The Investigator

Praise

“Finally a real private eye tells how it’s done. And this investigator—Terry Lenzner—plied his craft at the highest levels of power: from Nixon and Watergate and Howard Hughes, to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, John Kerry and the Swift Boaters, Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed. A fascinating work of history, absorbing and fun to read.”
—Lesley Stahl

“I stayed up until the wee hours reading this fascinating book. Lenzner played an important behind-the-scenes role in most of the great dramas of the second half of the 20th Century, from Selma to Watergate to the CIA hearings to the Clinton impeachment. He’s a great storyteller and shrewd judge of character who tells us—finally—where so many of the important bodies are buried.”
—Jonathan Alter, author of The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies
 
“Terry Lenzner’s is an exemplary life of brilliance, pragmatism and derring-do. His memoir reveals an astonishing involvement in every sector of US life from Big Oil to High Art. An absorbing account of dedicated public service, cunning intrigue and Beltway politics.”
—Monroe E. Price, Director, Center for Global Communications Studies Annenberg School for Communication

“If you want to read riveting, true-story crime-busting tales this is your book. Terry Lenzner has uncovered the truth while investigating everything from political shenanigans to movie star misdeeds and international intrigue. His stints in the Justice Department during the civil rights era and the famous Senate Watergate Committee are just some of the history-making moments where he’s played a key role as the pre-eminent private investigator of our time.”
—Cokie Roberts, political commentator, NPR and ABC News

“Terry Lenzner is unique in combining his life as a brilliant, dogged, energetic, creative, no-holds-barred investigator with a deep and abiding commitment to human and civil rights and liberties.”
—Victor S. Navasky, author of National Book Award winning Naming Names and former editor of The Nation

“Terry Lenzner is a linebacker for truth. He has an instinct for sniffing out deception and the courage to tackle it. He is professional in ways that put lawyers to shame.”
—Charles Nesson, William F. Weld Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society
“At one point, lawyer Lenzner was called one of the most powerful and dreaded private investigators in the world. His famous clients have included politicians and celebrities, governments and corporations….Yet what strikes the reader is how insightful Lenzer is, and how humble he seems….He lists the qualities that make a good investigator, such as curiosity, persistence, intuition, and imagination. A compelling memoir about a fascinating life.”
— Booklist

“One of Washington’s most in-the-know private eyes spills the beans in this canny memoir…. The truth Lenzner unveils, in part through shrewd thumbnails of everyone from John Dean to Kenneth Starr, is more about character and motive—the arrogant delusions that spawn and sustain malfeasance, and the resentments and idealism that spur informants and whistleblowers. The result is a low-key but absorbing study of the hidden impulses behind corruption and scandal.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“Lenzner deplores the hyperpartisan tenor of today’s Washington D.C., where “all that matters is the spin”…. He’s his own man, interested only in ethically gathering and analyzing facts and dedicated solely to uncovering the truth. A spirited recounting of a highly unusual life in the law.”—Kirkus

“What can we say about Terry Lenzner, a curious hybrid of Harvard-trained lawyer and dirt-digging Washington private eye? The Investigator [covers] a remarkable 50-year career with periods of both light and shadow….a time capsule of adventuresome sleuthing [that] traces the contours of U.S. political history.”
—Richard Leiby, The Washington Post

“In his dynamite new memoir, The Investigator, Terry Lenzner combines intriguing stories like these with an up-close history of America over the past half century. As a government lawyer, private attorney, and successful investigator, Lenzner was involved in a mind-boggling number of historic events—from the Mississippi Burning murders to Watergate, from the Alaskan Oil Pipeline inquiry to prosecuting the New York mob, from investigating Princess Diana’s death to the impeachment of President Clinton….Ultimately, The Investigator is about the meaning of truth, and how it has devolved in America over the past 40 years from a conclusion based on facts to something much more subjective.”
—Jake Whitney, The Daily Beast

“Mr. Lenzner has enjoyed a varied career that stretches from the civil-rights movement to the present day. Zelig-like, he keeps popping up at the various intersection points of politics, journalism and the law. Detailed yet accessible, The Investigator presents a breezy tour of postwar America by a relentless pursuer of concealed facts, a hired gun whose services can be purchased but whose allegiances cannot….he can be refreshingly iconoclastic in his views of the people and events he has observed up close….So decisive have been his victories that those who have encountered him are divisible into two groups: those who thanked God he was on their side and those who rued that he wasn’t.”
—James Rosen, The Wall Street Journal

“[Terry Lenzner’s] The Investigator reads like a Forrest-Gump-style catalogue of cases that have caught the public eye–from the murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi, to the Harrisburg 7’s federal case for antiwar activism, to Watergate, the Unabomber, Monica Lewinsky and the death of Princess Diana….Impressively, this seasoned investigator is also a fine writer. His story opens compellingly, giving background while simultaneously jumping right into the action….an absorbing and intelligent sampling of American history, told in puzzles and—sometimes—solutions.”
—Julia Jenkins, Shelf Awareness, STARRED REVIEW