I was familiar with the early 1980s deaths in Chicago that resulted from people consuming tainted Tylenol capsules…but I truly don’t remember the (copycat?) tainted Excedrin capsules in the Seattle area in the mid 1980s. In 2002, prolific author (of both fiction and nonfiction) Gregg Olsen published  Bitter Almonds : The True Story of Mothers, Daughters, and the Seattle Cyanide Murders. And I recently received a copy of  American Mother: The True Story of a Troubled Family, Motherhood, and the Cyanide Murders That Shook the World from Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for this honest review. 

Olsen is known for his true crime and thrillers, and does a great job with both. I admit I cruised through some of American Mother, after reading about 100 pages, getting a strong sense of deja vu, then realizing I had read Bitter Almonds. I still thought there were some incredibly complicated family dynamics at work (to say the least) in the story about a woman so desperate to kill her husband (insurance $ is often a strong motivator!) that she poisoned him with cyanide and then, realizing her likelihood of being caught, she thought it would be a good idea to tamper with some more Excedrin and then scatter the bottles around Seattle suburbs. The mother-daughter relationships are fascinating, especially the contrast between the murderer/her daughter and the innocent victim/her daughter.

I had a day to waste, and I did it with this book! It will be appreciated by true crime aficionados, Gregg Olsen fans, and anyone who appreciates solid research. Four stars.