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In the haunting tradition of Joe McGinniss's Fatal Vision and Mikal Gilmore's Shot in the Heart, True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa weaves a spellbinding tale of murder, love, and deceit with a deeply personal inquiry into the slippery nature of truth.
The story begins in February of 2002, when a reporter in Oregon contacts New York Times Magazine writer Michael Finkel with a startling piece of news. A young, highly intelligent man named Christian Longo, on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list for killing his entire family, has recently been captured in Mexico, where he'd taken on a new identity—Michael Finkel of the New York Times.
The next day, on page A-3 of the Times, comes another bit of troubling news: a note, written by the paper's editors, explaining that Finkel has falsified parts of an investigative article and has been fired. This unlikely confluence sets the stage for a bizarre and intense relationship. After Longo's arrest, the only journalist the accused murderer will speak with is the real Michael Finkel. And as the months until Longo's trial tick away, the two men talk for dozens of hours on the telephone, meet in the jailhouse visiting room, and exchange nearly a thousand pages of handwritten letters.
With Longo insisting he can prove his innocence, Finkel strives to uncover what really happened to Longo's family, and his quest becomes less a reporting job than a psychological cat-and-mouse game—sometimes redemptively honest, other times slyly manipulative. Finkel's pursuit pays off only at the end, when Longo, after a lifetime of deception, finally says what he wouldn't even admit in court—the whole, true story. Or so it seems.
- Sales Rank: #83095 in eBooks
- Published on: 2009-10-13
- Released on: 2009-10-13
- Format: Kindle eBook
Amazon.com Review
In True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa, disgraced New York Times writer Michael Finkel recounts the story of the murderer who assumed his identity and examines the reasons for his own fall from journalistic grace, in a memoir that is gripping, perceptive, and bizarre. In 2002, Finkel, a rising star at the Times, was fired for fabricating a character in a story about child laborers in Africa. Just as the story of his downfall was about to become public, he learned that a man named Christian Longo, arrested in Mexico for the murder of his wife and three small children in Oregon, had been living under an assumed identity: Michael Finkel of The New York Times. Sensing a story--and an opportunity for redemption--Finkel contacted Longo, initiating a relationship that would grow increasingly complex over the course of Longo's trial and conviction.
Finkel makes no excuses for his actions. Nor does he deny his own narcissism--a narcissism that allowed him to rationalize his own lies as surely as Longo rationalized his crimes. Ultimately, Finkel says, his year with Longo taught him "how a person's life could spiral completely out of control; how one could get lost in a haze of dishonesty; and how these things could have dire consequences." The lesson, Finkel need not add, applies as much to the disgraced writer as it does to the killer. --Erica C. Barnett
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In 2001, Finkel fabricated portions of an article he wrote for the New York Times Magazine. Caught and fired, he retreated to his Montana home, only to learn that a recently arrested suspected mass murderer had adopted his identity while on the run in Mexico. In this astute and hypnotically absorbing memoir, Finkel recounts his subsequent relationship with the accused, Christian Longo, and recreates not only Longo's crimes and coverups but also his own. In doing so, he offers a startling meditation on truth and deceit and the ease with which we can slip from one to the other. The narrative consists of three expertly interwoven strands. One details the decision by Finkel, under severe pressure, to lie within the Times article—ironic since the piece aimed to debunk falsehoods about rampant slavery in Africa's chocolate trade—and explores the personal consequences (loss of credibility, ensuing despair) of that decision. The second, longer strand traces Longo's life, marked by incessant lying and petty cheating, and the events leading up to the slayings of his wife and children. The third narrative strand covers Finkel's increasingly involved ties to Longo, as the two share confidences (and also lies of omission and commission) via meetings, phone calls and hundreds of pages of letters, leading up to Longo's trial and a final flurry of deceit by which Longo attempts to offload his guilt. Many will compare this mea culpa to those of Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, but where those disgraced journalists led readers into halls of mirrors, Finkel's creation is all windows. There are, notably, no excuses offered, only explanations, and there's no fuzzy boundary between truth and deceit: a lie is a lie. Because of Finkel's past transgression, it's understandable that some will question if all that's here is true; only Finkel can know for sure, but there's a burning sincerity (and beautifully modulated writing) on every page, sufficient to convince most that this brilliant blend of true-crime and memoir does live up to its bald title. 4-city author tour. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
