L.R. Dorn's Blog, page 2
August 13, 2021
#1 Bestseller in UK
The Anatomy of Desire: 'Reads like your favorite podcast, the hit crime doc you'll want to binge' Josh Malerman Kindle Edition
by L.R. Dorn (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.2 out of 5 stars 34 ratings
#1 Best Seller in Documentary Films
by L.R. Dorn (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.2 out of 5 stars 34 ratings
#1 Best Seller in Documentary Films
August 3, 2021
Book podcast review
Quick Book Reviews - Episode 119
Philippa interviews M W Craven about his latest book "Dead Ground" and also reviews "The Heights" by Louise Candlish, "The Disappearing Act" by Catherine Steadman, "The Anatomy of Desire" by L R Dorn. "My Best Friend’s Secret" by Emma Freud and "The Beresford" by Will Carver.
https://play.acast.com/s/quick-book-r...
Philippa interviews M W Craven about his latest book "Dead Ground" and also reviews "The Heights" by Louise Candlish, "The Disappearing Act" by Catherine Steadman, "The Anatomy of Desire" by L R Dorn. "My Best Friend’s Secret" by Emma Freud and "The Beresford" by Will Carver.
https://play.acast.com/s/quick-book-r...
July 1, 2021
5 CAPTIVATING NEW BOOKS THAT REIMAGINE CLASSIC STORIES
From Book Riot:
THE ANATOMY OF DESIRE BY L.R. DORN
Authors Matt Dorff and Suzanne Dunn make their fiction debut under the pseudonym L.R. Dorn with this riveting reimagining of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. After a woman turns up dead, Cleo Ray — the fitness influencer who was last seen with her — finds herself facing accusations of foul play. Written in the format of a true crime docuseries, The Anatomy of Desire is an innovative and riveting read that ratchets up the suspense with every page.
THE ANATOMY OF DESIRE BY L.R. DORN
Authors Matt Dorff and Suzanne Dunn make their fiction debut under the pseudonym L.R. Dorn with this riveting reimagining of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. After a woman turns up dead, Cleo Ray — the fitness influencer who was last seen with her — finds herself facing accusations of foul play. Written in the format of a true crime docuseries, The Anatomy of Desire is an innovative and riveting read that ratchets up the suspense with every page.
May 11, 2021
Interview with Mystery and Suspense Magazine
Q&A
LR Dorn
lrdorn.com
L.R. Dorn is the pseudonym for Matt Dorff and Suzanne Dunn. Matt Dorff is a Los Angeles native and graduate of the USC School of Cinematic Arts, has written, produced, and/or directed over 60 hours of dramatic television (CBS, NBC, ABC, Showtime, HBO and elsewhere). He lives in Los Angeles. Suzanne Dunn is a two-time Emmy Award winner, has written two screenplays produced and aired on Lifetime Television and Ion Television. She grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and earned degrees from Penn State and the University of Chicago.
Q. Your debut novel has its roots in both a fictional story and a true crime?
L.R.: Yes, we (L.R. Dorn is the pen name for husband-and-wife coauthors) were looking for a book we could update and reformat into a transcript-style novel that would make it feel like the streaming docuseries we just watched last night. We wanted to play with the traditional form of the novel and mix in these popular new platforms like podcasts, audiobooks, and docuseries. Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy was a huge (800-plus pages) and hugely important book in its time and spawned decades of adaptations across multiple mediums. Few people remember it today, but in the first half of the 20th century it was the American equivalent of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
Q. A Place in the Sun, the Academy Award-winning 1950s movie starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, was an adaptation of An American Tragedy, wasn’t it?
L.R: It was. Initially we were more familiar with that movie than the book. So we went back and read An American Tragedy and saw that it had what we were looking for: a strong crime narrative, a powerful courtroom drama, and themes that are as relevant today as they were a hundred years ago.
Q. For example?
L.R.: Economic inequality, the gap between the haves and have-nots, political corruption, religion, small-town versus big-city, the justice system, and the American Dream as an aspiration for status, money, and sex. The essence of the American Dream hasn’t changed since the 1920s; what’s changed is technology and media. Dreiser’s main character, Clyde Griffiths, is a young man who develops an overwhelming desire for the good life, for material success and the privileges that accompany it. When a discarded girlfriend from his own lower economic class stands in the way of him attaining his dreams, he decides to kill her.
