Reviews with content warning for Gun violence - I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer

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

41 reviews

v_neptune's review

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dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

5.0

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librarymouse's review

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challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

4.0

Michelle McNamara's work to hunt down the Golden State Killer is exceptional. Her dedication to the work and her writing style make the book an engaging read that made me want to keep reading long into the night despite the content. The sections compiled after her death were done with so much respect for her and her work show how much she meant to her friends, loved ones, and colleagues.

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eve_reads's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

3.5

Overall Thoughts:
⁕ A lot of true crimes focus on the gravity of the culprit's actions. McNamara places more emphasis on the lives of the survivors and victims, as well as the experiences of those trying to hunt down the Golden State Killer. It was a fresh perspective to the true crime genre and a more empowering narrative for all those affected, which I very much appreciated.

⁕ McNamara was unable to finish the book before her passing. The final chapters were completed by her husband and fellow researchers. The change in narrative from a memoir-type recounting to a detailed analysis of maps, numbers, and charts is very abrupt and jarring.

⁕ I read the updated version of the book, which was published after the capture of the Joseph DeAngelo, and there is surprisingly little detail on how he was finally arrested. If this is something that interests you, I recommend also watching the HBO documentary series which has much more information in that regard.

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scenic92's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative mysterious tense medium-paced

5.0

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jlautry's review against another edition

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dark informative sad slow-paced

4.5

Although she died 2 years before the his capture, her work contributed to the capture of the Golden State Killer. Her ability to tell a captivating story with true events and facts is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in a non-fiction piece. The parts she completed and edited read like a fiction crime novel. Paul Haynes, Billy Jenson, and her husband, Patton Oswalt, pieced together completed chapters with her notes and recordings to put together this book. You can tell instantly which of her chapters were completed before she died, versus what they pieced together from drafts, notes, and recordings. As good of writers as I’m sure they are, they just could not match her storytelling ability. I am a big consumer of true-crime media, and the stories generally do not scare me. However, many parts of this book terrified me. I felt like I was in the room with the victims or watching him from a neighbor’s backyard. It takes a really special author to bring a narrative to life like this. Here’s an example:

“[The victims] weren't thinking of their neighbors, but he was. Part of the thrill of the game for him, I believe, was a kind of connect-the-dots puzzle he played with people. He stole two packs of Winston cigarettes from the first victim, for instance, and left them outside the fourth victim's house. Junk jewelry stolen from a neighbor two weeks earlier was left at the fifth victim's house. Victim twenty-one lived within shouting distance of a water treatment plant; a worker there who lived eight miles away became the next victim. Pills or bullets stolen from a victim would later be found in a neighbor's yard. Some victims shared surnames or jobs.

It was a power play, a signal of ubiquity. I am both nowhere and everywhere. You may not think you have something in common with your neighbor, but you do: me. I'm the barely spotted

presence, the dark haired, blond-haired, stocky, slight, seen from the back, glimpsed in half light thread that will continue to connect you even as you fail to look out for each other.”

You will not find a better researched, more thorough compilation of research done on the GSK than this book. She literally worked herself to death researching this case to try to find justice for his 183+ victims. Parts of this book were not as good as others. I think Paul and Billy had a fine line to walk between maintaining the originality of her work, and creating a publishable piece. There is a section consisting of a transcript of conversations between Michelle and Paul Holes. I skipped most of the 2nd half of that section because it got a little boring for me. But, I did see the docuseries that was released in 2020 that included most of these conversations.

My favorite part of the book is the epilogue Michelle wrote. It is a haunting letter written directly to the, then unknown, Joseph DeAngelo. Here’s how that letter ends:

“One day soon, you’ll hear a car pull up to your curb, an engine cut out. You'll hear footsteps coming up your front walk. Like they did for Edward Wayne Edwards, twenty-nine years after he

killed Timothy Hack and Kelly Drew in Sullivan, Wisconsin. Like they did for Kenneth Lee Hicks, thirty years after he killed Lori Billingsley in Aloha, Oregon.

The doorbell rings.

No side gates are left open. You're long past leaping over a fence. Take one of your hyper, gulping breaths. Clench your teeth. Inch timidly toward the insistent bell.

This is how it ends for you.

‘You'll be silent forever, and I'll be gone in the dark,’ you threatened a victim once.

Open the door. Show us your face.

Walk into the light.”

--MICHELLE MCNAMARA

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savvyrosereads's review

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challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

Rating: 4/5 stars

If you don’t already know the story of Michelle McNamara, I encourage you to read up on her and her life/writing, but the nutshell version is this—Michelle was a brilliant and dedicated true crime writer/blogger who dedicated a significant chunk of her life to investigating the identity of the serial murderer/rapist she dubbed the Golden State Killer. Although Michelle passed away unexpectedly before GSK was identified (and before the book was completed) he was finally identified and apprehended in 2018. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark is a captivating and brilliantly written exploration of GSK’s crimes, a portrait of his victims, and an insight into the investigation that ultimately led to his arrest.

This was exceptional—though I’m still fairly new to the world of true crime I can already tell that this deserves a spot as one of the classics of the genre. It is incredibly well-written and detailed while still being compulsively readable and engaging. There are many reasons to be saddened by Michelle McNamara’s untimely passing, and one of them is the fact that we cannot look forward to more of her books. Indeed, the only part of the book that was less-than-stellar was the structure—undoubtedly due to the fact that Michelle never got to finish the book and much of it was pieced together from her notes or written after the fact by others—but the final product is still unquestionably good enough to compensate for this minor defect.

Recommended for anyone, but especially those who like: true crime; investigative journalism.

CW: Sexual assault/rape; murder/death; cruelty to animals.

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