Hannah Deitch
- Tom Odlin
- Jul 16
- 2 min read
Hannah Deitch is not your typical debut author. There is nothing tentative about her voice, nothing cautious about her storytelling. With Killer Potential, she arrives fully formed, ready to burn the rulebook and light a cigarette off the ashes.
Raised in the United States, Deitch has worn many hats before turning to fiction. She has worked in education, media, and nonprofit communications, often telling other people’s stories before deciding it was time to tell her own. That background shows in the way she builds character, controls pacing, and writes dialogue that sounds like it has been lifted from real life. Only better.
Deitch’s writing is fearless, fast, and frequently funny. But it is also thoughtful. Beneath the sharp banter and impulsive decisions, her work grapples with big questions. What happens when women are no longer polite? What happens when they run instead of explain? What does guilt look like when the whole world is watching?
Killer Potential is not just a thriller. It is a book about performance, identity, internet mythmaking, and the blurred lines between truth and attention. Deitch handles those themes with precision and wit, never once slowing down the narrative to make a point. Instead, the questions linger just behind the action, waiting for the reader to catch up.
There is something undeniably cinematic about her style. Scenes unfold with urgency, like each one is chasing the next. Her characters speak as if they know they might be recorded. Her locations are sharp, grimy, and familiar, even if you have never been there.
Deitch now lives in Brooklyn, where she is likely working on her next project, drinking too much coffee, and eavesdropping with purpose. She has already hinted that her next novel will continue exploring morally complicated women in morally complex situations, though with a very different tone.
Whether she sticks with thrillers or veers into something stranger, one thing is sure: She is a writer worth watching.
Killer Potential is her first novel. It reads like her tenth.
Comments