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Revision as of 16:56, 25 June 2006 by Onefortyone (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Suzanne Finstad (born 1955) is an American lawyer, author and biographer. She is the award-winning author of a number of literary works, including the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood (2001).
Finstad received the prestigious Frank Wardlaw Prize for literary excellence for her first book, Heir Not Apparent (1984), drawn from her experiences as a young law clerk and trial attorney investigating claims to the billion-dollar estate of legendary industrialist, aviator and filmmaker Howard Hughes, who appeared to have died without a valid will. Her second book, Ulterior Motives: The Killing and Dark Legacy of Tycoon Henry Kyle (1987), took her into the genre of the nonfiction novel created by Truman Capote’s true crime masterpiece In Cold Blood, centering on a spectacular murder trial which revealed that self-made millionaire Kyle, shot by his older son, had a violent Jekyll-Hyde personality and a lifetime of secrets, including a hidden wife and daughter. According to Publishers Weekly, much of the book "is tedious in its over-attention to detail."
Finstad then wrote the national bestseller Sleeping with the Devil (1991), the harrowing true story about the murder-for-hire of Barbra Piotrowski, a California beauty queen in a destructive love triangle with a married Texas health club tycoon named Richard Minns, alleged to have hired the assassins who shot and paralyzed Piotrowski. Finstad’s research led to Minns’s arrest for felony passport fraud after he fled the country using assumed names..
Following the success of Sleeping with the Devil, Suzanne Finstad wrote a trio of insightful, groundbreaking biographies of Priscilla Presley (1997), Natalie Wood (2001) and Warren Beatty (2005). In Child Bride: The Untold Story of Priscilla Beaulieu Presley (1997), Finstad offers a revealing, bittersweet account of the courtship and marriage of Elvis Presley and 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu based on extensive interviews with family, close friends, classmates, co-stars and Priscilla Presley, shattering long-established myths. The latter filed a lawsuit against Currie Grant for his claim that he had sex with her in exchange for introducing her to Elvis and a judgment was entered against Grant. Neither Finstad nor her publisher was a party to the lawsuit. Finstad says she stands by the account of the affair in her book.
Sleeping With the Devil and Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood were adapted for television – the former fairly successfully but the latter was poorly executed by director Peter Bogdanovich, lacking the emotional appeal of Natasha and ignoring the dark implications of Finstad’s exhaustive research in favor of a drowning sequence based purely in fantasy.
Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood was named the best film book of 2001 by the San Francisco Chronicle. Finstad’s most recent biography, Warren Beatty: A Private Man, was selected as one of the top five entertainment books of 2005 by the Times of London.