Sociopath Clark Rockefeller: BLOOD WILL OUT

In bookstores, probably alongside the book about the death of Michael Rockefeller, is "Blood Will Out," the new book about the horrifying fake "Clark Rockefeller." Author Walter Kirn knew him for a decade...and was swept up in the conman/murderer's sociopathic charm and cunning.

Kirn, who has written several well-regarded books, was, at the time of the meeting, returning from London for magazine work: "I flew back to America and landed a job at Vanity Fair writing punning headlines for fluffy stories..."

It's tempting to say that anyone writing for Vanity Fair deserves to get slammed down to earthy reality, but this confessional tome spares nobody, including the author and his gullibility. The more ridiculous Clark Rockefeller's brags, the more fascinating he became for Walter Kirn: "...he told me that he lived next door to Tony Bennett, whom he said he could hear rehearsing through the walls at night. He told me that he had degrees from harard and Yale…that he could sing the words to any song that I might name…from "Gilligan's Island" (to) a Cole Porter lyric. He told me that he'd learned from "sourcess" that Prince Charles and the Queen had murdered Diana…"

The story soon becomes a gripping account of a friend suspected of being a fiend, which many reviewers have likened to something out of Patricia ("Strangers on a Train") Highsmith, or a dark volume of James Ellroy.

In fact, Ellroy is one of Kirn's biggest supporters, and you'll agree with him: "“This stunning book dissects psychopathy, the perverse manners of the Internet generation, art, money, and the very nature of belief. At its core, it brilliantly portrays one man's journey through fraudulence to a point of stern resolve. It's tabloid tell-all journalism and Old Testament rebuke. It is of a piece with Roethke: it tells us that the abyss is just a step down the stair.”