True story : murder, memoir, mea culpa / Michael Finkel.
Material type:
TextPublication details: New York : Harper Perennial, 2006.Edition: 1st Harper Perennial edDescription: 320 pages ; 21 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 0060580488
- 9780060580483
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Main Library | Biography | Finkel, M. F499 | Available | 33111009303872 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
The improbable but true story of a man accused of murdering his entire family and the journalist he impersonated while on the run
In 2001, Mike Finkel was on top of the world: young, talented, and recently promoted to a plum job at the New York Times Magazine. Then he made an irremediable slip: Under extraordinary pressure to keep producing blockbuster stories, he fabricated parts of an article. Caught and excommunicated from the Times, he retreated to his home in Montana, swearing off any contact with the media. When the phone rang, though, he couldn't resist. At the other end was a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle, whom Finkel congratulated on being the first in what was sure to be a long and bloodthirsty line of media watchdogs. The reporter was puzzled.
In Waldport, Oregon, Christian Longo had killed his young wife and three children and dumped their bodies into the bay. With a stolen credit card, he fled south, making his way to Cancun, where he lived for several weeks under an assumed identity: Michael Finkel, journalist for the New York Times.
True Story is the tale of a bizarre and convoluted collision between fact and fiction, and a meditation on the slippery nature of truth. When Finkel contacts Longo in jail, the two men begin a close and complex relationship. Over the course of a year, they exchange long letters and weekly phone calls, playing out a cat-and-mouse game in which it's never quite clear if the pursuer is Finkel or Longo--or both. Finkel's dogged pursuit of the true story pays off only at the end, in the gripping trial scenes in which Longo, after a lifetime of deception, finally tells the whole truth. Or so he says.
In February 2002, 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's. The next day comes another bit of news: a note from the editors, explaining that Finkel has falsified an article and has been fired. The only journalist the accused murderer will speak with is the real Michael Finkel. 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, and his quest becomes a psychological game.--From publisher description.