Q. And Dreiser based An American Tragedy on a true crime?
L.R.: Yes, this was where our research took a surprising turn. Dreiser’s book is substantially based on a 1906 drowning investigation and murder trial that took place in the lakes region of upstate New York. He wasn’t merely inspired by the true crime and the people involved, he took the setting, the details of the killing, and the actual characters the newspapers were reporting on and fashioned what we might today call a nonfiction novel. He fictionalized the scenes and dialogue for the most part, but the outline of the true story is essentially identical to the outline of An American Tragedy.
Q. Tell me more about the true crime.
L.R.: Chester Gillette came from a family of Christian missionaries who were affiliated with the original Salvation Army. These were 19th century evangelicals who shunned worldly possessions. Chester wasn’t keen on the intentional poverty part of his upbringing, and approached a wealthy uncle for a job in his clothing factory, the Gillette Skirt Company. He started an affair with a working-class assembly-line employee named Grace Brown and got her pregnant. About the same time Chester began romancing a socialite named Harriet Benedict from a moneyed New York family. Grace wouldn’t consent to an abortion and demanded he marry her, so Chester had a problem. He took her up to a lake in the woods on the pretense he was going to propose to her. He rented a boat, rowed her out into the deep water, then whacked her in the face with a tennis racket and pushed her into the lake knowing she couldn’t swim.
Q. So the crime story and trial were covered extensively in the big media of the time, newspapers and magazines.
L.R.: “Girl Drowned, Escort Missing” was the first newspaper headline and it took off from there. It became the original “murder trial of the decade” in 20th century America. It had everything. A handsome, charming, man-on-the-rise suspect. A working girl victim, four months pregnant. A love triangle with a wealthy socialite that set off a scandal among New York’s upper-class. Chester pled not guilty and vigorously proclaimed his innocence all the way through. The prosecution had Grace Brown’s love letters to Chester and they were read aloud in court. It was one of those cases that has a gripping, elemental “did he, or didn’t he?” mystery at the center of it. All across the country, the public got to read the daily trial reporting and debate both sides along with the jury.
Q. What was the outcome of the trial?
L.R.: The jury found Chester Gillette guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced him to die in the electric chair. You had a poor woman murdered, a rich woman embroiled in scandal, and young man who went to his death declaring he was innocent. Chester Gillette established the American archetype of the youth who raises himself out of poverty, achieves success, then falls victim to his own ambitions and suffers the ultimate consequence. Sam Sheppard, Jeffrey MacDonald, OJ Simpson, and Scott Petersen are all variations of the social antihero first represented by Chester Gillette. He was the O.G. alpha male accused of murdering a female lover and triggering a media circus around the pursuit of justice for the tragic victim of a man’s intentional betrayal and ruthless ambition.
Q. How did you conceive the update?
L.R.: The key change we made was to take the male Chester Gillette/Clyde Griffiths and switch genders. It’s more interesting to us as a woman’s story. Our of-the-moment Cleo Ray strives for success and status by becoming a social media fitness influencer. We transformed the Gillette Skirt Company into YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. The American Dream is alive and well, like so much else it’s just shifted online.
LR Dorn
lrdorn.com
L.R. Dorn is the pseudonym for Matt Dorff and Suzanne Dunn. Matt Dorff is a Los Angeles native and graduate of the USC School of Cinematic Arts, has written, produced, and/or directed over 60 hours of dramatic television (CBS, NBC, ABC, Showtime, HBO and elsewhere). He lives in Los Angeles. Suzanne Dunn is a two-time Emmy Award winner, has written two screenplays produced and aired on Lifetime Television and Ion Television. She grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and earned degrees from Penn State and the University of Chicago.
Q. Your debut novel has its roots in both a fictional story and a true crime?
L.R.: Yes, we (L.R. Dorn is the pen name for husband-and-wife coauthors) were looking for a book we could update and reformat into a transcript-style novel that would make it feel like the streaming docuseries we just watched last night. We wanted to play with the traditional form of the novel and mix in these popular new platforms like podcasts, audiobooks, and docuseries. Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy was a huge (800-plus pages) and hugely important book in its time and spawned decades of adaptations across multiple mediums. Few people remember it today, but in the first half of the 20th century it was the American equivalent of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
Q. A Place in the Sun, the Academy Award-winning 1950s movie starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, was an adaptation of An American Tragedy, wasn’t it?
