The Typewriter and the Guillotine: An American Journalist, a German Serial Killer, and Paris on the Eve of WWII

by Mark Braude

As thrilling as Agent Josephine and A Woman of No Importance, the propulsive untold story of a trailblazing female New Yorker reporter in France on the eve of WWII who begins sounding the alarm as a German serial killer stalks the Parisian streets, from award-winning author Mark Braude.

In 1922, Janet Flanner arrived in Paris with dreams of writing about “Beauty with a capital B” for The New Yorker. Then a niche publication, her employer was self-consciously apolitical, seeking only breezy reports on French art and culture. As signs of frightening extremism, economic turmoil, and widespread discontent became apparent, Flanner ignored her editor’s directives, reinventing herself, her assignment, and The New Yorker in the process.

Working tirelessly to alert American readers to the dangers of German’s chancellor and the worrying developments across the Atlantic, Flanner soon became enmeshed in the disturbing criminal case of a man who embodied all of the darkness she was being forced to confront. The child of two proud Nazis, Eugen Weidmann’s crimes were explicitly political and for Flanner, who covered Weidmann’s crimes, capture, and trial, the case served as a guiding metaphor through which to understand the tumultuous years through which she’d just passed and to prepare herself for the dangers to come.
 
Set against the epic backdrop of pre-WWII Europe, THE TYPEWRITER AND THE GUILLOTINE tracks how Weidmann’s case and the political turmoil of the period transformed Flanner from naïve writer to the hard-hitting journalist who exposed Americans to the warning signs of WWII.
 

Genres: Nonfiction, History, True Crime, Crime, France, Audiobook, Biography

432 pages, Hardcover

First published January 20, 2026

About the author

MARK BRAUDE is a cultural historian and the author of KIKI MAN RAY: ART, LOVE, AND RIVALRY IN 1920S PARIS (W.W. Norton, Summer 2022), THE INVISIBLE EMPEROR: NAPOLEON ON ELBA FROM EXILE TO ESCAPE (Penguin Press, 2018), and MAKING MONTE CARLO: A HISTORY OF SPECULATION AND SPECTACLE (Simon & Schuster, 2016). His books have been translated into several languages.

Mark was a 2020 visiting fellow at the American Library in Paris and was named a 2017 NEH Public Scholar. He is the recipient of grants from the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, the de Groot Foundation, and others. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA) and a lecturer in Stanford’s departments of Art History, French, and History.

Mark was born in Vancouver and went to college at the University of British Columbia. He received an MA from NYU’s Institute of French Studies and a PhD in History and Visual Studies from USC. He has written for The Globe and Mail, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and others. He lives in Vancouver with his wife and their two daughters.

Reviews

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to admit that I was not sure that I wanted to read The Typewriter and the Guillotine, a non-fiction book which tells stories of two people in Paris at the outbreak of WWII, Janet Flanner (the “Typewriter”), an American who wrote letters about the French for The New Yorker magazine, and Eugen Weidmann (the “Guillotine”), a German serial killer. I loved the cover and the description of the book but was not drawn in by the title. The deciding factor to invest the time to read it for me was my love of Erik Larson’s “The Devil in the White City”, a book which also blended two separate stories which shared a time and place.

I enjoyed this book but not to the extent to which I had hoped. While I did enjoy reading about both main characters, I found Weidmann’s part of the story more interesting than Flanner’s. The fact that significantly more of the book is devoted to Flanner only left me disappointed that the mix was not more 50/50. Also, as their two stories were only slightly connected, I wondered if I might have enjoyed two standalone books more than this combined one.

One thing I enjoyed was getting to learn about life in Paris just before the start of the war, when Flanner found herself writing about politics more and arts and culture less. The author does a good job of describing what she went through and the danger in which she might have found herself.

I do believe the book was well-researched. I’d recommend it for people interested in learning about the WWII time frame and how the rise of Hitler was witnessed by people of neighboring countries. I’m concerned that people interested in true crime stories might find themselves wishing that there was more discussion of Weidmann.

Thanks to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for providing me the opportunity to read The Typewriter and the Guillotine. The above opinions are my own.

