[A] tight, gripping book...This bit of noir, from Mr. Kirn about Clark Rockefeller, is just right. -- Janet Maslin - New York Times Book Review
In this smart, real-life psychological thriller, the fake Rockefeller is a zombie Gatsby and Kirn the post-apocalyptic Fitzgerald. -- Nina Burleigh - New York Times Book Review
In this smart, real-life psychological thriller, the fake Rockefeller is a zombie Gatsby and Kirn the post-apocalyptic Fitzgerald. -- Nina Burleigh - The New York Times Book Review
A gripping performance! -- Edmund White
Has the power and insight and raw energy of an instant classic. -- Amy Hempel
There is no finer guide to the American berserk than Walter Kirn. -- Gary Shteyngart
The parallels with Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley are not lost on Kirn, who spends as much time trying to understand how he and others fell under Gerhartstreiter's spell as he does relating the primary tale of the criminal himself. Kirn's candor, ear for dialogue, and crisp prose make for a masterful true crime narrative that is impossible to put down. The book deserves to become a classic. -- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
Kirn bravely lays bare his own vanities and follies in this heart-pounding true tale; he examines the hold of fiction on the human imagination-how we live for it and occasionally die for it, too. -- Judith Newman - More Magazine
The story of Blood Will Out is one of cosmic ironies and jaw-dropping reversals... What makes Blood Will Out so absorbing is its teller more than its subject. Kirn's persona is captivating-funny, pissed off, highly literate, and self-searching. He's also an elegant, classic writer... Add the highly readable, intricately told Blood Will Out to the list of great books about the dizzying tensions of the writing life and the maddening difficulty of getting at the truth. -- Amity Gaige - Slate
[A] fascinating account of the imposter he considered his friend for 10 years... Blood Will Out is an exploration of a hoaxer from the point of view of a mark, and of a relationship based on interlocking deceptions and self-deceptions. The result is a moral tale about the dangers of social climbing on a rickety ladder-for both those trying to scramble up the rungs and those trying to hold it steady below. -- Heller McAlpin - The Washington Post
A melange of memoir, stranger-than-fiction crime reporting and cultural critique. The literary markers run the gamut from James Ellroy's My Dark Places, and Fyodor Doestoevsky's Crime and Punishment to Patricia Highsmith's Ripley trilogy and Strangers on a Train. Kirn's self-lacerating meditations on class, art, vanity, ambition, betrayal and delusion elevate the material beyond its pulpy core... Kirn's belated acceptance of reality provides the most fascinating and frustrating element of this engaging, self-flagellating memoir. -- Larry Lebowitz - Miami Herald
One of the most honest, compelling and strangest books about the relationship between a writer and his subject ever penned by an American scribe... Each new revelation comes subtly, and each adds to the pathetic and creepy portrait of Clark Rockefeller as a vacuous manipulator... The ending of Blood Will Out is at once deeply ambiguous and deeply satisfying. By then, Kirn has looked into the eyes of a cruel, empty man-and learned a lot about himself in the process. -- Hector Tobar - Los Angeles Times
Kirn's account of his friendship with this strange and terrible man cuts through the frippery of Gerhartsreiter's outrageous affectations to reveal the Lovecraftian nightmare hiding beneath the J. Press blazer. Blood Will Out is a wise, deeply frightening, and potentially sleep-disrupting read... In the end, Kirn manages to transform his personal account of one of this century's most aberrant personalities into a vessel bearing universal truths about narrative, evil, and the American Dream itself. -- Eugenia Williamson - Boston Globe
Absorbing... If there's anything rarer than a con man with Clark's gift for the game, it's a writer of Kirn's quicksilver accomplishment... To have someone of Kirn's ability write about the case from the inside promises exceptional insight into the way such tricksters operate and the even greater enigma of what motivates them. -- Laura Miller - Salon.com
One of the most honest, compelling and strangest books about the relationship between a writer and his subject ever penned by an American scribe- Each new revelation comes subtly, and each adds to the pathetic and creepy portrait of Clark Rockefeller as a vacuous manipulator- The ending of Blood Will Out is at once deeply ambiguous and deeply satisfying. By then, Kirn has looked into the eyes of a cruel, empty man-and learned a lot about himself in the process. -- Hector Tobar - Los Angeles Times
Engrossing... A haunting, pained and terrifically engaging self-interrogation. -- Charles Finch - Chicago Tribune
A nod to a different canon of con men and tricksters: the protagonist of Melville's The Confidence-Man, the prep-school clones of Leopold and Loeb of Hitchcock's Rope, and Highsmith's highbrow hucksters-all crossed with the shadows of film noir. -- Eric Banks - Bookforum