L.R: It was. Initially we were more familiar with that movie than the book. So we went back and read An American Tragedy and saw that it had what we were looking for: a strong crime narrative, a powerful courtroom drama, and themes that are as relevant today as they were a hundred years ago.
Q. For example?
L.R.: Economic inequality, the gap between the haves and have-nots, political corruption, religion, small-town versus big-city, the justice system, and the American Dream as an aspiration for status, money, and sex. The essence of the American Dream hasn’t changed since the 1920s; what’s changed is technology and media. Dreiser’s main character, Clyde Griffiths, is a young man who develops an overwhelming desire for the good life, for material success and the privileges that accompany it. When a discarded girlfriend from his own lower economic class stands in the way of him attaining his dreams, he decides to kill her.
Q. And Dreiser based An American Tragedy on a true crime?
L.R.: Yes, this was where our research took a surprising turn. Dreiser’s book is substantially based on a 1906 drowning investigation and murder trial that took place in the lakes region of upstate New York. He wasn’t merely inspired by the true crime and the people involved, he took the setting, the details of the killing, and the actual characters the newspapers were reporting on and fashioned what we might today call a nonfiction novel. He fictionalized the scenes and dialogue for the most part, but the outline of the true story is essentially identical to the outline of An American Tragedy.
Q. Tell me more about the true crime.
L.R.: Chester Gillette came from a family of Christian missionaries who were affiliated with the original Salvation Army. These were 19th century evangelicals who shunned worldly possessions. Chester wasn’t keen on the intentional poverty part of his upbringing, and approached a wealthy uncle for a job in his clothing factory, the Gillette Skirt Company. He started an affair with a working-class assembly-line employee named Grace Brown and got her pregnant. About the same time Chester began romancing a socialite named Harriet Benedict from a moneyed New York family. Grace wouldn’t consent to an abortion and demanded he marry her, so Chester had a problem. He took her up to a lake in the woods on the pretense he was going to propose to her. He rented a boat, rowed her out into the deep water, then whacked her in the face with a tennis racket and pushed her into the lake knowing she couldn’t swim.
Q. So the crime story and trial were covered extensively in the big media of the time, newspapers and magazines.
L.R.: “Girl Drowned, Escort Missing” was the first newspaper headline and it took off from there. It became the original “murder trial of the decade” in 20th century America. It had everything. A handsome, charming, man-on-the-rise suspect. A working girl victim, four months pregnant. A love triangle with a wealthy socialite that set off a scandal among New York’s upper-class. Chester pled not guilty and vigorously proclaimed his innocence all the way through. The prosecution had Grace Brown’s love letters to Chester and they were read aloud in court. It was one of those cases that has a gripping, elemental “did he, or didn’t he?” mystery at the center of it. All across the country, the public got to read the daily trial reporting and debate both sides along with the jury.
Q. What was the outcome of the trial?
L.R.: The jury found Chester Gillette guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced him to die in the electric chair. You had a poor woman murdered, a rich woman embroiled in scandal, and young man who went to his death declaring he was innocent. Chester Gillette established the American archetype of the youth who raises himself out of poverty, achieves success, then falls victim to his own ambitions and suffers the ultimate consequence. Sam Sheppard, Jeffrey MacDonald, OJ Simpson, and Scott Petersen are all variations of the social antihero first represented by Chester Gillette. He was the O.G. alpha male accused of murdering a female lover and triggering a media circus around the pursuit of justice for the tragic victim of a man’s intentional betrayal and ruthless ambition.
Q. How did you conceive the update?
L.R.: The key change we made was to take the male Chester Gillette/Clyde Griffiths and switch genders. It’s more interesting to us as a woman’s story. Our of-the-moment Cleo Ray strives for success and status by becoming a social media fitness influencer. We transformed the Gillette Skirt Company into YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. The American Dream is alive and well, like so much else it’s just shifted online.
May 6, 2021
CrimeReads Essay on True Crime
“Girl Drowned; Escort Missing.” This headline, on the front page of The Syracuse Herald’s July 13, 1906 edition, launched a crime story that still reverberates in popular American culture. The body of Grace Brown, a twenty-year-old factory worker from upstate New York, was recovered from the waters of Big Moose Lake, a fashionable boating spot in the Adirondacks. The cause of death was drowning, but cuts and bruises were found oIn 1908n her face and head, indicating she’d been beaten before falling into the lake. During the post-mortem examination, the county coroner discovered something else: Grace Brown was four months pregnant.
