GameSpot | GameFAQs | SportsGamer | Metacritic | MP3.com | TV.com
 |
|
||||
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
All-Time High Scores
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed books.
|
True Story |
||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
||||||||||||
Fired from the New York Times for fabricating part of a story, writer Michael Finkel was subsequently drawn into the news yet again, when the FBI captured accused murderer Christian Longo, who had been posing under an alias: New York Times writer Michael Finkel. Longo later chose to confide in the real Finkel, who here discusses both the criminal and his own scandal at the Times.
HarperCollins, 320 pages
05/24/2005
$25.95
ISBN: 006058047X
Nonfiction
Current Events & Politics
True Crime
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
The average user rating for this book is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 2 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Stephen S gave it a7:
My preferred subtitle would be “murky, memorable, morally challenging”. Michael Finkel had a spectacular fall from grace when caught out fabricating a story for the New York Times on so-called slave labour in the Ivory Coast cocoa industry. Named, shamed and fired, Finkel chose a highly unusual platform for his personal and professional redemption. He didn’t resort to prayer, counselling, pledges, or health and fitness drives. Instead, Finkel forged an unholy alliance with an Oregon family-murder suspect who had briefly assumed his identity. Finkel finds out that he had become a major fink, that his family and friends were rather relieved when he was cut adrift from high-power journalism. But his radical rehabilitation route has now paid its way, in that he has married and appears not to have kicked any more professional own-goals. Does the book pay its way? I’m prepared to believe that it is a True Story, and I think the answer is a qualified “yes”. No doubt the author is a talented investigator and writer, so you wonder why he had to cheat at all. His book is put together with skill, although I question the strategy of intertwining the mild story of Finkel’s paper-crime with the monstrous story of Longo’s perfidy. To the extent that the Christian Longos of our world can be fathomed, Finkel gives it his best shot. The jurisprudence and the psychology (of Longo’s narcissism) are well done, bu Finkel makes more of an impact when his journalistic sensibilities snare the thoughts and feelings of the ordinary people affected. Chillingly, Longo’s path to homicide resembles a classic John Cheever story. Minor transgression unexpectedly leads to larger sins and so to perdition. He meets the doomed MaryJane when he is 16 and she 23. His first $108 theft occurs during their 1992 engagement. They survive a chaperoned Jehovah’s Witness courtship, marrying over the opposition of Longo’s parents. He rises to a good position with a circulation company, but quits. In 2000 he stoops to crime again, passing dud cheques to rescue his own failing company, the prophetically named Final Touch. Less than two years later, and many missteps later, he has spiralled down to the point where his “model Witness wife” and family will die by his hand. Too proud to accept public assistance, Longo has jettisoned the American dream for the American nightmare. Oddly enough, one man’s ruination shapes up as another’s salvation. Technology being what it is these days, there is no need to die of curiosity about this. It will be easy to web-search the name “Michael Finkel” in five years’ time to assess the durability of his cure.
Jill B gave it a10:
This book grabbed me from the first page, and the bizarre, unguessable twists continued until the final chapter. It's an amazing tale that proves, yet again, that the truth is far stranger than fiction.
 |
Return to top of page |  |
