"In the summer of 1998, Walter Kirn, an aspiring novelist, 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 Kirn deep into the world of an outlandish, eccentric son of privilege who ultimately would be unmasked as a brazen serial impostor, child kidnapper, and brutal murderer. As Kirn uncovers the truth about his friend, a psychopath masquerading as a gentleman, he also confronts hard truths about himself. He reflects on their tangled personal relationship and the surprising literary sources of Rockefeller's evil, and a predatory, sophisticated genius whose life, in some respects, parallels his own. A tale of self-invention, upward mobility, and intellectual arrogance. It exposes the layers of longing and corruption, ambition and self-delusion. Clark Rockefeller's actual name is Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter. He is currently serving a life sentence for murder. Walter Kirn is a contributing editor to Time magazine and a regular reviewer for the New York Times Book Review. He is the author of four novels."--Provided by publisher.