[E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting non-fiction about an American journalist in Paris documenting Paris, London and Germany pre WWII and the story of a serial killer. It reads a bit like Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. The early parts of the book focus on the gay, fun Parisian life and slowly get darker as war approaches. The author clearly did a huge amount of research and captured the sentiment of people living in Europe at the time through the journalist’s true reporting in The New Yorker. Juxtaposing the serial killer story seemed a bit forced. The killer was German and because of the politics at the time, ties were made to the conflicts of fascism, communism and democracy. It seemed a bit odd to me to keep switching from one story to the next, leaving both a bit under-served. Some parts of the book moved swiftly while others dragged. Because the journalist left Paris before the war started in earnest and returned after liberation it felt like a huge gap. The author took on a bit much I felt. Is it a biography of the journalist and her journey as a writer, a reporting of prewar Europe in terms of culture and politics, or a story of murder and crime. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it felt forced. So I give this 3.5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

[Janine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this ARC from NetGalley and the publisher, Grand Central Publishing, for an honest review. This book is filled lots of post WWI and pre-WWII history surrounding an untold story a “trailblazing” New Yorker writer, Janet Flannery, who sounded the warning of the rise of Hitler and fascism. She lived in Paris during the heady times of the mid-1920s hobnobbing with the likes of Ernest Hemingway and the Murphys of F. Scott Fitzgerald fame and chronicling the devastating effects of WWI. Leaping into the 1930s, through German contacts she was able to experience the Nuremberg rally and the 1936 Olympics. It was her three piece New Yorker expose of her times in Germany that alerted America to a creeping danger. It was during this time that she also became gripped by a disturbing series of crimes by a German national who became the last man to be publicly executed by guillotine (that execution was in 1977 until capital punishment was ended in 1981). She covered the trial and execution. This was fascinating book. My only criticism is that I think rather than separating the two stories (Flannery and the killer), it might have just been better to intertwine the murder coverage as part of what is really a biography of Janet Flannery. Learned a lot and would recommend.

[Katie B · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars

Review to come.

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 ⭐️

The Typewriter and the Guillotine tells the story of two people in France and Germany during the 1930s to 1940s. Janet Flanner, a reporter for the NewYorker, living in Paris and Eugen Weidmann, a German man.

While I found the book interesting, I enjoyed the parts about Weidmann more than the ones about Flanner. The parts about Weidmann seemed, to me, more interesting than the parts about Flanner. Flanner's parts of the book seemed to drag in a lot of places. I could tell that Braude did a lot of research for the book.
Overall, the book was interesting, but it lacked something.

Tentative Publication: January 20, 2026

Thanks to Netgalley, General Central Publication, and Mark Braude for the E-ARC of the book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

#Netgalley #GrandCentralPublishing #MarkBraude #TheTypewriterandtheGuillotine

[TJ Macaluso · Rating 4 out of 5]

99 books. 1 to go. What do I choose?

