MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewMezrich is always on the lookout for the next big film adaptation. He makes this explicit in his latest book ... This may help to explain why Checkmate reads more like a screenplay than a work of nonfiction ... Though Mezrich does not consider himself a journalist, he has done some excellent reporting. This is a particularly noteworthy accomplishment when it comes to Niemann, who is clearly a difficult and irascible subject ... Mezrich often speculates when conjuring scenes, based on what the players in the drama told him, and these re-creations are often deft and insightful. Unfortunately, the subject at the heart of the story — chess — is not one that the author knows well, and in those sections of the book where he tries to explain the events of individual games, he can go wildly astray ... There are also errors in the book that have nothing to do with understanding chess ... Mezrich is good at telling a story and in Checkmate he has a good one. The characters are compelling, the events dramatic and occasionally absurd. But in trying to achieve his goal of seeing it on a big screen, he has hustled it into print too quickly.
