In 1998, Walter Kirn is waiting to become a father and up for a noble distraction: driving a paralysed Gordon setter named Shelby from his home state of Montana to New York City. There, Shelby would meet the man who had so desperately wanted to adopt her: Clark Rockefeller, a name with a pedigree if there ever was one.

Kirn, a journalist and writer – later he would publish the novel Up in the Air – handed over the dog and, without quite noticing it, handed himself over alongside her. He had a nose for interesting people and Clark, who had such a relaxed attitude to wealth that he let his dogs lick his original Rothko paintings, was enthralling. He was connected, mysterious, and any speculations he had about where the world was going seemed alarmingly like they could come true. If anyone knew, wouldn’t he?

A decade later, Clark Rockefeller abducted his young daughter during a supervised visit. By the time he was discovered, so too were his secrets: Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter was no Rockefeller, no pure-blood, and he was also the prime suspect of the 1985 murder of his neighbour, John Sohus. Having spent the intervening years listening to Clark with mute appreciation, Kirn was well-placed – and humiliated – to tell the story of a fraud who was never short of a lie to tell, and who was so convincing that even his errors would never be brought up by his friends, or his unrealistic tales of classified businesses second-guessed. One memorable moment has Clark hand a frustrated Kirn George Bush’s phone number to help him with a problem; Kirn, of course, never makes the call. It’s this ability that saw Clark sustain his ruse for years, with those he married and those he befriended – but silenced in front of a jury of his peers, he is not the same force. Kirn is an open and introspective writer with a taut leash on his writing and, frankly, one hell of a story to tell.

Fiona Hardy