by Walter Kirn
First published 2014
In summer 1998, novelist Walter Kirn agrees to transport an injured hunting dog from a Montana shelter to a Manhattan apartment. The recipient is Clark Rockefeller, who presents himself as a wealthy banker and art collector. This simple favor launches Kirn into a fifteen-year friendship with an elaborate fraud. Rockefeller charms his way through exclusive Manhattan clubs while spinning tales of privilege and family connections. Kirn becomes increasingly entangled in this world of manufactured identity and carefully constructed lies. The relationship deepens as Kirn struggles with his own personal troubles, including divorce and the challenges of single fatherhood. Eventually, the shocking truth emerges. The man calling himself Rockefeller is actually a serial impostor who has assumed multiple false identities across decades. Even worse, he is a murderer who has killed at least twice. Kirn must confront how completely he was deceived by someone he considered a close friend. The story moves from Manhattan's elite social circles to Los Angeles courtrooms as the legal system unravels the full extent of the deception.
Genres: american-fiction, crime, non-fiction, biography-memoir, 21st-century, true-crime, deception
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: Los Angeles, Manhattan, Montana
Period: 1998, 2000s
255 pages · Hardcover · Liveright
Content warnings: murder