2017 Reading Challenge discussion

The "murders" in this story are, unfortunately, hardly noteworthy beyond the immediate families and community of the four victims. It's the memoir part, the creepy shared history of the author and the subject, that make the book remarkable. that, and the fact that the architecture, the way Finkel has structured the stor(y)(ies) is devilishly clever and makes the book eminently readable in a day, even though it's over 300 pages long.

Christian Longo, the one involved with the "murder" in the title, is a mildly charming, extra intelligent young man who is later diagnosed by a psychologist as a narcissistic personality. Michael Finkel, the author, finds him captivating. The two correspond frequently and talk on the phone every Wednesday. They discuss their favourite cities and cuts of beef and skirmish over which one of them knows the most about the trivial and the arcane.

So how did these two become such good buds? Finkel is the author who was fired from The New York Times Magazine for fabricating a story, or more precisely, a central character in a story. As his career was unravelling around this high-profile event in February 2002, he prepared himself for a torrent of media attention. Much to his surprise, his very first media caller wanted to discuss a different subject entirely. He was calling because Michael Finkel, the NYT travel author, was now connected to four December, 2001, murders in Oregon in the minds of West Coast journalists and reporters.

And the reason for this connection is so strange...

This would also do for the category "a book that became a movie"

29 out of 50 / 52.