Jane Toppan and the Making of a Monster
March 30, 2020
McBrayer, a self-described “belly-dancer and horror enthusiast,” provides a wildly speculative “narrative retelling” of the story of 19th-century serial poisoner Jane Toppan (1854–1938). A nurse who confessed to killing at least 31 people starting in 1880, Toppan acquired the nickname of “Jolly Jane” for her pleasant demeanor. Without connecting the text to specific primary or secondary sources, McBrayer charts how her subject was able to get away with her crimes until she was finally arrested for murder in 1901. At her trial, Toppan argued she was sane, but the court declared her not guilty by reason of insanity, and she spent the rest of her life in an insane asylum, where she died in 1938. Contending that “facts are few,” the author, bafflingly, uses “educated guess” to “assert” trivial details, such as what clothes Toppan was wearing when she met her fiancé. McBrayer’s analysis is less than sophisticated (“The human mind is complex and unknowable, and many things can be true”). Given that this case has already been given full-book treatment in Harold Schechter’s Fatal: The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial Killer, it’s not clear who this might appeal to. True crime fans who value facts should pass on this.