[Paul Wagenbreth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compelling enough just at the straight narrative level, the two separate but not unrelated story lines of Mark Braude’s “The Typewriter and the Guillotine,” be it the smaller scale account of the series of murders that would make for a date with the blade for the clearly psychopathic Eugen Weidmann (as if he were “receiving guests at a party,” he’s described as when he leads authorities to victims’ bodies) or the larger-scale depiction of Germany’s embrace of Nazism, the full exuberance of which the book’s protagonist, Indianapolis-born journalist Janet Flanner, would get a taste of at a 1935 Nazi rally which drew hundreds of thousands to the “fairy-tale” town of Nuremberg, which would also be the location, partly because of the symbolic import of its having hosted the annual Nazi rallies, for the postwar trial of the Reich perpetrators.
Compelling enough, as I say, strictly as narrative history, the twin stories of Braude’s book which will no doubt have most readers quick to turn pages, though just as compelling for me as a journalist, if not for lay readers, was a running question posed in the book, a question given relevance in our own time with the situation in Minneapolis, where citizens are being asked, Gestapo-like, for their papers and resistance is being met with violence or even death, of whether sometimes events are of such moment or direness as to call for or even demand that journalists abandon their time-honored stance of impartiality, even at the risk of possibly giving more importance to an event than it deserves or, conversely, not enough attention to an event that truly deserves it.
The precise complaint, indeed, the latter, that was made against Flanner, whose early dispatches from Europe, where she’d been dispatched to report on matters of interest there, was criticized for not being sufficiently regardful of the Nazi threat at a time when a call for “announcing ideological affinities, unabashedly and unwaveringly," was being sounded by many intellectuals of the day, among them shipping heiress and writer Nancy Cunard, who was also a friend of Flanner’s and who publicly declared that the time had come for writers all over the world to take sides because ironic detachment would no longer do.
Something of a rift, indeed, Flanner’s reluctance to take a stand, made between the two women, though she did make a small step toward partisanship when in a piece she did on Spanish bullfighting she touched on how external events were impinging on the sport: “Because men are tragically fighting men in Spain, the best of Spanish bullfighting is being done in summer in southern France.”
Overall, though, she clung for a good while to her “politically reticent position," even becoming distressed that she might have made her support for the Republicans too obvious in writing about the “sad story” that she and Cunard witnessed in Perpignan, France, a holding area for Spanish Republican refugees fleeing Franco’s forces, where, with smoke hanging “like a flat, low second sky” and people “burning whatever they could to keep warm,” she “couldn’t think of anything in modern history with which it could be compared.”
To be fair, though, it had been Flanner’s specific charge from her employer, The New Yorker, for whom she felt a special fondness for how “nowhere else could she find ‘its particular mixture of lunacy and leniency’,” that she steer clear of war reporting and focus on art and culture at a time when, as Virginia Woolf noted, the Edward-Wallis Simpson marriage, about which Flanner dutifully penned a paragraph or two, elbowed out “Spain, Germany, Russia” and stretched “from one end of the paper to another.”
Too, Flanner was just plain uncomfortable writing about war, a not unwarranted concern, with Hemingway saying of her bullfighting piece, with its slight essay into the fighting in Spain, that “if a journalistic prize is ever given for the worst sports writer in the western world, I’m going to see you get it, pal, for you deserve it. You’re perfectly terrible.”
Still, it was from Hemingway, with whom she shared a particular affinity with both their fathers having committed suicide, that she got some of what she considered the finest advice she’d ever gotten about writing, including, in an instruction he liked to quote from Emily Dickinson, to “tell all the truth but tell it slant,” an instruction that Flanner put her own spin on in her journalism when she sought out the “seemingly superficial but ultimately illuminating particulars that other reporters ignored when covering the same story.”
It was, indeed, that special touch of hers, that particular manner of expression, that eventually got her editors at The New Yorker to relent on their shyness from her doing any war reporting and press her to deliver accounts of the European political situation in the way that only she could.
About Hitler, for instance, with whom she labored to get an interview and of whom she was one of the first to give Americans a first impression, her piece began with a joke of sorts: “It was odd … that a man who didn’t drink, smoke, eat meat, or, apparently, sleep with women, should be dictator of a nation devoted to splendid sausages, cigars, beer, and babies.” And while she judged his mind “limited” and his face inappropriate to fame, “with deft sleight of hand, through a great accumulation of anecdote and trivia, she went on to achieve her goal … to present Hitler, a man with foibles like any other, as the embodiment of the new and terrifying realities imposed by the Nazi party.”
And it was that same distinctive slant of hers that she brought to bear on the Weidmann business, about which she went for a wider aperture when she found in one of the victims the American “weakness” for “sociability with strangers” and in Weidmann attributes emblematic of the German character – something, indeed, that made for the cornerstone of the defense mounted by Weidmann's counsel, when in his summation he said that “Weidmann’s ‘milieu,’ the environment in which he was raised, had exacerbated his existing hereditary disposition for evil.”
“Germany,” he argued, overtly making a connection between Weidemann and the nation itself, “was ‘monstrous’, and monsters beget more monsters. …The blood in his veins … and the climate of his days collaborated to produce the work that is Weidmann. His body held in it the rage of an entire nation.”
To no avail, though, his oratory, magnificent enough that it drew him a burst of applause when he finished, with how it was after only three weeks, and it makes for no spoiler to report this with how it’s evident in the book’s first chapter, that the jury returned a guilty verdict – Weidemann, along with his chief confederate, would be guillotined, a messy affair when it was carried out, with his head having to be repositioned twice and a few of the women spectators dipping the hems of their dresses in his blood, believing in a centuries-old myth that a condemned man’s blood increased fertility.
Gruesome, to be sure, the details of his demise, as were some of the details that came out of the Nuremberg trial testimony which Flanner didn't flinch from reporting – a German police dog, for instance, eating a living man or a starved pig eating a man, wife and child while bystanding Germans pointed and laughed, or German soldiers sticking signs next to decapitated heads, including a child’s, reading, “Spring Fruit!”
Gripping stuff, for all the horribleness.
Not so gripping, to my mind, the police-procedural details of Weidmann’s capture, which frankly I found somewhat tedious and hard to follow, what with the multitude of actors, both authorities and offenders. And I’m not sure that the extensive focus on Flanner’s personal life, including her sexual orientation, added much overall to Braude’s book.
Still, quite the enthralling read, his account of times and events not without parallels to our own time in America, where Trump’s stated sentiment of not wanting Somalis, or, for that matter, most immigrants, in this country (not to mention his deploying an ICE armada against them) isn’t all that removed from the “Jews Not Welcome” signs that Flanner saw at the entrances to towns.

