Blood Will Out

The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade

By: Walter Kirn

Narrated by: Stephen Bel Davies

An In Cold Blood for our time, a chilling, compulsive story of a writer unwittingly caught in the wake of a grifter-turned-murderer.

In the summer of 1998, Walter Kirn - 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 15-year relationship that drew Kirn 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.

Kirn's one-of-a-kind 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 Kirn 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, Kirn 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, Kirn 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 Kirn 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: Kirn himself.

Combining confessional memoir, true crime reporting, and cultural speculation, Blood Will Out 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.

©2014 Walter Kirn (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Honest & authentic reflection on a relating to a psychopath

This was such a great book not only highly entertaining but also informative. It caught me off guard how much I was laughing. A laugh out loud and can’t put it down. I’m thinking to myself, I didn’t know I could laugh this much. The scenes with the mother, the Christmas tree, and the dog delivery had me laughing so hard. My kids thought I was loosing it, they didn’t see the air buds in my ears. I’m not a fog lover so I loved the brutal honesty with relating to one. I highly recommend it.

terrific

What made the experience of listening to Blood Will Out the most enjoyable?

the sensibility of the writer in relation to the enigmatic Clark. Fascinating inspection of both men,

What does Stephen Bel Davies bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I'd probably enjoy it just as well reading it - but the actor has an unbelievable command of accents.

Any additional comments?

Brilliant. Part memoir, part mystery.

Story about unbelievable con man

This book is about an unbelievable con man from the perspective of a person who was conned from when they met until the end of the murder trial in 2013. The author is very honest about how he was duped and his own culpability into falling for this con man. If the book intrigues you, then go back and download "The Man in the Rockefeller Suit" which is more of a fact based book but was written before the murder trial and focuses on the kidnapping trial. I just was looking at a You Tube interview which included both authors so they compliment each other. If you find the concept of how a psychopath can fool an author writing about him, you may also be interested in "True Story" by Michael Finkel.

You must read the Mark Seal book first

"The Man in the Rockefeller Suit" will give you the factual parts of the story, and is a fascinating read. This book is a personal and intimate recording of how the author was duped. There has been a lot of publicity surrounding the publication, and reviews have generally been good. I really liked it, but it would have made little sense had I not read the Mark Seal book first (which ends before the guilty verdict for murder is pronounced.)

Walter Kirn not write

Is there anything you would change about this book?

Yes, number one the writer of this book was boring, and I found that I was not able to pick up whatever he was trying to put down. So if the story was interesting which from what I could gather it was not, another author maybe.

What was most disappointing about Walter Kirn’s story?

The lackluster story, or non story if you will.

What three words best describe Stephen Bel Davies’s performance?

Complex yet boring

Did Blood Will Out inspire you to do anything?

Try another book.

Any additional comments?

Key point, the name Rockefeller always sells.