Author Guide · Lisanne Swart
Authors Like John Carreyrou
Bad Blood set a template that a specific kind of business journalist has been working from ever since: get inside a fraud that powerful people are actively trying to keep hidden, document it with enough precision to survive the inevitable lawsuits, and write it with the pace of a thriller even though every fact is footnoted. Carreyrou only wrote one book, so if it worked on you, here’s where to go next — writers doing the same kind of reporting on different frauds, in different industries, at a similar scale of ambition.
Some of these are financial journalists documenting corporate collapse. Others are reporters who spent years chasing a single powerful subject the way Carreyrou chased Theranos. All of them share his core method: meticulous documentation used to tell a story that reads like fiction but isn’t.
By Lisanne Swart · 6 authors · Investigative Journalism · Updated August 2026
Quick answerThe authors most similar to John Carreyrou are Bethany McLean, whose The Smartest Guys in the Room documents the Enron fraud with the same insider precision as Bad Blood, and Bradley Hope & Tom Wright, whose Billion Dollar Whale is often cited as the closest book to Bad Blood in scale, pacing, and reporting method.
| Author | Closest to Carreyrou for |
|---|
| Bethany McLean | Corporate fraud reporting with the same forensic financial detail (Enron) |
| Bradley Hope & Tom Wright | The book most directly compared to Bad Blood in scale and pacing (1MDB fraud) |
| Michael Lewis | The dominant voice in narrative financial journalism the genre grew out of |
| Ronan Farrow | Years-long insider investigation against subjects actively trying to kill the story |
| Brad Stone | Deep access reporting on a single powerful tech company |
| Nick Bilton | Silicon Valley fraud and deception, told with narrative pace |
01
Financial JournalismBethany McLean
McLean’s 2001 Fortune article asking “Is Enron Overpriced?” was the first major crack in Enron’s public image, and her follow-up book, The Smartest Guys in the Room (with Peter Elkind), traces the company’s collapse from a modest pipeline operator into a $70 billion accounting fraud. The forensic detail — following the money through invented accounting structures — is close kin to how Carreyrou traced Theranos’s fabricated blood tests.
If what you liked about Bad Blood was watching a journalist out-work a company’s PR machine using nothing but documents and patient sourcing, McLean is the closest match in method.
02
Investigative JournalismBradley Hope & Tom Wright
Two former Wall Street Journal reporters, Hope and Wright co-wrote Billion Dollar Whale, the definitive account of Jho Low, the Malaysian financier who siphoned billions from a sovereign wealth fund to bankroll a Hollywood-adjacent lifestyle — including financing The Wolf of Wall Street with stolen money. It’s frequently named alongside Bad Blood as the two books that defined this genre in the 2018–2019 window.
The single closest read to Bad Blood on this list: same scale of audacity, same reporting rigor, same thriller pacing built entirely from real documents.
03
Financial JournalismMichael Lewis
Lewis essentially built the modern genre of narrative financial journalism — The Big Short on the 2008 mortgage crisis, Flash Boys on high-frequency trading, and Going Infinite on the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX. He’s less focused on a single villain than Carreyrou usually is, more interested in the systems that let fraud happen in the first place.
If Bad Blood made you want to understand not just Theranos but the broader Silicon Valley funding culture that let it happen, Lewis is the writer who zooms out to that level.
04
Investigative JournalismRonan Farrow
Farrow’s Catch and Kill documents his years-long investigation into Harvey Weinstein, including the private intelligence operatives allegedly hired to surveil and intimidate him during his reporting — a real echo of the pressure Theranos applied to Carreyrou and his sources during the Journal’s investigation.
If the parts of Bad Blood about being surveilled and threatened were what stuck with you most, Catch and Kill is built almost entirely around that same experience.
Read the full author guide →
05
Tech & Business JournalismBrad Stone
Stone’s The Everything Store and its sequel Amazon Unbound are deeply reported accounts of Amazon’s rise, built on hundreds of interviews with current and former employees, in the same access-heavy tradition Carreyrou used to reconstruct life inside Theranos.
Less about outright fraud and more about ruthless internal culture, but the reporting method — patient accumulation of insider testimony — will feel familiar to Bad Blood readers.
06
Tech JournalismNick Bilton
Bilton’s American Kingpin tells the story of Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the dark web marketplace Silk Road, with the same narrative-thriller pacing Carreyrou brings to Theranos — a tech founder’s self-mythology colliding with the reality investigators eventually uncover.
A slightly pulpier read than Bad Blood, but the shape of the story — a founder’s carefully built public image unraveling under investigation — is very similar.
Frequently asked questions about authors like John Carreyrou
What should I read if I liked Bad Blood?
Billion Dollar Whale by Bradley Hope and Tom Wright is the most frequently recommended follow-up, matching Bad Blood in scale, pacing, and reporting rigor while covering the 1MDB financial fraud instead of Theranos. The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, on the Enron collapse, is the other most common comparison.
Who writes similar to John Carreyrou?
Bethany McLean and the writing team of Bradley Hope and Tom Wright are the closest matches in reporting method and subject matter — all specialize in meticulously documented corporate and financial fraud told with narrative pace. Ronan Farrow is the closest match for the experience of being actively investigated and pressured by a subject during reporting.
Is there a book like Bad Blood about a different industry?
Yes. American Kingpin by Nick Bilton covers the dark web marketplace Silk Road with similar narrative pacing, and Brad Stone’s Amazon books apply the same deep-access reporting method to Amazon’s corporate culture rather than fraud specifically.
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