You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
alpandia 's review for:
Killers Keep Secrets
by James Huddle
2.5 Stars. If you are new to the EAR/ONS aka Golden State Killer case, this book may rank higher for you. It covers a lot of the broad strokes of many of the crimes.
TLDR: If you have been following the EAR/ONS case, you will walk away disappointed. If you are just learning about the Golden State Killer - especially if you are coming in from I'll Be Gone In The Dark on HBO - you might find it a good read.
If you are looking for a book, as I was, where a family member/close friend relates "we were doing this around the time of this rape" or "we were doing this around the time of that murder" -- the opening chapters hold promise. The rest of the book fails to deliver on it.
You will come away with more or less the level of information you've probably been able to glean of JJD from reporting in the Sacramento Bee. The only thing that was new (to me) was that JJD had a secret gold bar. He claimed it was from coins melted down for Vietnam but "what if it was melted down jewelry from his crimes". This is just one example of looking back in hindsight and trying to lay a comment/behavior/etc on top of the murders to explain it away. Which to me, just falls flat.
Because there's a lot of armchair psychology tossed in -- Huddle's thoughts on "maybes" and "he's gotta be" that IMO detract from what he was trying to say. He critiques Reddit, for example, but engages in the same guessing games that many Redditors are accused of.... even though he has first hand personal experience with JJD.
In addition, once you get past the family portraits section (black and white/grainy) you hit a wall of filler: talking about other serial killers, myths about serial killers, etc. These don't tie into the EAR/ONS GSK case at all, but just describe other serial killers. I'm not 100% sure what these chapters are doing other than increasing the word count.
TLDR: If you have been following the EAR/ONS case, you will walk away disappointed. If you are just learning about the Golden State Killer - especially if you are coming in from I'll Be Gone In The Dark on HBO - you might find it a good read.
If you are looking for a book, as I was, where a family member/close friend relates "we were doing this around the time of this rape" or "we were doing this around the time of that murder" -- the opening chapters hold promise. The rest of the book fails to deliver on it.
You will come away with more or less the level of information you've probably been able to glean of JJD from reporting in the Sacramento Bee. The only thing that was new (to me) was that JJD had a secret gold bar. He claimed it was from coins melted down for Vietnam but "what if it was melted down jewelry from his crimes". This is just one example of looking back in hindsight and trying to lay a comment/behavior/etc on top of the murders to explain it away. Which to me, just falls flat.
Because there's a lot of armchair psychology tossed in -- Huddle's thoughts on "maybes" and "he's gotta be" that IMO detract from what he was trying to say. He critiques Reddit, for example, but engages in the same guessing games that many Redditors are accused of.... even though he has first hand personal experience with JJD.
In addition, once you get past the family portraits section (black and white/grainy) you hit a wall of filler: talking about other serial killers, myths about serial killers, etc. These don't tie into the EAR/ONS GSK case at all, but just describe other serial killers. I'm not 100% sure what these chapters are doing other than increasing the word count.