Book #80 of 2018:

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara

The day I picked up this book, police in California announced that they had finally made an arrest in the cold case of serial rape and murder described within its pages. I’ve put off learning more about that suspect until finishing the book and writing this review, but I understand that the author, the late independent crime journalist Michelle McNamara, is considered to be highly instrumental in publicizing this forgotten case and uncovering new evidence that helped lead to the perpetrator’s long-overdue capture.

McNamara is central in this narrative, a manuscript that was completed from her notes following the author’s untimely death in 2016. True crime can be a difficult genre to write, but she and her editors synthesize their sprawling subject matter with skill, bringing great humanity as they situate readers right in the midst of the communities that the killer preyed upon in the 1970s and 80s. It’s shiver-inducing without ever becoming lurid, and McNamara makes plain why she found the obscure story captivating over two decades after the last known attack.

In addition to the terrifying crimes that the author documents, we also get a strong sense of her as a researcher, growing consumed by the mystery and convinced that a solution might lie in some old case file gathering dust. Just as readers can see a tantalizing shadow of the book McNamara intended to write, we can see how the identity of the criminal beckoned to her, keeping the author up at night with the conviction that he was just out of sight and some key clue away. This portrait of obsession is equal parts insightful and haunting, a poignant reminder that McNamara ultimately passed before getting to see her elusive adversary brought to justice.

The new developments in the Golden State Killer case will likely merit a new edition of this book with an updated afterword, but the present version already ends on a hopeful note that the investigation is closing in on its quarry. McNamara died believing that her quest for a killer was near its end, and her documentation of that quest would be an instant classic even if time hadn’t proven her right after all.

★★★★★

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