[Carole Barker · Rating 4 out of 5]

A journalist sees a killer as a metaphor for coming war

Janet Flanner, one of many Americans who travelled to Europe in search of a richer and more cultured life, arrived in Paris in the 1920's with her lover Solita Solano. She wanted to be A Writer and was enthralled with her life as an expat, although she would come to make her name in a different way than she had originally envisioned. She did publish a novel but she was not another Ernest Hemingway nor a Gertrude Stein (although she socialized in the same circles and knew them both); she was offered the job of writing a column on life in France for a new magazine, The New Yorker, which she accepted as much for its promise of steady pay as anything else. Her tone was to be light and ironic, and the subject matter mostly gossip and fashion at the start. But as the 20's became the 30's and political upheavals in Germany, Russia and Spain took center stage Flanner would find it difficult to not include (at least indirectly) what she was seeing as the politics of communists, fascists and Nazis loomed menacingly over the horizon. During these same years, German born Eugen Weidmann was also living in France and pursuing his own career path....as a serial killer. He was a troubled child, sent away from home when his actions reflected badly on his family, did time in prison and emerged determined to emulate the Chicago mobsters about whom he had read. He decided that kidnapping wealthy tourists would be a great way to make money but quickly found that murder was his preferred métier. He was caught, tried and publicly executed in June of 1939 just before World War II exploded across Europe. Flanner would report on the sensational crimes and trial for the New Yorker, seeing it as a vehicle through which she could show her readers the coming danger from Germany and the turmoil in which France and much of Europe found itself.
There are two stories being told in this work of non-fiction, the biography of a woman writer for what would become an influential magazine and that of a good looking but sociopathic young man who took numerous lives before being caught. I found both stories to be interesting but was puzzled as to why the author tried to combine their stories between one cover. Yes, they take place during the same period of time and in the same place, and yes Janet Flanner did write about Weidmann in her column, but the crossing of their paths was rather brief. Author Mark Braude clearly did a tremendous amount of research into both people and brought to life an interesting time in French history, but ultimately I wished that he had picked one or the other and wrote the whole book about that single person. Flanner was a successful magazine columnist working for a storied magazine nearly from its conception; she left behind her Midwestern upbringing and her mother and sister in order to pursue her passion for writing as well as her love for other women. She travelled to Germany as Hitler rose to power, observed his impact on the German people and noted his talent for spectacle. In short, there was plenty of material for a full biography just on her. Do the same people who would find her story interesting also find true crime as compelling? I'm not sure that is the case, and other reviews I have read seem to express a strong preference for one over the other. That said, there is enough interesting material here that I found it a worthwhile read (although it did drag on a bit in sections), a 3.5 ⭐️ rounded up to 4, and I think it appeal to readers of Erik Larson, Simon Winchester and Sonia Purnell. My thanks to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for allowing me access to the book in exchange for my honest review.