The day before his career with the New York Times Magazine was set to end with the disclosure that he had concocted parts of a story about African slave labor, Finkel received a call notifying him that a man accused of murdering his family had been impersonating the reporter while on the run in Mexico. What started as a curiosity ended up being the path to personal and professional redemption as Finkel began a long relationship with Christian Longo, accused of murdering his wife and three young children. The "defrocked" journalist is tested by a man who has impersonated him but is well aware that he can have his choice of journalists to hear his story and that, on a certain level, he is in control. They develop a tentative mutual trust through months of communications and thousands of pages of letters as their curious relationship unfolds, and each struggles with notions of truth and deceit. This book is absolutely riveting, as much for Finkel's own painful self-examination as for the evasions of an accused murderer. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
85 of 86 people found the following review helpful.
Brilliantly done, but unsettling
By Dennis Littrell
I found this fascinating. I stayed up until two o'clock in the morning to finish it. It is a true crime story written in a clear, elegant style. Every sentence is polished, and every sentence is planned and placed in exactly the right place. There is no obvious striving for effect, no lurid prose, no fancy writing. Michael Finkel employs what George Orwell once called the invisible style. The writing is so unobtrusive, so deliberate in not calling attention to itself that what the reader experiences is the story itself, pure and simple.
Or stories. The book is like a film or a commercial novel in that there is a main plot and a subplot. The main plot is the story of Christian Longo who murdered his wife and three children and then ran to Mexico where he pretended to be Michael Finkel, ace reporter for the New York Times. This was a startling coincidence because Finkel had just been fired from the Times for falsifying a story about cocoa plantation "slaves" in West Africa. He was disgraced and fallen from the pinnacle of journalistic prestige. That is the subplot. Both stories are interwoven together in a masterful way. And the sequence of events is presented in a dramatic--not a strictly chronological--way so that the tension is maintained and the reader is led to eagerly turn the pages.
The overall story began when Finkel found out about Chris Longo impersonating him. Struck with the coincidence, he felt compelled to know more about Longo and why the accused murderer took on his name. He contacted Longo and worked hard to establish rapport and a friendship. His motive was to get as much information from Longo as he could in order to write a book. The book would fuse the story of his disgrace with that of a man who had murdered his family. The thread that ties the stories together is not just the initial coincidence but an obsession with honesty that haunted both men and the obvious lack of honesty that they both practiced. Both Finkel and Longo strove again and again to come completely clean about what they had done and what they were doing while using each other under the guise of friendship. Longo used Finkel as somebody to talk to (he had been isolated from the other prisoners and had almost no contact with anyone other than his lawyers) and as a sounding board for his defensive strategy. Finkel used Longo as a source for a story that would restart his career. As Finkel makes vivid, both men were more than a little desperate.
At one point Finkel gives part of the voluminous correspondence he had with Longo to three shrinks. They conclude that Longo has a narcissistic personality. He may indeed be narcissistic, but more to the point, Longo is a psychopath. He has all the classic features: a charming personality; a behavioral record of lies and thefts and murders; a grotesque sense of ultimately caring about nobody but himself; and finally an ability to be completely without remorse and able to party after his crimes, as he did in Mexico.
Ironically, I think it is Finkel who has at least a touch of the narcissistic personality. We can see this in his tendency toward an exaggerated sense of his own importance, first in imagining that the world would be all that interested in his story (ah, but he made the world interested by his skillful writing) and in this from page 267 (he's talking to Longo's lawyers who want ideas for Longo's defense): He writes, "I felt, at that moment, as though Longo's life was in my hands--that if I said the right thing, he'd be spared the death penalty." We can also see this in the tremendous amount of energy Finkel put into researching and writing this book. He desperately wanted to regain his reputation and to be regarded again as a top flight journalist.
