Book Review | I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara

I'll Be Gone in the Dark is a true crime book by Michelle McNamara.

"You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark."

For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area.

Three decades later, Michelle McNamara, a true crime journalist who created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called "the Golden State Killer." Michelle pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was.

At the time of the crimes, the Golden State Killer was between the ages of eighteen and thirty, Caucasian, and athletic—capable of vaulting tall fences. He always wore a mask. After choosing a victim—he favored suburban couples—he often entered their home when no one was there, studying family pictures, mastering the layout. He attacked while they slept, using a flashlight to awaken and blind them. Though they could not recognize him, his victims recalled his voice: a guttural whisper through clenched teeth, abrupt and threatening.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark—the masterpiece McNamara was writing at the time of her sudden death—offers an atmospheric snapshot of a moment in American history and a chilling account of a criminal mastermind and the wreckage he left behind. It is also a portrait of a woman’s obsession and her unflagging pursuit of the truth. Framed by an introduction by Gillian Flynn and an afterword by her husband, Patton Oswalt, the book was completed by Michelle’s lead researcher and a close colleague. Utterly original and compelling, it is destined to become a true crime classic—and may at last unmask the Golden State Killer.

I was not prepared for this book. This is not the kind of book you can snuggle in with and read yourself to sleep. To be frank: I'll Be Gone in the Dark scared the shit out of me. If you can read this book - especially at night or alone in your home - without looking over your shoulder, you are a lot tougher than I am.

For so many reasons, this book had me in pieces. Not only did the Golden State Killer/East Area Rapist rape, kill, and/or rob his victims, he psychologically tormented them. This book is unnerving.

Michelle McNamara's death put another level of heartache into the experience of reading this book. She obviously had a wonderful way with victims and law enforcement and she handled the presentation of the facts in such a caring way. She inserted herself and her obsession with the case into the pages of I'll Be Gone in the Dark, and it's devastating that she passed before he was finally captured.

I'll Be Gone in the Dark was completed by two other individuals, and the overall feel is pretty disjointed. Despite the way the book was pieced together, I highly recommend it. Michelle McNamara did an amazing job in her research, and this is truly one of the most chilling things I've ever read.

9/10: Highly Recommended