[Maine Colonial · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read a free advance digital review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

American Janet Flanner went to Paris in the 1920s and spent the interwar years writing the famed Letter From Paris column in the New Yorker (among other things), and was a part of Paris’s famed literary set. Though she definitely didn’t disclose this to the folks back home, she lived with another woman and had a long-term affair with a third woman. She hoped for fame as a novelist, but her efforts in that direction weren’t positive. Instead, her Letters and profiles of European figures, like an early three-part profile on Hitler, made her name in the US and Europe. Though she’d intended to focus on the arts, her work increasingly was taken up with the political; not surprising considering the ferment of the time. She also returned to Europe after the war and continued her New Yorker column for many years.

While focusing on politics and the arts, Flanner became as intrigued as most French people with a serial killer operating in and around Paris. That serial killer, we learn in other chapters of this non-fiction story, was a young German war veteran and small-time criminal named Eugen Weidmann. The Weidmann chapters trace his story from the end of his World War I service through his crimes, his trial, and his execution.

The choice to meld a historical biography with a true-crime story will remind many readers of The Devil In the White City. Though this should be equally interesting, it doesn’t reach that level. While the true-crime story is compelling, it doesn’t become much of a factor in the book until almost halfway through, and overall it takes up such a relatively small part of the book that it seems incongruous. While Flanner wrote about the case several times, there are only brief references to that, making any connection between Flanner’s story and Weidmann’s feel tenuous at best.

Janet Flanner’s story should be fascinating, but her chapters drag at times. I’m not entirely sure why, but I think it’s that Braude is at too much pains to display all of the research he did about her and her experiences, and the result is a bit bloated and flat; the times and places don’t come alive. It’s still an interesting story, but at times a bit of an effort to get through.

2.5 stars, rounded to 3.

[Richard Jaffe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for this advance ARC in return for an honest review.

The Typewriter and the Guillotine juxtaposes Janet Flanner, an American Lesbian writing "Letters from Paris" for the New Yorker Magazine, with the plight of a German serial killer, Eugen Weidmann, who was the last person to be publicly executed in France by guillotine. Written in the style of The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, somehow author Mark Braude manages to make the descriptions of Flanner's Paris ( and later Europe as WWII approaches ) even more boring than Larson's descriptions of the in-fighting between the Architects of the Chicago World's Fair.

What intrigued me the most about this book was the portions given over to the reign of terror of Weidman, of whom I had no knowledge before this under taking. As interesting as these passages were, they were very short compared with the long chapters describing Flanner's various paramours and letters with her Editors. By the time Braude gets to the precipice of WWII Flanner's exploits wear thin as the writing style lets the reader down.

When reading the blurb, I had been hoping this would delve more into the romantic Paris of ex pats like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, Picasso, and Man Ray. Instead we are treated to the group led by Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas. The story bogs down as Flanner apparently has several female lovers over this time period, bouncing from one to another, and rather than focusing on the turmoil of Europe in the face of Hitler and the Nazi onslaught, we are focusing on which woman she is going to choose over the other.

I would have liked to know more about Weidmann and his effect on the French sensibility and even more about how the Nazi's tried to find as much information about the executed German after they occupied Paris. This would have been far more interesting than will Flanner choose Natalia Murray, Solita Solano or Noël Haskins Murphy to spend her life with. She was obviously a talented writer, contemporary of Hemingway, and a witness to history, but I would have liked to hear more about the latter than her romantic dalliances.

It pains me to give this 3 stars, but I am constrained from giving it 2 1/2 stars which it deserves.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fledgling writer Janet Flanner headed off to Paris to escape her mundane middle class life. She succeeded a bit more wildly than she imagined. When she arrived in 1925, Europe was still recovering from WWI and an unstable Germany already threatened the shaky peace. This is a fascinating, and quite frankly terrifying, journey to go on with Flanner considering it mirrors our current political climate.

As a history fan, I adored that this book covered an in-between time. We have a plethora of WWII books and a good amount of WWI, but the time in the middle is mostly ignored. This portion of Flanner's life was both pivotal to her development as a writer and correspondent and to the transition of Europe from one war to another.

There were some interesting facts I think could have been explored a bit deeper. For instance, Janet is a nice common name. Her mother's name is Mary. Her sister's name is Hildegarde. Talk about a break in pattern. What is that about? Everything that was discussed was more service level with Flanner when I really wanted a deeper dive.