So began a murder case that would come to national attention, as well as to the attention of a thirty-four-year-old debut novelist named Theodore Dreiser.
A suspect was identified and arrested. Period photos of Chester Gillette, the accused, show a handsome face that appears entirely modern by current media standards—minus the wing-tipped shirt collar. Thick dark hair, confident gaze, high cheekbones, sensuous lips, a perfectly placed chin dimple, Gillette looks like he could play the heartthrob in a new Netflix series. A hundred years ago, he was known to be a young man on the rise. His uncle owned the Gillette Skirt Company in Cortland, and Chester was working his way up the managerial ranks, heading swiftly toward an executive position and all the perks that came with it.
One of the female workers under Chester Gillette’s supervision was Grace Brown, a local farm girl. In contrast, her photos show a distant Victorian era charm, with little of Gillette’s contemporary appeal. Gillette embarked on a romantic relationship with his employee, and it doesn’t take a lot to imagine their one-sided workplace power dynamic. Gillette was a “catch,” and used his position to bed young Grace and leverage her into keeping their affair a secret. Then, in the spring of 1906, Grace got pregnant. Having no intention of marrying “beneath” him, and fearing a scandal would upset his economic and romantic prospects (he was already courting a beautiful socialite from a wealthy family), Gillette decided the best way to solve his problem was to kill Grace and make it look like an accident.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT
A man murders a woman who stands in his way of social and material advancement. This was a story that intrigued novelist Dreiser as a real-life case exemplifying the dark side of the American dream. Its themes included economic inequality, the spiritual cost of materialism, the raw desire for social status and financial success. Seventeen years after Chester Gillette was executed in the electric chair following his murder conviction, Dreiser published what many consider his defining work, An American Tragedy (1925).
As Thomas P. Riggio points out in his contribution to The Cambridge Companion to Theodore Dreiser, Dreiser’s fictionalized version of the Chester Gillette murder case “benefitted from the popular interest in criminal biography, a form to which Dreiser’s masterpiece gave new life as the progenitor of documentary novels of crime such as Richard Wright’s Native Son, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, and Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song.” It turns out that Truman Capote did not invent the “nonfiction novel.” Forty years earlier, Dreiser used the framework of a shocking crime and murder trial to construct a vast narrative study of the societal and economic forces that shape a such a criminal. As Capote probed the heart and mind of Perry Smith, Dreiser went inside the heart and mind of Clyde Griffiths (he kept Chester Gillette’s initials for his made-up twin) to trace the psychological journey that transforms a relatively average person into a cold-blooded killer. And there stands the narrative formula that seems to underlie much of our ubiquitous and ongoing fascination with True Crime.
***
In preparing to write his novel, Dreiser researched at least two other sensational true crime cases of the early 20th Century, the Harry K. Thaw murder of Stanford White, and the Roland Molineux poisoning murder. Both cases were turned into media circuses by the New York press and became front page news across the country. Both defendants in those cases were high-born Americans, Thaw the son of a railroad baron, and Molineux the son of a distinguished Civil War general who made a fortune in the chemical dye business. Chester Gillette, on the other hand, was born to traveling Christian missionaries who had renounced material possessions in favor of living a life of poverty modeled after Jesus Chris, their Lord and Savior. Conversely (perhaps perversely), the young Gillette yearned for the worldly comforts afforded by financial success. When a wealthy uncle offered him a job at his clothing manufacturing plant, the twenty-two-year-old jumped at the chance.
Here was a “low-born” man, his early life dominated by religious fanaticism, whose circumstances seemed to mirror a majority of Americans at the time. Unlike Harry Thaw and Roland Molineux, Chester Gillette was a relatable and recognizable figure, the industrious striver working his way up in the land economic opportunity. He was the real life equivalent of the hero in a Horatio Alger story, the rags-to-riches archetype that set an example for the rest of the country, proving that the American dream was attainable.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT
Dreiser found in Gillette the personification of the American dream gone wrong. Seventy years after An American Tragedy’s publication, this theme would be embodied in another success story inverted by a shocking act of violence, the O.J. Simpson murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown. Gillette was neither famous or rich when he committed his act of violence, yet it was his desire for those things that drove him to destroy what he perceived as an obstacle to their attainment.