Both men are caught in a moral confusion about lies and honesty, Longo because he's a psychopath who doesn't understand how people can be so upset about lying since it would seen to be the natural thing to do if it might benefit you (sociopaths learn at an early age that they are supposed to be remorseful about lying, and that it's bad, but they never really appreciate why, and so they are fascinated with the dynamics); Finkel because as he freely admits has told many lies in his life including the lies that ended his career at the New York Times. Neither has apparently thought much about Emerson's "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Neither seems to understand that it is not so much the absolute consistency of what you say as it is your motive for what you say and especially how what you say affects others. That is what counts. Most people know this. Furthermore everybody lies at one time or another, but not when bearing witness and not when the lives of other people might be adversely affected.
I think what fascinated Finkel about Longo was that he could see in him a caricature of himself; and as long as he could imagine that Longo might not be guilty or as long as he didn't look too closely at the murders, that was tolerable. However after sitting through the trial and hearing Longo's grotesque self-serving lies about the murders and the horrific details, Finkel had to psychologically distance himself from his would-be, partial alter-ego. And rightly so since there is something terribly unsettling about their symbiotic relationship.
But in the final analysis I say good for Michael Finkel. This is an outstanding work, a fine addition to a genre I like to call "participatory journalism." What Finkel learned about himself from this chancy venture is possibly as important as what this book has done for his career and for his self-esteem.
77 of 82 people found the following review helpful.
The Journalist and the Killer: Lives Strangely Linked
By W. C HALL
This is a compelling and disturbing book. Author Michael Finkel tells both his own story and that of Christian Longo, who was convicted of killing his wife and three children in Newport, Oregon in December 2001. Their lives became intertwined when Longo fled to Mexico following the killings. There, he adopted the identity of a journalist whose work he had read and admired: Michael Finkel. Then came a twist of fate no screenwriter could get away with. As Longo was being escorted back to the U.S. for trial following his arrest, the New York Times Magazine announced it was dropping the real Finkel as a regular contributor because he had created a composite character for one of his stories.
(Disclaimer: I have a strong personal interest in the Longo case. I covered the killings, his arrest and trial as a radio news reporter; my apartment is a two-minute walk from the condominium where the killings took place. As the trial unfolded, we in the press were aware that Longo was in regular contact with Finkel, though he had turned down all other requests for interviews.)
Finkel wrote a letter to Longo in jail, explaining that he wanted to know why he had assumed his identity. This led to weekly hour-long telephone conversations between the two men and a regular correspondence that stretched to more than a thousand pages on Longo's part. Although both men pledged complete honesty to each other, neither kept that vow. Finkel came to realize that each was using the other. Seeing some of his own worst qualities magnified in Longo, Finkel was looking for a form of personal and professional redemption. Longo, meanwhile, was using Finkel as a sounding board for the persona and story he would present to the jury.
In the beginning, Finkel went out of his way to give Longo the benefit of the doubt, despite strong evidence linking him to the killings. In the end, when Longo stood exposed for the despicable liar that he was, Finkel found himself unable to make sense of a supremely senseless act. If there's any frustration for the reader--at least this reader--it's the discovery that there are no answers in these pages to help make any better sense of this tragedy.
Longo may be beyond redemption, but Finkel is not. He's an obviously talented writer who has brought to life a tragic event in all its awful detail.-William C. Hall
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
One of My Top 10 Favorite True Crime Books!!
By B. Ryan
This book is one of my favorite true crime books. I've read it a few times already. Christian Longo murdered his wife and children in 2001. The author of this book, Michael Finkel, lost his job as a writer for the New York Times in 2002. The two men cross paths along the way and it makes for one terrific read. Michael Finkel is an excellent writer.
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