Simon Worrall
The Poet and the Murderer (2002)
Author: Simon Worrall
Genre: Nonfiction (True Crime)
Plot Summary:
Dan Lombardo, curator of Special Collections at the Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts, thought he was getting a fair deal when he purchased an original, unpublished poem by Emily Dickenson from a Sotheby’s auction for $21,000 in 1997. As he discovered later, the poem was a forgery created by a genius at deception, Marc Hofman. Hofman was a legitimate dealer in antiquarian manuscripts and books who was raised in a devout Mormon family but chafed at what he perceived as religious hypocrisy. He ceased to be a believer in his teens, yet maintained the façade of a devout member of the church. About this time, Hofman discovered he had a talent for forgery, and was able to use self-hypnosis to keep his hands steady while he created his documents, thus fooling many experts. He began by forging documents related to Mormon Church history that might put the church in a bad light, then selling them to the Church which didn’t want the documents to become public. He later branched out, forging documents by George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Boone, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Emily Dickenson among others. He began to offer investments on fraudulent rare book and manuscript transactions, using the imminent sale of one document as collateral in what is known as a Ponzi scheme. The scheme began to fall apart as investors demanded returns and in desperation, Hofman resorted to violence. He created two pipe bombs which killed one of his investors, and the wife of another. A witness saw him carrying the package at one of the bombings, and in desperation he created a third pipe bomb which he used on himself to make him appear as an innocent victim of the bomber. He survived the blast, but suspicions were still cast on him and he was convicted of the murders and forgeries through the skill of a forensic document examiner, George Throckmorton, who discovered over 600 of Hofman’s forged documents, many of which are still circulating among collectors, auction houses and dealers. Hofman is eligible for parole in 2006, though injuries caused by an attempted suicide will insure that he will not be able to forge handwriting again.
Geographical Setting: Salt Lake City, Utah & Amherst, Massachusetts.
Time Period: mid–1970s to late 1990s.
Appeal Characteristics:
This book is a fascinating study of three things: the art of forgery and forensic document examination; the corruptness of the antiquarian manuscript trade; and the history and oddities of the Mormon Church. Those three things would make it appealing to fans of CSI, police procedurals, history buffs, and bibliophiles. There is also heavy emphasis on Emily Dickenson and her history, which would appeal to literary readers. The narrative is literary in style, and flows smoothly even while skipping backwards and forwards through time. This causes uneven pacing, however. The main emphasis of the book is on the forgeries, not the murders, so fans of serial-killer true crime stories will probably be disappointed.
Red Flags: May offend members of the Mormon Church.
|top|
|
