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Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder,…
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Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade (edition 2015)

by Walter Kirn (Author)

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3592171,547 (3.16)14
This is a chilling, compulsive story of a writer unwittingly caught in the wake of a grifter-turned-murderer. In the summer of 1998, the author, then an aspiring novelist struggling with impending fatherhood and a dissolving marriage, set out on a peculiar, fateful errand: to personally deliver a crippled hunting dog from his home in Montana to the New York apartment of one Clark Rockefeller, a secretive young banker and art collector who had adopted the dog over the Internet. Thus began a fifteen-year relationship that drew the author deep into the fun-house world of an outlandish, eccentric son of privilege who ultimately would be unmasked as a brazen serial impostor, child kidnapper, and brutal murderer. This story of being duped by a real-life Mr. Ripley takes us on a bizarre and haunting journey from the posh private clubrooms of Manhattan to the hard-boiled courtrooms and prisons of Los Angeles. As the author uncovers the truth about his friend, a psychopath masquerading as a gentleman, he also confronts hard truths about himself. Why, as a writer of fiction, was he susceptible to the deception of a sinister fantasist whose crimes, he learns, were based on books and movies? What are the hidden psychological links between the artist and the con man? To answer these and other questions, the author attends his old friend's murder trial and uses it as an occasion to reflect on both their tangled personal relationship and the surprising literary sources of Rockefeller's evil. This investigation of the past climaxes in a tense jailhouse reunion with a man whom the author realizes he barely knew, a predatory, sophisticated genius whose life, in some respects, parallels his own and who may have intended to take another victim during his years as a fugitive from justice: the author himself. Combining confessional memoir, true crime reporting, and cultural speculation, this is a Dreiser-esque tale of self-invention, upward mobility, and intellectual arrogance. It exposes the layers of longing and corruption, ambition and self-delusion beneath the Great American con. -- From book jacket. The true story of a young novelist who meets and befriends an eccentric, privileged New Yorker when he delivers a crippled hunting dog to him from an animal shelter, and later discovers that his friend was a serial imposter and brutal double-murderer.… (more)
Member:Exeter
Title:Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade
Authors:Walter Kirn (Author)
Info:Liveright (2015), Edition: 1, 272 pages
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Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade by Walter Kirn

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» See also 14 mentions

Showing 1-5 of 21 (next | show all)
BLOOD WILL OUT, though a true murder mystery, is not the murder mystery you would expect. Although there is a murder and many mysteries, particularly about the man who committed it, the author, Walter Kirn, plays a big part in this story, too. Not only that, but Kirn theorizes about the mysteries, and his theories are good, almost certainly correct.

Kirn does not begin with the murder or even what led to it. Instead, he begins with how he met the murderer, Christian Gerhartsreiter. Except Kirn thought he was meeting Clark Rockefeller, yes, of THE Rockefeller family. Turns out, "Clark Rockefeller" was only one of Gerhartsreiter's many aliases. (Kirn makes, in my opinion, the mistake of calling him Clark throughout the book because, Kirn says, that's how he knew him for a long time.)

Other books have been written about the man known as "Clark Rockefeller," but it looks like Kirn was careful to be different. He begins with his drive from his home in Montana to "Clark's" home in New York to bring him a crippled dog he wanted to adopt. Upon their meeting, "Clark" started dropping several clues that his stories were not true. And Kirn berates himself for not catching the lies at the time, with just being impressed with his new friend. For friends they did become. And Kirn continues to berate himself for that.

But good people tend to trust that most people are good. Most people ARE good. Gerhartsreiter is the exception. I hope Kirn has stopped being angry with himself for being one of the good ones. ( )
  techeditor | Jun 24, 2022 |
An interesting look at "Clark Rockefeller", the con man, murderer and then also kidnapper of his daughter, The author details the years they were 'friends'. ( )
  loraineo | Oct 26, 2021 |
The backstory was interesting... and the book could have been better if Clark Rockefeller was the topic of the book. The true topic was the author's attempt to find out why he fell for the ruse for so long. It seems he wanted to prove it was because he was vain... not "stupid". ( )
  Chrissylou62 | Aug 1, 2020 |
Ce livre ébluoissant dissèque la psychopathie, les tendances perverses de la génération Internet, l'art, l'argent, et la nature même de la croyance.
  ACParakou | May 31, 2018 |
I'm not really sure how much I can say about this book. Kirn did a really great job of making me dislike him (Kirn, not Rockefeller). And not because of him being duped by someone like Rockefeller. I thought Kirn handled his own betrayal in a fairly straightforward manner, without asking for pity or sympathy. However, he did write a few offhanded remarks that really got under my skin. It's a little hard to explain without delving into dangerous territory. Suffice it to say, I enjoyed the story behind this and thought it was well-written, but won't be reading anything else by this author. ( )
  gossamerchild88 | Mar 30, 2018 |
Showing 1-5 of 21 (next | show all)
Although the murder horrifies him, you get the impression that Kirn is more upset about being gulled. “I wasn’t a victim, I was a collaborator,” he concludes.
added by ozzer | editNew York Times, Nina Burleigh (Mar 6, 2014)
 
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This is a chilling, compulsive story of a writer unwittingly caught in the wake of a grifter-turned-murderer. In the summer of 1998, the author, then an aspiring novelist struggling with impending fatherhood and a dissolving marriage, set out on a peculiar, fateful errand: to personally deliver a crippled hunting dog from his home in Montana to the New York apartment of one Clark Rockefeller, a secretive young banker and art collector who had adopted the dog over the Internet. Thus began a fifteen-year relationship that drew the author deep into the fun-house world of an outlandish, eccentric son of privilege who ultimately would be unmasked as a brazen serial impostor, child kidnapper, and brutal murderer. This story of being duped by a real-life Mr. Ripley takes us on a bizarre and haunting journey from the posh private clubrooms of Manhattan to the hard-boiled courtrooms and prisons of Los Angeles. As the author uncovers the truth about his friend, a psychopath masquerading as a gentleman, he also confronts hard truths about himself. Why, as a writer of fiction, was he susceptible to the deception of a sinister fantasist whose crimes, he learns, were based on books and movies? What are the hidden psychological links between the artist and the con man? To answer these and other questions, the author attends his old friend's murder trial and uses it as an occasion to reflect on both their tangled personal relationship and the surprising literary sources of Rockefeller's evil. This investigation of the past climaxes in a tense jailhouse reunion with a man whom the author realizes he barely knew, a predatory, sophisticated genius whose life, in some respects, parallels his own and who may have intended to take another victim during his years as a fugitive from justice: the author himself. Combining confessional memoir, true crime reporting, and cultural speculation, this is a Dreiser-esque tale of self-invention, upward mobility, and intellectual arrogance. It exposes the layers of longing and corruption, ambition and self-delusion beneath the Great American con. -- From book jacket. The true story of a young novelist who meets and befriends an eccentric, privileged New Yorker when he delivers a crippled hunting dog to him from an animal shelter, and later discovers that his friend was a serial imposter and brutal double-murderer.

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