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

Rating | ⭐⭐

I HATE being tricked by a gorgeous cover and a subtitle.

The Typewriter and the Guillotine appears to have some of the things I love reading about most - an intrepid journalist who lives life on her own terms, a serial killer, and World War II.

Janet Flanner arrived in Paris in 1922, a journalist for The New Yorker, who would be covering all the best things about Paris, the beauty, the art, the culture. However, she soon sees the signs of what is to come - the rise of extremism and how the economic problems and public discontent fed into it. Flanner completely changes her role and attempts to capture the attention of her readers as to why the new German chancellor is a danger to the world.

In that same time frame, a serial killer was stalking the streets of Paris, himself a child of two Nazis.

Now, here is the issue - the synopsis claims that Flanner "soon becomes enmeshed in the criminal case of a man who embodied all of the darkness she was being forced to confront".

It also says that Flanner covered his case from start to finish and it was this great symbolism for what had passed and what was to come.

Except...not really.

The connection between the journalist and the serial killer is hardly there at all. She attended some of his trial and that was it. I feel like the title and subtitle were incredibly misleading. I expected there to be some greater connection between the two, that somehow she might have been directly impacted by his crimes or they'd crossed paths before he was captured.

There's also far less information about Eugen Weidmann than I expected. This could have something to do with the Nazis destroying evidence once they'd taken control of Paris, as Weidmann was a German and they didn't want his crimes associated with them...as they committed even more and worse crimes.

I started skimming the content strictly about Flanner after a while, only because I did not personally find her story all that compelling. The author could easily have written a biography solely of Flanner without making Weidmann seem like such an enmeshed part of her life in Paris. The story of her life before, during, and after World War II would be more than enough to engage many readers.

I did not enjoy this one, but would recommend it for those who have an interest in strong female journalists, Paris before and on the eve of WWII, and/or The New Yorker.