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.

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.

So, this is kinda cool…the first nonfiction book I’ve read in awhile, and the first on the blog! I actually used to read TONS of nonfiction, but just…got out of the habit over the last ten years or so. Some of the stuff I used to read was maybe…true crime adjacent? But I’m not sure I’ve ever read a proper true crime book.

But I got it in my head that I wanted to start reading some true crime. I obsessively watch ALL THE MURDER DOCUMENTARIES and so, it just seemed like the next logical step. I got some great recommendations from my friend Ashley, and it felt like I’ll Be Gone in the Dark was the best place to start. Not only was it raved about as a genre-defining classic, but the trailer for the HBO show had been recently released (this is a book I’ve been slowly chipping away at since back in June), and it just seemed so intense. I wanted to wait until after I had binged the show to write this review, and for a lot of reasons, I think this review will cover some things relating to the book & the show, so fair warning.

And I guess…POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT? I don’t know. I honestly didn’t know much about this case to begin with. I’m not someone who frequents true crime blogs & I don’t currently listen to any podcasts. So I mean, I was peripherally aware of the Golden State Killer, and of this book. But I didn’t know much. And then. AND THEN!!! I had the killer’s identity revealed/spoiled for me like THREE DAYS AFTER I STARTED READING THE BOOK when he appeared in court for sentencing. I think that’s likely to be the only time The Actual News spoils a book I’m currently reading, but fingers crossed.

One of the things that both the show & the book touch on extensively is just…why. Why true crime? When the world outside is so cruel already, why subject yourself to even more darkness? Michelle McNamara had a personal obsession with true crime that began when she was a teenager, after a woman was brutally murdered in her own neighborhood. And at some point, she just kinda fell into the Golden State Killer story, and it grabbed her attention & never let go. She couldn’t understand why the case wasn’t more well known, when the number of victims & the severity of the crimes was significantly worse than say, the Zodiac Killer, or Son of Sam. It was Michelle herself who gave the Golden State Killer his more memorable name, whereas he had previously been known as the East Area Rapist, the Original Night Stalker, and EAR-ONS.

The book is astonishing, both in its detail and its writing. The amount of all-consuming work that went into this is staggering, and ultimately, a bit sad. As much as I felt awestruck by Michelle & her relentless pursuit of this monster, I also felt devastated by the idea that this work, in a very real sense, cost her her life. This is of course covered much more thoroughly by the HBO show (which is fucking incredible), and it’s just this raw, awful sense of grief & loss that hangs over everything connected to this story. The text messages shared between Michelle & her husband, Patton Oswalt, are gutting to see. The way he was in her corner, championing her & the book as hard as he could. Oof.

I think this is one of the best examples of a book-to-screen adaptation where each one serves the other, and they become almost inseparable. The book really feels like a masterpiece, like…I don’t really see how you could write a better true crime book than this. But getting to see Michelle in the show, to hear her voice…to hear that passion & enthusiasm in her voice…it’s so special. And you really do get this sense of her, that despite being married to a Hollywood actor/comedian, she was this incredibly down-to-earth, introverted true crime nerd, who was most at home in bed with her laptop doing research.

I don’t think reading true crime is going to become like, One of My Main Things, but I definitely would like to read some periodically. There were more than a handful of moments in reading I’ll Be Gone in the Dark that were deeply unsettling to me, and I was primarily reading the book in the daytime hours, in little snippets. I can’t imagine submerging myself into this kind of thing the way Michelle McNamara did, that’s for sure. It’s unbearably sad that this will be the only book she will ever write, but from what I’ve learned, her impact on the true crime community and on the lives she touched, will last forever.