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supplantedbearer 's review for:
Evil Has a Name: The Untold Story of the Golden State Killer Investigation
by Paul Holes, Paul Holes, Peter McDonnell, Jim Clemente
I've been kind of going in and out of a serial killer media phase for the past year or so, and I think, having finished this production, that phase might be beginning to draw to a close. Part of it, I think, has to do with having just finished watching the first two seasons of Mindhunter, and how that series' restraint and sobriety contrasted with the lurid celebration of gore in NBC's Hannibal, which I had watched immediately prior. Where Hannibal revels in its macabre subject matter and eventually even has you root for the serial killers, Mindhunter reminds us that these are actually quite terrible crimes and there's something a little bit gross about glamorising them. I'll still probably consume a thriller or a true crime podcast here or there, but I think, after this, I'm ready to take a break for a little while.
But I should specifically address Evil Has a Name, seeing as that's what this is supposed to be a review of. This production comes hot on the heels of I'll Be Gone in the Dark, and about half of its runtime covers the same territory. You do get to hear the victims describe their experiences in their own actual voices, which is something Michelle McNamara's book didn't have, but aside from that there is little novelty until we move beyond the point in the investigation where McNamara passes away and her book ends. Anyone who read the news coverage will also already know the broad strokes of how the Golden State Killer was caught—DNA, genealogy databases, etc—so the true novelty here is mostly in hearing Paul Holes speak about the investigative red herrings and blind alleys he ran into along the way, of which there seem to have been quite a few.
It's funny: when you think of true crime classics like I'll Be Gone in the Dark and Robert Graysmith's Zodiac, they're often not written with closure in mind, since an amateur investigator, no matter how dedicated and astute, usually cannot hope to solve a cold case on their own, lacking the resources of the FBI or a DNA lab. Evil Has a Name of course does have that closure, so you might think that would make it a more satisfying work, but I don't think that's really the case. It is satisfying, of course, it's just maybe not quite as engrossing as those other books. I'd like to say that what makes the others so compelling is the passion of their authors, who pour decades of their lives into the pursuit of their subjects, but of course that's also true here: Paul Holes spent twenty-four years of his life on this case, and was as dedicated as any Zodiac killer obsessive. The most relevant point is probably just that Evil Has a Name is mostly retreading territory that has already been covered well elsewhere. As a result, it's probably not a classic, but it's perfectly serviceable as a true crime podcast-style audio production.
But I should specifically address Evil Has a Name, seeing as that's what this is supposed to be a review of. This production comes hot on the heels of I'll Be Gone in the Dark, and about half of its runtime covers the same territory. You do get to hear the victims describe their experiences in their own actual voices, which is something Michelle McNamara's book didn't have, but aside from that there is little novelty until we move beyond the point in the investigation where McNamara passes away and her book ends. Anyone who read the news coverage will also already know the broad strokes of how the Golden State Killer was caught—DNA, genealogy databases, etc—so the true novelty here is mostly in hearing Paul Holes speak about the investigative red herrings and blind alleys he ran into along the way, of which there seem to have been quite a few.
It's funny: when you think of true crime classics like I'll Be Gone in the Dark and Robert Graysmith's Zodiac, they're often not written with closure in mind, since an amateur investigator, no matter how dedicated and astute, usually cannot hope to solve a cold case on their own, lacking the resources of the FBI or a DNA lab. Evil Has a Name of course does have that closure, so you might think that would make it a more satisfying work, but I don't think that's really the case. It is satisfying, of course, it's just maybe not quite as engrossing as those other books. I'd like to say that what makes the others so compelling is the passion of their authors, who pour decades of their lives into the pursuit of their subjects, but of course that's also true here: Paul Holes spent twenty-four years of his life on this case, and was as dedicated as any Zodiac killer obsessive. The most relevant point is probably just that Evil Has a Name is mostly retreading territory that has already been covered well elsewhere. As a result, it's probably not a classic, but it's perfectly serviceable as a true crime podcast-style audio production.