How long does it take to read Fatal?
The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial Killer
Fatal by Harold Schechter takes about 6 hours 4 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 6 hours 4 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2003. 331 pages, about 91,025 words.
13 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 10 hours 7 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 6 hours 4 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 48 minutes |
The page count is the median across 4 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
In an era that produced some of the most vicious female sociopaths in American history, Jane Toppan would become the most notorious of them all. AN ANGEL OF MERCY In 1891, Jane Toppan, a proper New England matron, embarked on a profession as a private-duty nurse. Selfless and good-natured, she beguiled Boston's most prominent families. They had no idea what they were welcoming into their homes.... A DEVIL IN DISGUISE No one knew of Jane's past; of her mother's tragic death, of her brutal upbringing in an adoptive home, of her father's insanity, or of her own suicide attempts. No one could have guessed that during her tenure at a Massachusetts hospital the amiable "Jolly Jane" was morbidly obsessed with autopsies, or that she conducted her own after-hours experiments on patients, deriving sexual satisfaction in their slow, agonizing deaths from poison. Self-schooled in the art of murder, Jane Toppan was just beginning her career -- and she would indulge in her true calling victim by victim to become the most prolific domestic fiend of the nineteenth century.
Subjects: Serial murders, True Crime, Women serial murderers, Case studies, Biography, Serial murderers
