forgery: true crime

Yesterday at Barnes and Noble, I asked for help finding the book The Poet and the Murderer, subtitled A True Story of Literary Crime and the Art of Forgery, and I was directed to the True Crime section. I had wandered the store a bit, looking in the writing section and the essays section, even the biography section, but with no luck. How does one--or how does a bookstore like B&N--categorize forgery? This is true crime, my friends. Nestled among books about Elizabeth Smart and Andrea Yates and Amber Frey was The Poet and the Murderer, a book detailing the forgery of an Emily Dickinson poem in the mid-90s and, though I haven't gotten there yet, the forgery of Mormon documents by the "counterfeit artist" Mark Hofmann. Interesting, isn't it, that he's an "artist." Con artist. Counterfeit artist. The art of forgery. All of these terms imply a definition of manipulation as a kind of art. Imagine this: the art of plagiarism.

Reading this book is like reading a mystery novel, but the question isn't whodunnit, but how'd they do that? Love love love this stuff.