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Well, that was interesting. I've never thought much about what it would be like to correspond with a man who murdered his whole family. That's probably because I'd never do something like that! (I hope.)

However Michael Finkel, the author of this memoir, did have his reasons. The murderer was found and arrested in Mexico on the Yucatan Peninsula using Michael Finkel's name and identity as a NY Times writer, as a disguise. Michael was naturally curious about someone who would pretend to be him while running from the law.

It does seem strange that the man would choose to use the name of an obscure NY Times writer. As we get to know him through the pages of this book, it begins to make sense.

Michael Finkel was actually a recently-fired former NY Times writer at the time he learned a murderer was using his name. Because he'd been fired he was looking for a new writing project, and stumbled his way into this one. He decided to correspond with the now-jailed man awaiting trial. He also received phone calls from him. They became chummy, and were nearly friends! But Michael's devious intention was to write a book about the murderer. This is the result of that decision.

I normally don't spend much time with the true crime genre, but occasionally I find such books that interest me, normally written by professionals who are somehow connected. I could name a lot of true crime books I've avoided over the years... for example, The Onion Field, In Cold Blood, and Helter Skelter all hold no interest for me, for various reasons. There are better things for me to be reading, after all. Right?

This book caught my attention because of the author. This was his first book published back in 2005.

It was his second book that I discovered first. I found it on a display table at The Well-Read Moose, a bookstore in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, back in 2017. The title: The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit. Since I'm an introvert I've daydreamed about becoming a hermit, and I wanted to read a book about one. The book was part-memoir, focusing on the author's invasive way of getting his story even without the welcome approval of the main character (the hermit). He got some flack for that (bad reviews) but I liked and admired his strategies, mainly because as an introvert I'd never be able to do what he did.

Then this book (True Story) kept showing up in various places on the internet for me this year, and I eventually decided to read it because I remembered the author's name from reading his hermit book a few years back.

For the clean-reads folks: I can't say this is a clean book. There's violence, etc., but it is all in context so I didn't find it out-of-place or excessive.