At first I enjoyed the back and forth between Flanner chapters and Eugen Weidmann, the murderer featured in the subtitle, chapters. I expected some sort of intersection where the two met and the story really found its purpose. But that never happened. Flanner did report on the murder trial, but only briefly as her focus was elsewhere. I'm not sure why the author chose to combine these two disparate storylines when they would have been more successful as two separate books.

Overall, I quite enjoyed this glimpse into a woman's life from a century ago as she struggled with a changing world. As she watched war approaching yet again, she said multiple times in her many letters home, "I don't understand men." So relatable. Some things never change.

[Fay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you Grand Central Publishing and Hachette Audio for my #gifted copies of The Typewriter and the Guillotine! #GrandCentralPublishing #GrandCentralPub #hachetteaudio

𝐓𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐲𝐩𝐞𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐞: 𝐀𝐧 𝐀𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐉𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭, 𝐚 𝐆𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐊𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐯𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐖𝐖𝐈𝐈
𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫: 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐮𝐝𝐞
𝐍𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫: 𝐊𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧 𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐬
𝐏𝐮𝐛 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐞: 𝐉𝐚𝐧𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝟐𝟎, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔 - 𝐎𝐮𝐭 𝐍𝐨𝐰!

The Typewriter and the Guillotine is a nonfiction book about Janet Flanner, a journalist who goes to Paris in 1922 to write for a magazine called The New Yorker. Tasked with writing about French art and culture, she tries to keep her “Letter from Paris” non-political, but as time goes on, that becomes more difficult with what is happening in Germany. Soon, Flanner becomes intrigued with a serial killer and the criminal case of Eugen Weidmann. This book is written in chapters that focus on Flanner and then focus on Weidmann and I liked the format. While I found both to be well-written and researched, I did gravitate more towards the Weidmann chapters.

While I have not read it, I have seen this one compared to Devil in the While City by Erik Lawson. I think non-fiction fans will enjoy this one and the unique blend of history and true crime.

🎧Narrated by Karen Cass, I thought the audiobook flowed well and I appreciated how she was able to elevate my listening experience. She was the perfect voice for this book and I think non-fiction lovers will enjoy this one on audio with Cass as the narrator.

[Abigail Singrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating, in-depth look at how one Paris correspondent covered the rise of Hitler.

This book gives the reader an inside look at the birth of the New Yorker magazine, how columnists wrote and developed their style and how Paris went from the Roaring 20's to a world war. Janet Flanner, not a literary name I knew, though she's friends with Hemingway, who also makes appearances in the book, begins writing "Letters from Paris." At first, she covers art, style, and popular gossip, but as Adolf Hitler's shadow begins to loom over Europe, the tone of her letters change as well.

The book has dual points of view: serial killer Eugen Weidmann, a German con-man who ends up guillotined in a Paris on the brink of war, and Flanner, as she builds a life and falls in love with multiple women.

As a sometimes journalist myself, I found this to be an illuminating look at these years in the industry. I also enjoyed Flanner's tracing the serial killer's history, though I have to admit, that felt a bit tacked on to me. I did enjoy the author's take on how the serial killer was made to answer for all the anger Parisians felt about Germans in general.

Thank you to the publisher for the complimentary copy of this book.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

This was a wonderful book about the trailblazing female correspondent, Janet Flanner. Her personal life and how she watched the rise of Hitler. Theoretically this was also the story of Eugen Weidmann, a German serial killer. In many ways, this book felt very similar to Erik Larson's Devil in the White City, with a grand global story offset by a smaller story of a killer. But, I had the same issue here. The stories weren't balanced and I was drawn more to the historical story rather than the murders. I never felt the connection between the two storylines. Sure, Janet reported on him a bit, but it was such a minor part of her story, and he never interacted with her at all. The chapters about him where shorter, less frequent, and felt more like interruptions in the story of Janet's life. I really enjoyed learning about her, her friends, and their lives in Europe. I might have enjoyed it even more if Eugen's story didn't interrupt.

Thanks to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for a copy of the book. This review is my own opinion.

