Reviews with content warning for Stalking - Nieuchwytni. Jak rozwiązywałem sprawy z Archiwum X

On one hand, I think this was an interesting real-life look at the investigative side of true crime. I wasn’t a huge fan of the author’s tone throughout, but I understand that to be in his position you probably need to be a little aloof and detached personality-wise (and we do need people in his position to get the bad guys, unfortunately). I skipped through a lot of the very detailed descriptions of the EAR’s rapes and killings because that’s a hell of a lot more likely to happen to me as a woman than it is to Paul Holes — I guarantee most of us women and enby folks have worried about the same scenario in our head, we don’t need 50 gruesome stories of the same situation for us to imagine the horror.

I’ll add a few content warnings officially but in case I forget any — it’s literally anything you can imagine relating to rape and murder.

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librarymouse's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative mysterious fast-paced

4.5

Having read Michelle McNamara's perspective on the investigation, it was interesting to read about the search for the Golden State killer from the perspective of another working on the case in a more traditional investigative capacity. Paul Holes is a characteristic writer, and every loss faced by him and the others who's stories he tells are deeply impactful. His work on cold cases gives me hope that others who have suffered without knowing the fate of their loved ones will find closure.

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avidreaderandgeekgirl's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional informative slow-paced

3.0

This book is about Paul Holes' career as a forensic investigator. and how he helped catch the Golden State Killer. As well as his life, mostly the adult part during his career, and how it affected his life.

The topic was interesting but the author's writing was a bit repetitive and I zoned out a lot while reading it. Part of that was my messed up sleep and part of it was the writing. It just seemed to drone on a lot. The author was a great narrator. He has a podcast I listen to, but I prefer his co-host's books to his.

I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts and at least one true crime book a month, so it's not a new type of content for me. Though I don't read many memoirs, so maybe that's what I didn't like about it.

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elisabethshelby's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.25

This book is the perfect read for anyone who loves Dateline or solving cold cases. Paul takes the reader behind the scenes to really understand what goes on when law enforcement reviews old cold cases. The details are specific, and sometimes even reading what goes on can be a bit jarring to realize. Hey, let's look at this face covered in maggots to try to determine a time of death. Oh....ok.

Paul's book mostly looks at his career-long hunt for the Golden State Killer, and his work towards finally tracking down the correct person. Between his hunt, he looks at other memorable cases he helped with, including Jaycee Duggard, Laci and Connor Petersen, and more. The stories are well told, and only in a handful of places does the narrative seem to slow down a little too much. For the most part, this is a well written story.

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ajediprincess's review against another edition

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dark informative mysterious tense medium-paced

4.0

This book was extremely fascinating, if not a little disturbing. I do not normally read true crime. I’m typically very sensitive to subject matter that would incite fear and anxiety. But, my library has an annual reading challenge that involves reading books from 50 different genres, so I chose this book to fit the “true crime memoir” category. It was good—well written, interesting, cinematic, and it had the sort of feeling of sitting down and talking to a friend who is a detective, a detective who is really passionate about his job and kind of overshares without realizing it. That’s what reading this book was like for me.

I loved hearing about the crime solving tactics and strategies and all the dead ends and false leads Det. Holes experienced through his work. As someone who has worked for the police for the better part of a decade, I will always find the methods detectives use to solve cases to be infinitely fascinating. Cold cases are especially interesting to me, I think, because of the feeling of justice finally being meted out after years with no resolution. For those reasons, I thought I would love this book, when a friend in my forensics lab recommended it to me. To a certain extent, I did. But, it was difficult for me to get through this book without wincing and feeling bone-chillingly frightened at times.

While Det. Holes does a great job of mentally bringing the reader into his office and unpacking his thought process when trying to solve a cold case, he also delves pretty deeply into the crime details and methods of the East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker/Golden State Killer and sets the scene for each horrific attack. Between 1974 and 1986, EAR/ONS/GSK committed 120 burglaries, 51 rapes, and 13 murders; and, while Holes doesn’t explore every single one, he does touch on several that stood out to him. I was deeply unsettled by the way Holes described individual attacks as though I was watching a flashback to the night that these crimes occurred. Perhaps that was the point, but I could have done without the somewhat cinematic detail. It is clear that Det. Holes has a great deal of empathy—that the injustice of these cold cases and the psychological wounds they left on each surviving victim haunt him regularly. I suppose the way Holes tells his story is meant to share that experience with the reader and if so, job well done.

One of the most interesting and compelling aspects of this book for me was seeing how the development of technology, particularly the progression of DNA research and genealogy tracing, has affected the police department over the years and really can mean the difference between apprehending the bad guy or unwittingly allowing the perpetrator to get away with murder. Det. Holes describes this experience as he worked relentlessly to identify the monstrous person behind these vile crimes in California and how the progression of technology across forty years was a key factor in solving these cold cases. Holes also describes his experience with some of the more bureaucratic aspects of working in law enforcement and how it can sometimes feel like one is banging one’s head against a wall of red tape, which is something I can relate to.

As with most memoirs, the reader gets to know the man behind the detective badge in this book and Paul Holes becomes something of a friend by the end. He shares in detail about his personal struggles with alcohol, night terrors, panic attacks, navigating relationships as a husband and father, and trying but failing to achieve the coveted “work-life balance.” I really felt for the guy as I was reading about the agonizing dichotomy between his wishes, hopes, and plans for his life and the crushing reality he faced daily. There are many ways one could look at Det. Holes’s story: the triumph of a modern day superhero, the cautionary tale of a man who gave up too much for the demands of his job, the self-absorbed boasting of a real-life Sherlock Holmes who let celebrity go to his head, the obsessive ravings of a cold case addict unable to resist the next “hit,” list goes on. One thing is for certain though, Paul Holes is a damn good detective.

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sky_maris's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.0

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ktdakotareads's review against another edition

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dark informative medium-paced

3.5

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