Author Guide · Lisanne Swart
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Michael Finkel writes about people who’ve deliberately removed themselves from ordinary life — a hermit who avoided human contact for 27 years, an art thief who stole for love rather than money, a killer who assumed Finkel’s own identity. His own career began with a very public professional collapse, which gives his subsequent books about deception and self-reinvention an unusually personal edge.
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Michael Finkel on tracking down the last true hermit
Finkel discusses how he tracked down Christopher Knight, the Maine hermit who spoke to no one for 27 years, and why Knight agreed to talk to him and no one else.
By Lisanne Swart · 3 books · Nonfiction · True Crime · Updated August 2026
Quick answer
Michael Finkel has written three books: True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa (2005), The Stranger in the Woods (2017), and The Art Thief (2023). Start with The Stranger in the Woods — it’s his most acclaimed and widely read book.
Key facts
- Background: Former New York Times Magazine writer; fired in 2002 for creating a composite subject in a story about child labor in West Africa
- Books written: 3, published 2005–2023
- Adaptation: True Story was adapted into a 2015 film starring Jonah Hill and James Franco
- Best-known book: The Stranger in the Woods (2017), a New York Times bestseller
- Recurring theme: People who deliberately remove themselves from, or reinvent, their identity
Why trust this list: Every book below is one I’ve read in full. Curated by Lisanne Swart.
True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa
Days after being fired from The New York Times Magazine for fabricating a composite subject in a story on child labor, Finkel received a call: an accused murderer on the FBI’s Most Wanted list had been using Finkel’s own identity while a fugitive in Mexico. The book traces Finkel’s correspondence with the killer, Christian Longo, and the uncomfortable parallels between Longo’s lies and his own.
A remarkable act of self-implication for a debut book — Finkel doesn’t spare himself while examining someone else’s much larger deceptions. Adapted into a 2015 film starring Jonah Hill.
The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
In 1986, at age 20, Christopher Knight walked into the Maine woods and did not speak to another human being for 27 years, surviving through more than a thousand carefully planned burglaries of nearby cabins. Finkel corresponded with and interviewed Knight after his 2013 arrest, producing an account of radical solitude that never romanticizes it.
A New York Times bestseller, and his most acclaimed book — a genuinely strange true story handled with real restraint rather than sensationalism.
The Art Thief
The true story of Stéphane Breitwieser, who stole an estimated $2 billion in art and antiquities from European museums over nearly eight years — not to sell, but to keep and admire alone, driven by genuine obsession rather than profit.
His most recent book, and another study of a person whose compulsion took them entirely outside ordinary social and legal boundaries.
Where to start with Michael Finkel
If you have never read him
→ Start with The Stranger in the Woods. It’s his most acclaimed and widely read book, and the one that shows his restraint at its best — a genuinely strange true story told without sensationalism.
If you want the origin story — why deception became his subject
→ True Story. Written right after his own very public firing for fabrication, it’s the book that explains why every subject he’s chosen since has involved someone hiding, lying, or reinventing themselves.
If you want his most recent work
→ The Art Thief. A different kind of obsession — theft for love rather than profit — but the same fascination with people who step entirely outside ordinary rules.
If the deception-and-identity angle is what draws you
→ My best investigative journalism books list has more reporting that gets inside a world most people never see. And my best true crime books list has the natural successors.
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From the bookshelf
“He had come to prefer the deep quiet of solitude, as if he had discovered a rare species, alive and well, deep in the woods, and this species was himself.” — Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods
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