David Hayes reviews the book Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa in today's Globe and Mail.

The author is Michael Finkel, a former New York Times Magazine writer who was disgraced for inventing a composite character.

Some excerpts:

... The night before the Times was to publish an editor's note that, Finkel believed, would end his career, he received a phone call from a reporter with the Oregonian in Portland. Assuming the news had already leaked, Finkel braced himself for questions about his firing. To his astonishment, though, the reporter was calling Finkel to ask about a Portland businessman named Christian Longo, who had just been arrested by the FBI for the murder of his wife and three children. In a bizarre twist, Longo had been hiding out in Mexico and telling people he was Michael Finkel, a writer with The New York Times.

When the editor's note was published, Finkel became a pariah, joining a rogue's gallery that included Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke, who had written a Pulitzer Prize-winning profile of a fictitious eight-year-old heroin addict, and Stephen Glass, caught fabricating people, quotes and events in dozens of stories in The New Republic and other magazines. Even though the Times and Finkel's other main employer, National Geographic Adventure, fact-checked all of Finkel's previous articles and found only a few insignificant errors, for the foreseeable future he was persona non grata in U.S. journalism.

Finkel and Longo made an unlikely but perfect pair. In the months leading to his trial, Longo decided the only journalist he would communicate with was the man whom he had impersonated (because, he explained, he admired Finkel's writing). ...

Finkel skillfully lets the story unfold so readers realize, about the same time he did, Longo's crafty strategy. "I was his dress rehearsal. I was his one-man focus group. When it came time to retell his story in court, in a matter of weeks, it would be airtight and polished, edited by his personal writing coach."

It is Finkel's personal relationship with Longo that elevates True Story beyond a mere journalistic account of an appalling crime. The dynamic between the depressed writer and the manipulative killer makes for dramatic reading. What about Finkel's ambition, though? Can he, by documenting his own hubris and fall from grace, achieve redemption, a second chance? As Finkel wraps up the Longo story, he inserts a grovelling apology to his editors, the fact-checkers, the photo department, his colleagues, "and to everyone who read the West Africa article."

I understand why Finkel felt compelled to include it, but on the page, it strikes a false note, as though struggling to understand a man who murdered his wife and children was, in the end, a career move.