[Debbi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book personifies the adage that truth is stranger than fiction. One one hand, you have the story of Janet Flanner, a journalist who started the Letters from Paris series for the newly created New Yorker magazine. As time goes on her work morphs from lighthearted to war correspondence from the heart of Paris in the lead up to and through WW II. On the other hand there is the story of Eugen Weidmann, a psychopath who murders his way through Paris and other places. The two people come together as Flanner investigates his story and follows his trial.

If I didn't know that this book was non-fiction, I would have thought that it was an incredibly creative story, and wondered how the author came to create it. But it's fact, and it's spellbinding. It's a really in depth look at the time and the people in an increasingly stressful and dangerous time. Definitely a must read!

[Tanya Hindson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was captivated from the first page. The Typewriter and the Guillotine weaves together two compelling narratives: a chilling story of a con man and serial killer, that scratched my true crime itch, and an American writers coming-of-age in Paris. Beginning in the 1920s during its golden age of artistic innovation, the story moves from glamour and creative freedom toward the darker pre-war years, which I found at times, uncomfortably resonant. Through it, Janet Flanner emerges as a captivating force, surrounded by iconic figures and a lifestyle many would envy. I find myself wanting to befriend her… if only I were cool enough. Masterfully researched and elegantly written, the book is a powerful reminder that truth can be just as riveting as fiction. Is the historical thriller my new genre of choice?

[CONSTANCE · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the vein of “Devil in the White City”, this non-fiction story centers on two quite different events happening in the same city. A female journalist goes to Paris in 1925 to write articles for a new magazine called The New Yorker (which people question if it will make it). She’s trying to keep her “Letter from Paris” articles non-political, but as the years go by, the things going on in Germany with this very scary man named Adolf Hitler make that more and more difficult even as she feels the French seem to be putting their head in the sand and not acknowledging what’s happening.
Meanwhile a very different story is also playing out in Paris and that story centers on a young German man who goes on a killing spree.

[Madeline Caldwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the beautifully entwined narrative, a queer icon of letters is brought to life against the backdrop of Europe on the brink of fascism. Flanner comes into her own amidst love affairs, fabulous parties and growing insidious shadow, one mirrored by a serial killer born out of the nazi regime. The book deftly weaves these stories together, letting the growing tension of the time mirror the escalation of violence both from our killer and between political adversaries. In the middle is an intrepid reporter finding her voice. A brilliant read that unexpectedly overlaps with our current political climate.

[Courtney · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stars

The Typewriter and the Guillotine is a historical, nonfiction true crime book, set just before The Second World War. I ended up DNFing this book at about 40% because the writing style was not for me. I just felt like it was taking way too long to get to the meat of the story, even at the point where I stopped reading. It was a bombardment of facts, names, places and I was overwhelmed with so much and it just bled altogether. I lost interest in the story and what was happening. That all being said, while this book was not my preference, I do believe that others will enjoy it.
I received an advanced ebook,via Netgalley. This review is my own honest opinion.

[Autumn (Nerdy Silly Goose) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

So, upon looking further into this, I think it's a little darker than I'd anticipated, so I think I'm going to pass for now. I'll probably come back to it eventually, but right now I'm so busy I pretty much only read before bed, and I don't think that's such a good idea with this book. I'll pick it up when I'm a little older!

[Shannon A · Rating 5 out of 5]

What starts as a letter for what would become The New Yorker quickly has that same writer sharing the events that lead up to WWII. As Janet writes to her American audience to warn them of the dangers of the rising Third Reich, Paris is has a serial killer on the loose. Full of Drama, history & intrigue this is one untold story you don’t want to miss!

[Joshua Linde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mark Braude’s knack for taking the reader back in time
has not wained as he moves into a new genre (if you can call it that when adding murder and mystery to his historical truths).

Loved the deep dive into characters (not easy when shackled by true defendable research) and the whodoneit theme, so popular in today’s media.

Good read for vacation or cozying up this winter.

[Dr G · Rating 5 out of 5]

very intriguing

[Glenn Stenquist · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very engrossing and interesting. Worth your time.

[Marie Housel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cinematic, spooky, and super entertaining! I loved the balancing of the two stories, and really enjoyed learning more about Janet Flanner. Couldn't put it down.

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I felt the connection between the journalist and the serial killer wasn’t much of a connection and felt like two stories thrust into one book.