stands the true mystery of this story, because both versions could be true, and both versions speak of a life-long ordeal in which the victim, Cassie, has found a way to structure her suffering into a creation where, in the end, she accepts everything as “normal” and even finds a modicum of happiness, twisted as it might be: the sections where she speaks of her relationship with Pepper Man as a loving one, where she says that he does indeed love her, are among the more chillingly disturbing of the whole book.

That Cassie is a victim, and has been for most of her life, is without doubt, because no matter what version of the story you believe - that of the blood-sucking Pepper Man and his cadre of supernatural beings, or that of the dysfunctional family in which she was always an outsider and the victim of abuse, physical and verbal - it could be argued that she shows definite symptoms of Stockholm’s Syndrome and of a coping mechanism that makes her accept the horrors of such a life as something “normal”, and in some instance even acceptable. The distinction between what’s real and what’s imagined is made even more difficult, if not impossible, by a total lack of an outside point of view: every detail, every occurrence is always mediated through Cassie’s perspective, even Dr. Martin’s evaluation, so that the readers find themselves in the impossibility to verify the facts as presented.

No matter what side of the story one might believe in, Cassie’s journey remains a fascinatingly compelling one: Camilla Bruce has a way of drawing her readers in and keep them grimly fascinated as they try to perceive the truth of the situation which must lie between the line, but remains elusive throughout the whole length of the book. Even the end manages to keep the mystery alive because the final surprise that Cassie springs on her heirs is one that leaves the door open to interpretation, shrouding it in one of those faerie arrangements that showcase the cruelly duplicitous nature of those creatures - provided that they exist, of course…

It was a final twist I did not expect and that left me both shocked and admiring of the subtle tapestry that the author has woven with this story, one that I find difficult to forget.… (meer)

When hearing the term “serial killer” our minds usually conjure the image of a man whose cruel and perverted nature pushes him toward such heinous acts, since both recent and past history have presented us with many such examples. But women can be serial killers as well, even though the phenomenon is rare: the case of Bella Gunness is one such example and it’s no less horrifying than those of better-known serial murderers with whom we are more acquainted. Author Camilla Bruce once again explores a real-time personality to which she adds some narrative extrapolation, creating a riveting - if appalling - tale of descent into madness.

Brynhild is a young Norwegian woman working as a scullery maid for a wealthy farmer, whose son has attracted her attention and fueled her dreams of a better life. Pregnant with the man’s child, she confronts him only to be viciously beaten within an inch of her life, which also causes a miscarriage. Embittered and full of repressed anger, not assuaged even by the murderous vengeance she is able to visit on her attacker, Brynhild sails to America, where her older sister Nellie has been living for a while with her husband: changing her name to “Bella”, Brynhild sets out to fulfill her dreams of wealth, but with a shocking twist, since she has tasted the flavor of murder, and discovered that it gives her pleasure just as much as material comforts do.

Her first husband meets an untimely death that allows her to commit both murder and insurance fraud at the same time, all too easily evading any suspicion raised by the unclear circumstances of the event, so that she feels emboldened by this first “success” and moves on toward further liaisons and killings whose only goal is to insure financial security. But it’s not only money that drives Bella toward murder, because once she moves to an isolated farm she discovers that the act of murdering her hapless victims is a reward in itself - her life’s experiences having spawned a hatred of men and a depraved enjoyment in their destruction. At the same time, however, Bella progressively loses contact with the reality of things and her madness does not spare even the children she professes to love, accelerating a descent into Hell that will force her to choose a tragic path…

I have tried to keep the details of this story to a minimum because Bella’s story is both fascinating and repulsive, even more so when considering that she is not a fabricated character but a real-life individual: Ms. Bruce takes us deep into her mind and leads us, step by step, along the journey that transforms a young, hopeful woman who simply wanted to escape a dreary life into a disturbed killing machine devoid of any feelings. At first it’s easy to empathize with her, particularly when witnessing her home life, bracketed between a distant, harsh mother and a drinking, abusive father; the brutal assault at the hands of her lover enhances that sympathy, because you see Brynhild’s inner strength and will to survive - and the way she exacts her revenge on the man does have a slight flavor of… rightness, for want of a better word.

But once she reaches America, everything changes and you see how she takes advantage of everyone - including her doting sister Nellie - to further her own goals. It’s interesting to note that the story is told from two different points of view: that of Bella, where we are made privy to her inner musings and to her psychological motivations; and that of Nellie, who observes those transformations from outside and is torn between the love for her younger sister and the dread for what she suspects Bella might truly be.

What impressed me, in Camilla Bruce’s story, is the depiction of Bella as a sociopath: all the elements of this personality disorder are there - self-centeredness, no sense of guilt or remorse, a controlling, violent nature that often shows lack of planning, and so forth. She can fake (even to herself) a deep love toward her children, but ultimately they are simply props for the world to see, the outward sign of Bella’s “goodness”: when necessity arises, she has no qualms in using them to fulfill her goals, or even worse… What makes Bella the horrifying person she is are not so much the murders she is guilty of, but rather the cold, calculating way in which she performs them - even the so-called pleasure she derives from annihilating these men is observed in a detached manner that is beyond chilling.

And here lies, at least for me, the basic fault of the story that prevented me from giving it a higher rating: following Bella’s long “career” in murder becomes somewhat repetitive, to the point that I felt both repulsed and numb and at some point I was ready to put down the book because I could not take anymore of that bloody account of entrapments and killings. I endured only because I wanted to discover if she was apprehended or not, but - as it happened with the other Camilla Bruce book I read - her destiny remains a mystery and we readers are left to wonder if the Black Widow of Laporte did indeed die in the fire that burned her farm to the ground or if she really used that as a smokescreen to disappear forever. Even history gives no certainty about it.

So, I’m glad to have learned something about a real-life person I knew nothing about, but at the same time I’m even happier to be done with her…… (meer)