In today’s true crime docuseries and podcasts, one sees narrative techniques that echo Dreiser’s famed literary naturalism through the juxtaposition of talking heads and straightforward re-creations. These techniques inspired us to take An American Tragedy and the true crime on which it was based, and reimagine them as a crime story for our present moment. Employing the conceit of a transcript-style novel that draws its raw material from interviews, trial testimony, recorded phone calls, social media posts, and email correspondence, we sought to create a form of digital-age naturalism presented from multiple character perspectives. Our Claire Griffith shares initials with Chester Gillette and Clyde Griffiths, yet we changed her gender because today’s symbol for the American dream gone wrong is just as likely to be a female. Social media overflows with people of modest means striving for material success. Presently, that success is measured as much in the number of Instagram followers and YouTube channel subscribers as it is in the traditional trappings of affluence. Which would you rather have, a brand-new car or a million more social media followers? Many of today’s influencers would likely choose the latter. Here’s another one: Would you kill someone for a million more followers? It’s a question that may well have intrigued Theodore Dreiser.
*
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An American TragedyChester GilletteGrace BrownL.R. DornThe Anatomy of DesireTheodore Dreisertrue crime history
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L.R. Dorn
L. R. Dorn is the pseudonym for Matt Dorff and Suzanne Dunn. Matt Dorff is a Los Angeles native and graduate of the USC School of Cinematic Arts, has written, produced, and/or directed over 60 hours of dramatic television (CBS, NBC, ABC, Showtime, HBO and elsewhere). He lives in Los Angeles. Suzanne Dunn is a two-time Emmy Award winner, has written two screenplays produced and aired on Lifetime Television and Ion Television. She grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and earned degrees from Penn State and the University of Chicago. She has worked at DIRECTV and is a member of the Producers Guild of America and Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. She is also a yoga teacher and lives in Los Angeles.
So began a murder case that would come to national attention, as well as to the attention of a thirty-four-year-old debut novelist named Theodore Dreiser.
A suspect was identified and arrested. Period photos of Chester Gillette, the accused, show a handsome face that appears entirely modern by current media standards—minus the wing-tipped shirt collar. Thick dark hair, confident gaze, high cheekbones, sensuous lips, a perfectly placed chin dimple, Gillette looks like he could play the heartthrob in a new Netflix series. A hundred years ago, he was known to be a young man on the rise. His uncle owned the Gillette Skirt Company in Cortland, and Chester was working his way up the managerial ranks, heading swiftly toward an executive position and all the perks that came with it.
One of the female workers under Chester Gillette’s supervision was Grace Brown, a local farm girl. In contrast, her photos show a distant Victorian era charm, with little of Gillette’s contemporary appeal. Gillette embarked on a romantic relationship with his employee, and it doesn’t take a lot to imagine their one-sided workplace power dynamic. Gillette was a “catch,” and used his position to bed young Grace and leverage her into keeping their affair a secret. Then, in the spring of 1906, Grace got pregnant. Having no intention of marrying “beneath” him, and fearing a scandal would upset his economic and romantic prospects (he was already courting a beautiful socialite from a wealthy family), Gillette decided the best way to solve his problem was to kill Grace and make it look like an accident.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT
A man murders a woman who stands in his way of social and material advancement. This was a story that intrigued novelist Dreiser as a real-life case exemplifying the dark side of the American dream. Its themes included economic inequality, the spiritual cost of materialism, the raw desire for social status and financial success. Seventeen years after Chester Gillette was executed in the electric chair following his murder conviction, Dreiser published what many consider his defining work, An American Tragedy (1925).
As Thomas P. Riggio points out in his contribution to The Cambridge Companion to Theodore Dreiser, Dreiser’s fictionalized version of the Chester Gillette murder case “benefitted from the popular interest in criminal biography, a form to which Dreiser’s masterpiece gave new life as the progenitor of documentary novels of crime such as Richard Wright’s Native Son, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, and Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song.” It turns out that Truman Capote did not invent the “nonfiction novel.” Forty years earlier, Dreiser used the framework of a shocking crime and murder trial to construct a vast narrative study of the societal and economic forces that shape a such a criminal. As Capote probed the heart and mind of Perry Smith, Dreiser went inside the heart and mind of Clyde Griffiths (he kept Chester Gillette’s initials for his made-up twin) to trace the psychological journey that transforms a relatively average person into a cold-blooded killer. And there stands the narrative formula that seems to underlie much of our ubiquitous and ongoing fascination with True Crime.
