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A review by broro117
I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara
Did not finish book. Stopped at 43%.
Wow. I did not see this one coming.
This is the first time I've ever DNFed a book I own, and for that reason I've really been resisting the urge to give up, but I dread picking up this book and reading it still feels like a chore at nearly the midway point, so I'm officially throwing in the towel.
I'm gonna drop some harsh opinions here: I don't think this book would have been published at all, let alone received the hype and praise it did, if not for the combination of Michelle McNamara's privileged status as the wife of a celebrity + her untimely death + the coincidental timing of Joseph DeAngelo's capture. I was surprised to find that her writing style is, uh...not good. It alternates between being dry as dust and attempting to be poetic/flowery, but those attempts are so poorly done that I often found myself rereading a sentence over and over just to make heads or tails of what she was trying to say. Going into this book I was under the impression that McNamara was a trained investigative journalist and that her research actually helped bring DeAngelo to justice, both of which I quickly realized were untrue.
In fact, McNamara's only credentials were an MFA in creative writing, running an amateur true crime blog (which anyone can do, obviously), and an absolutely unhealthy obsession with true crime cases. To be honest, I don't really hold armchair detectives in very high regard to begin with, but McNamara took that role to a whole other level. I don't mean to speak ill of the dead, but I feel compelled to air my grievances with this book that I feel like other readers glance over or ignore because of her death.
The book itself is highly disorganized, incoherent and amateurish. It's a complete mess, much of it cobbled together after McNamara's death (a fact of which we are reminded by the constant editorial asides). It somehow manages to make the stories of these violent crimes and their aftermath supremely boring. The scenes are set in exhaustive, often unnecessary detail, only for the retellings of the crimes themselves to feel perfunctory, like they're the least crucial part of the story. I always feel a bit icky about totally irrelevant people inserting themselves into true crime narratives when the actual victims and their loved ones exist, and that was no different here. But besides the sections about McNamara's personal life, everything else reads like she's rattling off Wikipedia findings. There's very little additional insight to be gleaned here. Gillian Flynn's foreword led me to believe McNamara's recounting of the Golden State Killer's crimes would be filled with warmth and compassion for the victims, but I didn't read any evidence of that.
And it must be said: proof of McNamara's immense privilege is all over these pages. Most people don't have the luxury of spending all their time "researching" a case they're not being paid to work on and that they have nothing to do with. Most people don't have a spare $1400 lying around to spend on copies of transcripts from long-ago preliminary hearings to assist in said "research." Admittedly I am very pro-"eat the rich" anyway, but this all struck me as very gross, for lack of a better word.
Like lots of other people, I find true crime stories morbidly fascinating and enjoy listening to podcasts, watching documentaries, etc. from time to time, but I don't think I'm as big a true crime junkie as many others--and I'm certainly nowhere near McNamara's level of preoccupation. For me, it felt rather pointless to read about the then-unresolved search for the Golden State Killer, knowing how it ends and having read about DeAngelo's arrest years ago. I may give the HBO documentary a shot instead and see if that's more intriguing.
This is the first time I've ever DNFed a book I own, and for that reason I've really been resisting the urge to give up, but I dread picking up this book and reading it still feels like a chore at nearly the midway point, so I'm officially throwing in the towel.
I'm gonna drop some harsh opinions here: I don't think this book would have been published at all, let alone received the hype and praise it did, if not for the combination of Michelle McNamara's privileged status as the wife of a celebrity + her untimely death + the coincidental timing of Joseph DeAngelo's capture. I was surprised to find that her writing style is, uh...not good. It alternates between being dry as dust and attempting to be poetic/flowery, but those attempts are so poorly done that I often found myself rereading a sentence over and over just to make heads or tails of what she was trying to say. Going into this book I was under the impression that McNamara was a trained investigative journalist and that her research actually helped bring DeAngelo to justice, both of which I quickly realized were untrue.
In fact, McNamara's only credentials were an MFA in creative writing, running an amateur true crime blog (which anyone can do, obviously), and an absolutely unhealthy obsession with true crime cases. To be honest, I don't really hold armchair detectives in very high regard to begin with, but McNamara took that role to a whole other level. I don't mean to speak ill of the dead, but I feel compelled to air my grievances with this book that I feel like other readers glance over or ignore because of her death.
The book itself is highly disorganized, incoherent and amateurish. It's a complete mess, much of it cobbled together after McNamara's death (a fact of which we are reminded by the constant editorial asides). It somehow manages to make the stories of these violent crimes and their aftermath supremely boring. The scenes are set in exhaustive, often unnecessary detail, only for the retellings of the crimes themselves to feel perfunctory, like they're the least crucial part of the story. I always feel a bit icky about totally irrelevant people inserting themselves into true crime narratives when the actual victims and their loved ones exist, and that was no different here. But besides the sections about McNamara's personal life, everything else reads like she's rattling off Wikipedia findings. There's very little additional insight to be gleaned here. Gillian Flynn's foreword led me to believe McNamara's recounting of the Golden State Killer's crimes would be filled with warmth and compassion for the victims, but I didn't read any evidence of that.
And it must be said: proof of McNamara's immense privilege is all over these pages. Most people don't have the luxury of spending all their time "researching" a case they're not being paid to work on and that they have nothing to do with. Most people don't have a spare $1400 lying around to spend on copies of transcripts from long-ago preliminary hearings to assist in said "research." Admittedly I am very pro-"eat the rich" anyway, but this all struck me as very gross, for lack of a better word.
Like lots of other people, I find true crime stories morbidly fascinating and enjoy listening to podcasts, watching documentaries, etc. from time to time, but I don't think I'm as big a true crime junkie as many others--and I'm certainly nowhere near McNamara's level of preoccupation. For me, it felt rather pointless to read about the then-unresolved search for the Golden State Killer, knowing how it ends and having read about DeAngelo's arrest years ago. I may give the HBO documentary a shot instead and see if that's more intriguing.