With me on this episode of Writers at Work is Mark Braude, author of THE TYPEWRITER AND THE GUILLOTINE: AN AMERICAN JOURNALIST, A GERMAN SERIAL KILLER, AND PARIS ON THE EVE OF WWII. The American journalist is Janet Flanner, best known for her work for The New Yorker. The German serial killer is a wormy, self-deluded, lifelong criminal, and the setting is, as stated, Paris during the build-up to the Second World War.

THE TYPEWRITER AND THE GUILLOTINE is the third non-fiction work by Mark Brodie, whose previous KIKI MAN RAY: ART, LOVE, AND RIVALRY IN 1920s PARIS was named a notable book of 2022 by the New York Times, and a New Yorker Best Book of the Year. In 2018, he published THE INVISIBLE EMPEROR: NAPOLEON ON ELBA FROM EXILE TO ESCAPE, and two years earlier, MAKING MONTE CARLO: A HISTORY OF SPECULATION AND SPECTACLE.

Mark holds a PhD in History from the University of Southern California, and a Master's in French Studies from New York University.

An aside: I just returned from a writer's conference where I think I may have spoken more about THE TYPEWRITER AND THE GUILLOTINE than I did my own novels. I'm eager to find out how this book I admire so came to be.