When I was a kid, which really wasn’t that long ago, I had a morbid curiosity for all things murder and mystery related. It was something I didn’t share with classmates because even as a 9 year old, I knew this would alienate me. However, a fascination with true crime and cold cases has become a little more mainstream these days thanks to shows like Making a Murderer, The Jinx, and The Keeper, and with podcasts like The Last Podcast on the Left and My Favorite Murder (all of which I would recommend). 
When I found out that Michelle McNamara of the blog True Crime Diary had a book coming out, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. And y’all, once I had it, I couldn’t put it down.
With what could be called an almost fanatical obsession, McNamara was on the hunt for what she dubbed the Golden State Killer, or GSK. Originally known as the East Area Rapist, the Golden State Killer raped over 50 women and killed more than 10 men and women in the Sacramento, Santa Barbara, and Orange County areas. Entire communities were paralyzed with fear, always wondering in the backs of their minds: “Who’s next?” McNamara interviewed witnesses, detectives who worked on the cases, and even the victims themselves to try and get information that she felt the original police reports lacked. She would buy items on eBay that she thought could possibly be linked to the killer. McNamara visited sites where the GSK hit and was on a first name basis with a criminalist who was also working the case on an official level.
This isn’t a spoiler when I say that this guy was never caught. It was only in the mid-1990s with advances in forensic technology that investigators even connected various cases to the GSK. McNamara was obsessed, going so far as to look up options for submitting the killer’s DNA to Ancestry.com. The GSK haunted her, almost tauntingly so. Unfortunately, Michelle McNamara passed away unexpectedly in 2016 before she could finish her book and before she could find out who the GSK really is. The book was finished with the help of her researcher Paul Haynes and investigative journalist Billy Jensen who had to make sense of thousands of McNamara’s files.
When I said that I couldn’t put this book down, I meant it. I read I’ll Be Gone in the Dark in one day and practically one sitting. McNamara’s style of writing kept me questioning if I was actually reading a work of fiction. “Surely something like this would never happen,” I would think until a chilling fact would surface as a reminder that this monster was only all too real. This (entirely true) story pulled me in and held on for dear life until the very final pages. There were twists that are expected in works of fiction, but are made all the more bone chilling because they did, in fact, happen. Lovers of true crime have to pick up I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. Michelle McNamara has written what I imagine will be what future true crime books will be compared to.
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