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True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 070.92
EAN: 9780060580476
ISBN: 006058047X
Label: HarperCollins
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: May 24, 2005
Publisher: HarperCollins
Release Date: May 24, 2005
Studio: HarperCollins
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Editorial 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
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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.
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Outstanding
A thoughtful, well written description of a horrendous crime that explores the psyche of the killer; the author's growing understanding of the killer's psyche as he gets to know him; and the author's own travails while all this is going on.
Rating: - Compelling, compelling
Back in December 2001, a heinous act occured along the Oregon coast that would forever alter the lives of the people involved with it. Christian Longo, newly relocated to the area a few months back, savagely took the lives of the people closest to him, and then fled the country. The shock and horror of the crimes reverberated strongly through the community and the state. While in Mexico, Longo assumed the identity of disgraced NY Times reporter Michael Finkel. Thus, this unusual pairing of these ... Read More
Rating:  - Self-Serving
This book is about a murderer's theft of the author's identity to help him escape police apprehension. The author makes much of this fact,seeing himself as a victim, but an account I read of the actual murders has no mention of the author, nor does it need any for the purpose of telling its story.
Nor is the author a very sympathetic character, having announced at the beginning of the book that he has been fired for fictionalizing a news story for the New York Times. (a practice ... Read More
Rating:  - What's one man's demise is another's redemption...or is it?
Michael Finkel wrote this book in an effort to alter the popular opinion that he is a dishonest reporter who falsified his articles. He wrote with one objective in mind - to emerge as a talented author and honest human being. But was he able to do so? It's up to the readers to decide.
What's the book about? As it turned out, a serial murderer used Mr. Finkel's identity to hide from the law. Luckily, the FBI did their job and caught the man. And when Mr. Finkel found out that his identity ... Read More
Rating: - Brilliantly done, but unsettling
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 ... Read More
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