True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa

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 crime

Fascinating story and kudos to Finkel for succeeding in obtaining so much correspondence from the accused family-killer, Christian Longo; ironically, despite the hundreds of pages of letters and transcribed phone calls, Finkel is still not sure he knows what actually triggered Longo's murderous rampage against his wife and three kids. It is chilling to watch the downward progression of Longo's life from modestly successful emmployee to overly-optimistic struggling entrepreneur to the loss of everything, homelessness, fraud, and total desperation. The parallel story of Finkel's own career debacle is laid out in painful detail and intricately interwoven into the Longo saga.

After Michael Finkel's deceit that cost him his job at the New York Times Magazine, things took a decidely different turn for Mr. Finkel. Never in his wildest dreams did he think he would find himself fired from the job he coveted so much. But even more so, never did he ever expect to find himself in the middle of a murder trial where he played a central role. Christian Michael Longo decided to become Michael Finkel of the New York Times at almost the exact time Finkel lost his job at the Times. Longo, wanted for the murder of his family in Oregon, had fled to Mexico and assumed the identity of reporter Finkel. All that happens next is something that sounds straight from a Hollywood screenplay. Except, this time there's no deceit to "get the story," - it's all real. Finkel finds himself with a true-crime story of a lifetime dropped in his lap. Another reviewer described this book as "genre-busting" and I couldn't agree more. This is a story of a reporter's fall from grace, his (sometimes bizarre) relationship with a murderer, and a true crime book that follows the Longo case with many psychological twists and turns. Finkel, throwing convention to the wind, makes it work. Where Finkel goes from here will ultimately be decided by peers who will decide whether his problems at the NY Times Magazine was an aberration of character that was a mistake, but one that most certainly will not be repeated - or in this day of moral and ethical purity, he is shunned. What a shame that would be. If that's the ultimate take on Finkel, he has a career (if he so desires) as a writer of true crime, bringing his journalistic curiosity to some of the multitudes of heinous criminal behavior that perplexes us all. He's proven he can do that - and do it well. I cannot recommend this "genre busting" book highly enough.

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