For True Crime Fans and History Buffs

"The Good-Bye Door" is an enthralling read for both true crime fans and history buffs. Although a sensation at the time, Anna Marie Hahn has not only vanished from the popular conscience but, as the author points out, she has also nearly disappeared from official public records. Diana Franklin's five years of painstaking research, based largely on newspaper accounts, trial transcripts and Hahn's own handwritten confession, has yielded the chilling tale of a headstrong young German immigrant who arrived in Cincinnati in 1929 as an outcast following the birth of her illegitimate son. Trading on her youth and good looks, Hahn preyed on some of the most vulnerable members of society for five years before being caught. Franklin's straightforward, dispassionate retelling of Hahn's crimes and punishment avoids the popular sensationalism of the 1930s and lets her shocking story speak for itself.

Outstanding Crime Story

I understand that "The Goodbye Door" is the author's first effort at true crime. You would never know it. The way she describes the packed Cincinnati courtroom in the opening chapter and concludes with serial killer Anna Marie Hahn's final minutes in the electric chair is gripping, even intoxicating, reading. I would place Diana Franklin in the top rank of true crime authors, and I look forward to her next book in this genre.

Bizarre, bizarre

Bizarre, bizarre....This tale of the beautiful "blonde Borgia," who fleeced & then poisoned kindly elderly gentlemen to feed her gambling mania, started slowly, but by the time the police arrested her, I was hooked in and had trouble tearing myself away. The detailed trial and execution coverage which followed is not only a grisly real-life murder mystery, but also an engrossing look into the major media of the 30s, and the ghoulish way they were already immersing themselves in sensational cases...sixty years before the O. J. Simpson circus