***
In preparing to write his novel, Dreiser researched at least two other sensational true crime cases of the early 20th Century, the Harry K. Thaw murder of Stanford White, and the Roland Molineux poisoning murder. Both cases were turned into media circuses by the New York press and became front page news across the country. Both defendants in those cases were high-born Americans, Thaw the son of a railroad baron, and Molineux the son of a distinguished Civil War general who made a fortune in the chemical dye business. Chester Gillette, on the other hand, was born to traveling Christian missionaries who had renounced material possessions in favor of living a life of poverty modeled after Jesus Chris, their Lord and Savior. Conversely (perhaps perversely), the young Gillette yearned for the worldly comforts afforded by financial success. When a wealthy uncle offered him a job at his clothing manufacturing plant, the twenty-two-year-old jumped at the chance.
Here was a “low-born” man, his early life dominated by religious fanaticism, whose circumstances seemed to mirror a majority of Americans at the time. Unlike Harry Thaw and Roland Molineux, Chester Gillette was a relatable and recognizable figure, the industrious striver working his way up in the land economic opportunity. He was the real life equivalent of the hero in a Horatio Alger story, the rags-to-riches archetype that set an example for the rest of the country, proving that the American dream was attainable.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT
Dreiser found in Gillette the personification of the American dream gone wrong. Seventy years after An American Tragedy’s publication, this theme would be embodied in another success story inverted by a shocking act of violence, the O.J. Simpson murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown. Gillette was neither famous or rich when he committed his act of violence, yet it was his desire for those things that drove him to destroy what he perceived as an obstacle to their attainment.
In today’s true crime docuseries and podcasts, one sees narrative techniques that echo Dreiser’s famed literary naturalism through the juxtaposition of talking heads and straightforward re-creations. These techniques inspired us to take An American Tragedy and the true crime on which it was based, and reimagine them as a crime story for our present moment. Employing the conceit of a transcript-style novel that draws its raw material from interviews, trial testimony, recorded phone calls, social media posts, and email correspondence, we sought to create a form of digital-age naturalism presented from multiple character perspectives. Our Claire Griffith shares initials with Chester Gillette and Clyde Griffiths, yet we changed her gender because today’s symbol for the American dream gone wrong is just as likely to be a female. Social media overflows with people of modest means striving for material success. Presently, that success is measured as much in the number of Instagram followers and YouTube channel subscribers as it is in the traditional trappings of affluence. Which would you rather have, a brand-new car or a million more social media followers? Many of today’s influencers would likely choose the latter. Here’s another one: Would you kill someone for a million more followers? It’s a question that may well have intrigued Theodore Dreiser.
*
Share:
Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)More
An American TragedyChester GilletteGrace BrownL.R. DornThe Anatomy of DesireTheodore Dreisertrue crime history
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L.R. Dorn
L. R. Dorn is the pseudonym for Matt Dorff and Suzanne Dunn. Matt Dorff is a Los Angeles native and graduate of the USC School of Cinematic Arts, has written, produced, and/or directed over 60 hours of dramatic television (CBS, NBC, ABC, Showtime, HBO and elsewhere). He lives in Los Angeles. Suzanne Dunn is a two-time Emmy Award winner, has written two screenplays produced and aired on Lifetime Television and Ion Television. She grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and earned degrees from Penn State and the University of Chicago. She has worked at DIRECTV and is a member of the Producers Guild of America and Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. She is also a yoga teacher and lives in Los Angeles.
April 18, 2021
Top of list Washington Post
By Richard Lipez
April 18, 2021 at 6:00 a.m. PDT
Escape to California, Lebanon, Connecticut, Provence and not-so-merry England in these five first-rate new mysteries and thrillers. Sure, readers will find plenty of danger, intrigue and suspense in these pages, but it’s all at a comfortably safe distance.
"The Anatomy of Desire," by L.R. Dorn
Among the career possibilities my high school guidance counselor never mentioned to me some years back was “social media influencer.” This peculiar phenomenon is at the center of L.R. Dorn’s spicy update of Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 classic, “An American Tragedy.” In the original, social-climbing Clyde Griffiths is accused of drowning his pregnant girlfriend so he can marry a socialite. In the version by Dorn — pseudonym of Los Angeles husband-and-wife screenwriting team Matt Dorff and Suzanne Dunn — “fit-fluencer” Cleo Ray is charged with killing her lesbian lover so she can move up the social scale with male “sports brand ambassador” Sandy Finch. The novel is written in the form of a docuseries like “Serial,” and like that cool potboiler, “The Anatomy of Desire” cruises along with nary a bump in the road. (Morrow, May 11)
April 18, 2021 at 6:00 a.m. PDT
Escape to California, Lebanon, Connecticut, Provence and not-so-merry England in these five first-rate new mysteries and thrillers. Sure, readers will find plenty of danger, intrigue and suspense in these pages, but it’s all at a comfortably safe distance.
