Praise for David Grann’s
“These straightforward tales grip you as unrelentingly as the suckered appendages of the giant squid Grann attempts to track down in ‘The Squid Hunter.’ ”—
“Titillating.… Evidence of Grann’s abundant talent as a writer.”—
“The most powerful essay I read this year was David Grann’s ‘Trial by Fire.’ ”—David Brooks,
“The truth is always stranger than fiction, even when it comes to murder mysteries. That’s the take-home lesson of Grann’s latest collection, which brings together twelve stories of real-life mysteries, each one stranger and more gripping than the last.”—
“A gifted storyteller, Grann has a Sherlock Holmesian gift for unearthing facts that are hidden in plain sight, presenting a crystal-clear narrative and letting his compelling cast of characters speak for themselves.… Easily worth the price of admission, a visit to Grann’s rogue’s gallery is likely to leave you with a sense, at once awful and awesome, of the profound desire we all have for recognition.”—
“Beautifully constructed, highly improbable real life reports.”—
“Eclectic.… Skilfully crafted.… [Grann] does not just tell these bizarre tales, he meets, interviews, gets to know and seems to understand many of his strange subjects.”—
“There is humanity in the writing, and it’s all the more impressive that Grann manages to evoke it without drawing any attention to himself; his tales are first-person ones, but they don’t foreground the writer in that manner so popular among magazine editors today. Indeed, his selflessness as a writer, along with his gentle rectitude, cause him to bear a resemblance to another hero who never hogs the spotlight: Holmes’s assistant, Watson. Rarely does modesty produce such stunning results.”—
“Thoroughly documented, well written and full of surprises.”—
“Grann’s in-depth reporting and vivid writing make this worthwhile reading for lovers of good journalism.”—
David Grann
David Grann is a staff writer at
www.davidgrann.com
Also by David Grann
The Lost City of Z
FOR ZACHARY AND ELLA
Introduction
Reporting, like detective work, is a process of elimination. It requires that you gather and probe innumerable versions of a story until, to borrow a phrase from Sherlock Holmes, “the one which remains must be the truth.”
Although Holmes is the subject of just one of the stories in this collection, about the curious death of the world’s foremost Holmes expert, all twelve contain elements of intrigue. Many of the protagonists are sleuths: a Polish detective trying to determine whether an author planted clues to a real murder in his postmodern novel; scientists who are stalking a sea monster; a con man who suddenly suspects that he may be the one who is being conned. Even the stories that seem cut from a different cloth deal in mystery of a kind: the secret world of sandhogs digging water tunnels under New York City, or the riddle of an aging but ageless baseball star.
Unlike the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, these tales are all true. The protagonists are mortal: as with Dr. Watson, they can see, but they don’t necessarily observe. Pieces of the puzzle often remain elusive. Their stories do not always end happily. Some of the characters are driven to deception and murder. Others go mad.
Part of Holmes’s appeal is that he restores order to a bewildering universe. But it is the messiness of life, and the human struggle to make sense of it, that drew me to the subjects in this collection. As Holmes once conceded to Dr. Watson, “If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most
