Page Updated: 04/02/2008

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Carol Anne Davis - Page 2

Women Who Kill - Profiles of Female Serial Killers Noise Abatement Safe as Houses Shrouded

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Paperback - Allison & Busby (2002)

First British Edition Allison & Busby (2001)

Women Who Kill - Profiles of Female Serial Killers
Why does a young woman lure teenagers into her car then participate in their horrific rape and torture? What makes a nurse lethally inject the healthy babies in her care? Women, statistically, aren't a violent breed ... but the female of the species can be just as deadly as the male.
From the mass poisoner to the sexual sadist, from profit killings to crimes committed just for twisted thrills, Carol Anne Davis sets out to explore the dark and disturbing world of the female serial killer. In depth analysis of individual cases, including new information from the priest who heard Myra Hindley's confession, provides an invaluable insight into the psychology behind these atrocities.
In Her Own Words..
When we hear the term serial killer we tend to think of a Ted Bundy or a Charles Manson - superficially compelling but extremely violent males. The killers I profile in this new book are also compelling and violent - but they are women. Some killed in tandem with a male or female partner whilst others killed alone.
I show the detail of their lives in chronological order so that the reader can see the loving baby changing into a withdrawn or attention-seeking child and disturbed teenager. One embryonic killer was physically and emotionally battered by both parents and also sexually abused by her father. By her teens she was running through the streets naked in a desperate bid to be noticed. By adulthood she was helping her lover to kill teenagers in order to enjoy necrophiliac sex.
Another killer was given so little food as a child that by the age of eleven or twelve she was performing sexual favours in the school playground in return for sandwiches. A third future killer had to listen to her prostitute mother having sex every night.
Sometimes the abuse is hidden and you have to search for it.
Some journalists have given the impression that Myra Hindley had a happy childhood. In reality, her father was absent for the early years of her life due to the war - and when he did return home he admitted that he didn't like her. He would hit Myra and her mother after his many drinking binges. By four Myra had been given permanently to her gran. She felt very different and unloved and longed to be special to someone - and suddenly the handsome autodidactic clerk in her office, Ian Brady, started to pay her attention. She dreamed of nurturing him and even marrying him. But her new lover's many bad experiences had left him with the desire to hurt and control. Eventually they hired a van and went out looking for child victims. The rest is history.
Whilst researching the book, I interviewed the minister who Myra Hindley confessed to, a former prison governor who knows her well. I also spoke to prison officers and social workers who spend every working day with killers and know their histories.
Many of the multicides explored in Women Who Kill are American but I also detail cases from Australia, Bavaria, Canada and France and include chapters on female serial killer typologies and on why they kill.
‘In this well, written, eminently readable reference work, crime writer and criminologist Carol Anne Davis tackles her subject in a way that avoids the extremes of tacky goriness and dry-as-dust theorising that mars most true crime books’ Time Out
A chilling read and not for the faint-hearted’ Scotland on Sunday
‘Davis writes in a way that keeps the reader’s interest while describing the detailed lives of 14 women who have been classified as serial killers ... Recommended for all true crime collections’ Library Journal
‘Society doesn’t like to believe that women are as capable of monstrous behaviour as men ... Davis’ casebook reveals that not only do women excel at murder, but there also even better at manipulation’ Bizarre
‘Davis writes with verve’ Publishers Weekly

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British Pbk Original - Do Not Press (2000)

Noise Abatement
A typical street in Edinburgh...
Stephen and Caroline Day are an active young couple until the neighbours from hell move into the flat above. Suddenly every day becomes a living nightmare and they're shocked from sleep every night.
After weeks of police inactivity, Stephen snaps and takes increasingly inventive and extreme revenge on his tormentors. But there are horrifying unforeseen consequences ...
Noise Abatement is a thriller that's impossible to put down.
In Her Own Words..
I wrote Noise Abatement after going through the hell of anti- social neighbours. I was a writer living happily in an Edinburgh tenement when several graduates moved into the flat above me with their wall to wall musical equipment. After months of work-interrupted days and sleepless nights I wanted to kill them, to literally make the noise abate by silencing the bastards for life.
I moved house in the end to escape, but kept reading of other people who had killed their raucous neighbours. So I created Stephen and Caroline in Noise Abatement, a happy professional couple until new occupants with bad attitude move in upstairs. They try to talk to the musical youths only to be greeted by indifference, then they reluctantly involve the police. But as Stephen's circumstances become intolerable, he snaps and people have increasingly severe accidents...
Noise Abatement is about the increasing social problem of living with excessive sound. It also looks at two different mindsets: those individuals who care about their destructive impact on other people and those who don't.
At first it seems fair that Stephen is wreaking revenge - and even death - on the youths that have devastated him. But his actions have horrifying consequences...
Carol Anne Davis
'Carol Anne Davis is Scotland's leading woman of suspense. Discover her now.' The Times
'Without doubt Scotland's best female writer of suspense fiction' The Times

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Paperback - Do Not Press (2003)

First British Edition Do Not Press (1999)

Safe as Houses
Women are vanishing from the streets of Edinburgh and only one man knows the answers. David is a sadist with a double life. He divides his time between the marital home - shared with devoted wife, Jennifer and young son - and his Secret House.
The Secret House is where fantasies become horribly real and where screams go unheard.
Slowly Jennifer begins to realise that all is not well... Safe as Houses is the new psychological thriller from the acclaimed author of Shrouded.
About Shrouded and Carol Anne Davis:
'A tight, imaginatively written book that I would advise anyone to read.' West Coast Magazine
'A superior character study that is moody, hypnotic and tinged with violence.' Library Journal (USA)
'A powerful and tense first novel which you'll find hard to put down.' Fife Leader
'An accomplished crime novel. Well written and, appropriately, claustrophobic.' Time Out
'It could well be the debut of the year. Davis writes with force - with a remarkable feeling of menace." - Janice Young, Yorkshire Post

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British Pbk Original - Do Not Press (1997)

Shrouded
Taut and enthralling debut novel from a gifted new writer.
Douglas likes women quiet women; the kind he deals with at the mortuary. Douglas meets Marjorie, unemployed, gaining weight and losing confidence. She talks and laughs to cover up her shyness, but Douglas needs a lover who'll stay deadly still. Driven by lust and fear, he finds a way to make women remain excitingly silent and inert, and then needs to blank out the details of their unplanned deaths. But only Marjorie can fulfil his growing sexual hunger. He studies his textbooks to find a way…
Shrouded is a powerful and accomplished debut, tautly-plotted, dangerously erotic and vibrating with tension and suspense. It deserves to propel Carol Anne Davis to the forefront of young British writers.

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