AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
British author Lizzie Pook is known for historical fiction, but there's another subgenre that's fascinated her for a long time, even back in college. That's when she told her university adviser that she wanted to do her dissertation on serial killers.
LIZZIE POOK: And he was absolutely appalled. You know, he was really worried for my well-being. He made me promise in writing not to contact any serial killers in prison.
RASCOE: Two decades later, Lizzie Pook is more interested in the women who never suspected their husbands were gruesome killers. Her new novel, written under the pen name Elizabeth Arnott, is a thriller set in 1960s California called "The Secret Lives of Murderers' Wives."
POOK: (Reading) Criminals' wives, victims of their husbands' indiscretions, sometimes had a certain look. Margot could see it in newspaper articles and rolling coverage on the TV, especially those wives who loyally followed their husbands to court, adamant that their Joe, Bob, Frank could never be responsible for such abominable acts. He was such a kind man, they'd parrot in interviews after trials that laid out in scrupulous, incontestable detail how their husbands had slaughtered multiple people. He never raised a fist at home. We're not simpering wives. We learned the truth. We got mad. We moved on, says Margot. Is this really moving on, Beverley asks doubtfully. I just had to relive everything in front of a room full of cops. Well, I'm drinking cocktails at 2:30 in the afternoon. I've moved on, Margot replies. I made melon balls, Elsie shrugs weakly.
RASCOE: The three characters in the book - they found each other after their husbands' crimes were uncovered. And they kind of have this friendship, but it's also like a support group. Can you tell us first about Margot and Elsie?
POOK: Yeah. So these women are part of a club that nobody wants to be part of. Elsie - she's trying to work her way up in a newsroom. She's never really listened to, but she's very tenacious. She has reacted to her husband's crimes with action, momentum. You know, she's seeking out facts at every opportunity. So she sort of arms herself with knowledge so that it won't happen to her again.
And then you have Margot. She loves the Hollywood studio party. She loves dressing up and drinking and sort of putting on a show and a facade, and she wants to be seen as to not care about what happened to her. But really deep down, she is very fragile, very vulnerable and damaged by what has happened.
RASCOE: And tell us about Beverley because she seems completely shaken to her core. She's the only one of them that's a mother. How is she coping?
POOK: Beverley - or Bev - is the one character who is really struggling with the duality of the man that she lived with and loved. She finds it very difficult to see the father of her children as a monster. She knows what he has done is terrible. And she has a son, and she's terrified that her son might have inherited the same rotten core as her husband.
RASCOE: As the women are moving forward with their lives, they become aware of a series of suspicious deaths of several women in the town, and their - you know, the Spidey-senses (ph) start tingling. Like, they realize something is going on. But they seem more determined to investigate these crimes than the police. Why is that?
POOK: Well, I do think they want to stop it happening to other women, and they want to atone. The FBI's Behavioral Science Unit was set up in the early 1970s. I thought, you know, wouldn't it be funny, a little joke to women, a little joke to myself, to have, you know, three housewives sort of beating them at their game and scooping the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit and starting to profile these sorts of men because they've lived through it? They, in hindsight, can see the signs.
But also, mid-1960s was a time where in some states, women weren't allowed to serve on juries because it was thought that they were too fragile, too sensitive and too compassionate to be objective. And law enforcement would've probably held those same views, you know, that they were too fragile and compassionate to be able to solve these crimes. But I sort of wanted to give them a chance to (laughter) - to get one over on them.
RASCOE: Well, you know, and I - I'm not going to give anything away 'cause it is very twisty as they try to stop this killer. But, you know, something that comes up is that as women, you don't really know where the danger is going to come from. I mean, it could be from a stranger, but often it is from a loved one, and you also have to kind of always be vigilant, and that's a hard way to live. But do you think that's why so many women are into true crime?
POOK: Yes. I think you're absolutely right there. I think part of our fascination with true crime as women - and it is a genre that many women are drawn to. Part of that is about knowing the beast, getting all the information that we can about something that poses a risk to us because we are so used to having to plan every step of our lives with a sort of risk assessment. I think we are comforted by true-crime stories. There's very often a female victim at the beginning, and then there's an investigation, and then there is closure and justice. And so I do think we find comfort in that.
RASCOE: And all three of these women are dealing with shame, with guilt for the actions of their husbands, which - I mean, they weren't a part of it, but they are kind of carrying it, right? What did you want to examine about that shame that can often come on women because of the actions of the men in their lives?
POOK: Well, I do think it's very interesting that the one question that we often think of - and I say this because I thought it too - how can they not have known? And when I started writing this book, I actually do think that I held a small amount of judgment. You know, I thought, they didn't know, but I would definitely know. If I was in that situation, I'm sure I'd know. I sure - I'm sure there would be something that would give it away. But actually, if you do look at the stories of real women who have been through this, they didn't know. You know, it - they couldn't have known because forensic psychologists or experts who deal with serial killers, they will tell you that most often, serial killers are so skilled at manipulation, so skilled at control, it is almost impossible to know what they're hiding.
RASCOE: And so you want people to come away from reading this novel to have more sympathy and compassion, not just for serial killers' wives, but just to have compassion for women in general who may be caught up in these sorts of situations.
POOK: Absolutely. And I think it's also possibly acknowledging that the very same thing could happen to us. There were serial killers' wives who were attorneys. You know, I've spoken to women whose husbands had affairs, and they were so, so, so shocked that they couldn't see what was going on, that there was no clue. They always thought that they would have an inkling. But anyone is vulnerable to being controlled, to being manipulated, no matter your background or intelligence level. You know, that is just part of being a human. So, yes, compassion, yes, empathy, and, yes, the sort of understanding that this can really happen to anyone.
RASCOE: That's Elizabeth Arnott. Her new novel is "The Secret Lives of Murderers' Wives." Thanks so much for talking with us today.
POOK: Thank you so much.
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