"The Anatomy of Desire," by L.R. Dorn
Among the career possibilities my high school guidance counselor never mentioned to me some years back was “social media influencer.” This peculiar phenomenon is at the center of L.R. Dorn’s spicy update of Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 classic, “An American Tragedy.” In the original, social-climbing Clyde Griffiths is accused of drowning his pregnant girlfriend so he can marry a socialite. In the version by Dorn — pseudonym of Los Angeles husband-and-wife screenwriting team Matt Dorff and Suzanne Dunn — “fit-fluencer” Cleo Ray is charged with killing her lesbian lover so she can move up the social scale with male “sports brand ambassador” Sandy Finch. The novel is written in the form of a docuseries like “Serial,” and like that cool potboiler, “The Anatomy of Desire” cruises along with nary a bump in the road. (Morrow, May 11)
April 12, 2021
Library Journal starred review
MYSTERYThe Anatomy of Desire by L.R Dorn Morrow. May 2021. 320p. ISBN 9780063041929. $27.99. THRILLER COPY ISBN This modern reimagining of Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 novel, An American Tragedy by Dorn (TV writers/producers Matt Dorff and Suzanne Dunn) takes readers through the intimate details of a mysterious drowning and the sensational trial that follows. A witness spots rising social media fitness influencer Cleo Ray fleeing the lake where a woman drowned. Beck Alden told her mother she thought Cleo would propose to her at the lake, but Cleo had other intentions. During the investigation before and after her arrest, and subsequent trial, both the prosecution and defense highlight Cleo’s tough childhood, the foundation for her disastrous choices. Raised as Claire Griffith by her devout missionary parents, she fled her Midwestern life at 15 and reinvented herself in California. Cleo’s desires behind her rise to fame and her ultimate unraveling are revealed as the trial unfolds. The novel is written in a docuseries format, jumping from testimony to inner thoughts to documentary statements of various participants in a fast-paced narrative.VERDICT For fans of true crime and podcasts such as Serial, this riveting mock podcast docudrama ratchets up the suspense as readers glimpse every angle of the story from a 360–degree view.
March 30, 2021
Publisher's Weekly interviews L.R. Dorn
Dorn’s debut, The Anatomy of Desire (Morrow, May.), views the competitive world of social influencers through a gender-bending lens of crime and obsession. (Dorn, the pen name of Suzanne Dunn and Matt Dorff, have elected to answer jointly.)
Q: What explains the rise of social media influencers?
A: Social climbing in the digital age is the new American dream. The more followers you gain, the higher your status. We believed the world of influencers would resonate for readers and embody the themes we wanted to explore. Suzanne has seen fellow yoga teachers build popular brands through social platforms, and Matt has followed the rise of various influencers. It takes time and creativity to produce likable content. It’s hard work.
Q: Why did you format the book to read like a podcast?
A: Docuseries have become a favorite form of serial storytelling, and we wanted to tap into that. Given our screenwriting backgrounds, it felt natural to write for a panorama of voices. We varied the pacing by intercutting longer and shorter character commentaries. We gave our lead, Cleo Ray, some extended monologues to challenge her reliability as a narrator.
Q: Is the fictional crime in the story, a reimagining of a crime in Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, based on a real case?
A: Dreiser had been drawn to a 1906 murder case in which a young man took his pregnant girlfriend boating. Later she was found dead in the lake. Dreiser substantially based his characters and plot on this true crime sensationalized in the national press.
Q: Why the many courtroom scenes?
A: Courtroom scenes are inherently dramatic in the conflict between opposing attorneys and in witness questioning. We wanted the trial to climax with the cross-examination of the defendant, pitting a middle-aged prosecutor against a young social media star. These two lock horns in a battle of wills and words with stakes as high as they get.
Q: Why did you set the crime and the trial in California’s conservative Inyo County?
