True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa.

• Author: Young, Elizabeth
• Position: Book review

True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa

By Michael Finkel

I read True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa after watching the movie version that came out in early 2015. The plot is certainly movie material. A disgraced New York Times reporter, Mike Finkel, and a suspected murderer of his entire family, Christian Longo, strike up an unusual relationship that starts shortly after Longo's arrest and lasts long after his trial.

Finkel, in the memoir portion of the book, bluntly exposes his own folly in a story he wrote for the Times about slave labor on cocoa plantations in Africa. He reported his story through the eyes of one young man, when, in fact, his "voice" was a composite of a number of men he interviewed. Finkel admits to having numerous opportunities to come clean about his lies before the story went to print. He didn't. When the truth came out, he was sum marily fired by the Times. Finkel planned to go off the grid to his Montana home until after the dust settled, but in a stroke of karma, he took one last call. It was a reporter from the Portland Oregonian whom Finkel assumed was calling about his journalistic disgrace. He wasn't. He was calling about the Longo murders about which Finkel knew nothing.

Why did the Oregonian reporter call Finkel? That's part of the mystery. As a result of that phone call, Finkel obtained access to Longo and began speaking with him regularly.

Longo agreed not to talk to other reporters and Finkel agreed to keep Longo abreast of any research he did outside of their discussions. Part of the book's intrigue is the subliminal game of cat and mouse...