Decisions were made: I made them. Violence was done: I did it. Crime scenes were fled: I fled them. People were hurt: I hurt them. Someone was loved: I loved them. Not everything I did was bad. Just most of it.

A scholarship kid with straight As and massive potential, Evie Gordon always thought she was special, that she'd be someone.

But after graduating from an elite university, she finds herself drowning in debt and working as a private tutor to the children of Los Angeles's super-rich.

Everything changes when Evie arrives at the Victor family's lavish mansion for her weekly lesson to discover, not the bored teenager she excepted, but pure carnage: the bloody remains of Mr and Mrs Victor sullying their beautiful back garden, and a woman crying for help from within the walls of the house.

Within moments, Evie and the woman go from bystanders to suspects to fugitives.

Suddenly at the heart of a nation-wide manhunt, Evie finds that her mysterious companion, who refuses to speak, has quickly become the most important person in her upside-down life. Meanwhile, the press runs wild with Evie's story - anointing her the new Charles Manson, a blood thirsty ninety-nine percenter looking to start a class war.

About the Author: 

Hannah Dietch is a former SAT tutor and current PhD candidate in English at UC Irvine, where she studies Marxist theory and contemporary pop culture. A former arts magazine editor with a Master’s in journalism from USC, Hannah has been published by the LA Times, LA Weekly, and the LA Review of Books. Her debut novel Killer Potential was published by W&N in February 2025. She lives in Los Angeles.

What Our Reviewers Said:

"Hannah Deitch’s Killer Potential is what happens when you take a razor-sharp literary voice, infuse it with Tarantino-esque energy, and hand it a getaway car. It’s smart, it’s stylish, and it’s steeped in darkly comedic nihilism - the kind of book that takes a tired trope, flips it on its head, and then sets it on fire just to watch it burn."

"Killer Potential takes familiar elements—a fugitive road trip, a media-fuelled moral panic, a cynical yet brilliant protagonist—and remixes them into something fresh, witty, and subversive. It has echoes of Thelma & Louise and My Sister, the Serial Killer, but its literary sharpness and self-aware humour set it apart."

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