A: We’re exploring the contrast in cultural norms between big city and small town. Cleo Ray is a big-city influencer with a fluid sexuality who’s accused of murdering her lesbian girlfriend. That trial in a rural town is morally controversial in a different way than it would be in Los Angeles. Ironically, the small-town district attorney, a churchgoing Christian, is the one fighting for a lesbian victim. We’re attracted to those kinds of complexities.
Q: What explains the rise of social media influencers?
A: Social climbing in the digital age is the new American dream. The more followers you gain, the higher your status. We believed the world of influencers would resonate for readers and embody the themes we wanted to explore. Suzanne has seen fellow yoga teachers build popular brands through social platforms, and Matt has followed the rise of various influencers. It takes time and creativity to produce likable content. It’s hard work.
Q: Why did you format the book to read like a podcast?
A: Docuseries have become a favorite form of serial storytelling, and we wanted to tap into that. Given our screenwriting backgrounds, it felt natural to write for a panorama of voices. We varied the pacing by intercutting longer and shorter character commentaries. We gave our lead, Cleo Ray, some extended monologues to challenge her reliability as a narrator.
Q: Is the fictional crime in the story, a reimagining of a crime in Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, based on a real case?
A: Dreiser had been drawn to a 1906 murder case in which a young man took his pregnant girlfriend boating. Later she was found dead in the lake. Dreiser substantially based his characters and plot on this true crime sensationalized in the national press.
Q: Why the many courtroom scenes?
A: Courtroom scenes are inherently dramatic in the conflict between opposing attorneys and in witness questioning. We wanted the trial to climax with the cross-examination of the defendant, pitting a middle-aged prosecutor against a young social media star. These two lock horns in a battle of wills and words with stakes as high as they get.
Q: Why did you set the crime and the trial in California’s conservative Inyo County?
A: We’re exploring the contrast in cultural norms between big city and small town. Cleo Ray is a big-city influencer with a fluid sexuality who’s accused of murdering her lesbian girlfriend. That trial in a rural town is morally controversial in a different way than it would be in Los Angeles. Ironically, the small-town district attorney, a churchgoing Christian, is the one fighting for a lesbian victim. We’re attracted to those kinds of complexities.
March 12, 2021
Starred review in PW
The Anatomy of Desire
L.R. Dorn. Morrow, $27.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-06-304192-9
"Centered on the world of social media influencers, the pseudonymous Dorn’s remarkable debut takes the form of a true crime docuseries. Cleo Ray, who’s bisexual and has risen from a humble background to become a successful fitness coach and social media influencer, and her lesbian girlfriend, Beck Alden, row their rented canoe to a secluded cove on Serene Lake near Bishop, Calif. The canoe is later found overturned, with Beck’s bruised body floating nearby. Cleo flees to the town of Mammoth Lakes to rendezvous with her YouTube star boyfriend for a camping trip, never mentioning Beck or the canoe incident. Before long, the sheriff investigating the drowning finds and arrests Cleo. Cleo’s uncle, the owner of a talent management agency, hires a high-powered L.A. defense attorney to represent her. The riveting trial, during which Cleo constantly changes her story, comes down to circumstantial evidence. The prosecutor even brings the canoe into the courtroom to reenact the crime. With no witnesses to the murder, readers will breathlessly await the verdict. Dorn, the pen name of husband-and-wife team Matt Dorff and Suzanne Dunn, is definitely a writer to watch." (May)
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L.R. Dorn. Morrow, $27.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-06-304192-9
"Centered on the world of social media influencers, the pseudonymous Dorn’s remarkable debut takes the form of a true crime docuseries. Cleo Ray, who’s bisexual and has risen from a humble background to become a successful fitness coach and social media influencer, and her lesbian girlfriend, Beck Alden, row their rented canoe to a secluded cove on Serene Lake near Bishop, Calif. The canoe is later found overturned, with Beck’s bruised body floating nearby. Cleo flees to the town of Mammoth Lakes to rendezvous with her YouTube star boyfriend for a camping trip, never mentioning Beck or the canoe incident. Before long, the sheriff investigating the drowning finds and arrests Cleo. Cleo’s uncle, the owner of a talent management agency, hires a high-powered L.A. defense attorney to represent her. The riveting trial, during which Cleo constantly changes her story, comes down to circumstantial evidence. The prosecutor even brings the canoe into the courtroom to reenact the crime. With no witnesses to the murder, readers will breathlessly await the verdict. Dorn, the pen name of husband-and-wife team Matt Dorff and Suzanne Dunn, is definitely a writer to watch." (May)
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