BEYOND BAD

Katherine Knight's story is not unlike the vengeance served up in Shakespeare's TITUS ANDRONICUS. Knight, Australia's first woman sentenced to life without parole, slaughtered her live-in lover by stabbing him 37 times. Then the abattoir worker skinned, decapitated, and cooked his remains in a stew intended for his children. As a means to foreshadow Knight's penchant for violence, Sandra Lee's account spends a great deal of time--considerably more than necessary--describing the slaughter and subsequent dressing of the animals turned out by Aberdeen's abattoir. Given the horrific nature of the material, Kate Hood narrates with the dispassionate charge of a reporter doing her job as objectively as possible. This is a book for those who prefer their true crime bloody, gruesome, and nauseating. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC 04/ JAN 05]