for the inaugural Sue Grafton Memorial Award. She is also a certified Crime Scene Analyst and certified Latent Print Examiner, beginning her forensics career at the Coroner’s office in Cleveland Ohio and then the police department in Cape Coral, Florida. She has spoken to readers and writers at numerous conferences and is one of two Guests of Honor at 2020 Killer Nashville.
Her new novel is Every Kind of Wicked.
Recently I asked Black about what she was reading. Her reply:
My next book involves scammers and fraud, so I’ve been devouring books about con-men, grifters and cult leaders for well over a year. I read The Man in the Rockefeller Suit by Mark Seal, the story of Christian Gerhartsreiter. A German expat, he conned his way through the States for thirty years; during the last twelve he convinced uber-rich and not-wealthy Americans alike that he was a descendent of the John D. Rockefeller, with all the riches that family commands. Oh, and it turns out he also murdered a few people to do it.Visit Lisa Black's website.
Impeccably dressed and incredibly intelligent, Gerhartsreiter had been born in 1961, a slightly pampered boy who grew into a good-looking teenager, intelligent and charming. Hemight have been exceedingly full of himself, but what good-looking young man isn’t? He happened to meet an American couple on vacation, invited them to his parents’ for dinner, then used their names on an application to become an exchange student in the U.S. He actually showed up on their doorstep in 1985, but only after he’d floated through a few households and one identity--that of Christopher Chichester, film executive. As Chichester he rented a garage room from a somewhat dotty landlady, though he became expert at never letting the wealthy people he hung with see exactly where he lived. But after the landlady’s son and daughter-in-law mysteriously disappeared, he moved on to another coast and another name, becoming Christopher Crowe of Greenwich, Connecticut.
I’m always fascinated by grifters--how they can be such good actors, put so much attention and intelligence into their research, while so callous that they’ll take innocent people’s emotions, money and lives without the slightest shred of remorse. Unfortunately books can never really describe exactly how they manage to fool so many people. I think it’s impossible to put into words, and is a combination of many things--their ability to read people, their ability to absorb information that would make them incredibly successful in a legitimate occupation, and the tendency to accept people when they seem to belong where they are. Once he stepped inside the exclusive clubs and homes, no one thought to ask how he’d gotten there.
--Marshal Zeringue
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