SOURCE: "Joe McGinniss," in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 238, October 18, 1991, pp. 40-1.

[In the following essay, Dahlin profiles true-crime writer Joe McGinniss.]

Until the telephone rang in mid-February last year, Cruel Doubt hadn't been even a scribble in Joe McGinniss's notebook.

He'd signed a two-book contract with Simon & Schuster in the summer of 1988, but the subjects were not specified, and he had no desire to follow up Fatal Vision and Blind Faith with another disturbing scrutiny of a family slashed apart by murder. His commitment was only for one manuscript by the end of 1991 and the second by the end of 1994.

"I wanted to sell books like a novelist," says McGinniss of the agreement, negotiated by agent Mort Janklow. "You don't ask Philip Roth for an outline of his next book."

He's on the terrace behind his commodious home just outside Williamstown, Mass. Tall and invincibly low-key, McGinniss looks his...