One of my pals started a horror book club and McNamara’s book was selected. It was already on my radar, but this put it at the top of the list. Unfortunately, it is so dang popular that I wasn’t able to get the book until after the meet-up, but once the audio hit my inbox I was committed. I heeded the advice of everyone else which was NOT to listen to it at night time. This was my early morning walk/morning commute listen. Definitely a […]
“You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark.”
“I don’t care if I’m the one who captures him. I just want bracelets on his wrists and a cell door slamming behind him.” Michelle McNamara died in April 2016 halfway through the writing of I’ll be Gone in the Dark but her husband, Patton Oswalt, editors and research assistants completed her book and published in February of this year. Two months later, on April 24th, the Golden State Killer was found using a DNA profile uploaded to a genealogy website. There was a lot of hubbub […]
When the author outshines her subject…
Usually the research leading to a book is a means to an end. But with this one, I feel like the book is the means, and the real story lies in the lead up to the book. We could talk about a man so evil he is believed to be responsible for more than 50 rapes and at least 12 homicides. A man who terrorized California for a decade…whose dauchebaggery was low enough to taunt a child, saying he was playing with mommy and daddy. […]
Long Process, Fast DNA
When I was contemplating subscribing to Scribd’s audio book library, the book that sold me was Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone In The Dark. I expected to enjoy listening to the book, narrated by Gabri Zachman, I did not expect the book to make me miss my mother and cry. She was both proud of the fact that she had raised a strong-minded daughter and resentful of my sharp opinions.“ That dichotomy was my relationship with my mother and I did not expect to hear […]
“Open the door. Show us your face. Walk into the light.”
I first heard about the man now known as the Golden State Killer back when I first read about Richard Ramirez. A throwaway line about someone else, known as the Original Night Stalker (ONS), who remained uncaught captured my interest and sent me down an internet rabbit hole as I started to discover the horror of the East Area Rapist/ONS, a home invader and serial rapist and murderer who terrorised Sacramento and the wider California area through the seventies and eighties. I soon shied away […]
We learn his banal secrets. We watch as he’s led, shackled and sweaty, into a brightly lit courtroom as someone seated several feet higher peers down unsmiling, raps a gavel, and speaks, at long last, every syllable of his birth name.
This is both a strange book and a strange book to read at this given moment. It’s clear that there will be a rushed second edition with additional updates, and I bet that book will be a more satisfying read. I should start off that this is one of those books that I worry that my reading it will make the internet mad at me. This book is very interesting, and mostly doesn’t hold together. When a fiction author dies, and they leave an unfinished […]