I read a lot of true crime in my early twenties in an effort, I suppose, to “understand the human condition”. As I matured, I began to recognise the prurient nature of my interest; began to realise that behind every pseudonymous victim on the page stood a real and suffering person, and no longer feeling good about my self-perceived voyeurism, I moved on to other interests. I'll Be Gone in the Dark is true crime – detailing the evil acts of a man who raped over fifty victims and killed a further ten between 1976 and 1986 across California – but author Michelle McNamara elevates the material beyond the merely salacious; there is humanity on these pages (that of the victims, the investigators, as well as the author's own), and the book offers the prospect of finally capturing the Golden State Killer by shining a light in the corners where such a cockroach might yet be hiding. I wouldn't call this an “enjoyable” read – there is unvarnished horror here – but it does feel essential. (Caveat: I read from an ARC and quotes might not be in their final forms.)
There's a scream permanently lodged in my throat now. When my husband, trying not to awaken me, tiptoed into our bedroom one night, I leaped out of bed, grabbed my nightstand lamp, and swung it at his head. Luckily, I missed. When I saw the lamp overturned on the bedroom floor in the morning, I remembered what I'd done and winced. Then I felt around the covers for where I'd left my laptop and resumed my Talmudic study of the police reports.I'll Be Gone in the Dark is really two stories in one, detailing both the Golden State Killer's crimes and the author's own reasons for pursuing this story. As a result, the wealth of autobiographical information serves as a memoir for McNamara: from her childhood in Chicago and her relationship with her parents there, to her attempts to find balance between obsessive online/in-person sleuthing and her family's needs, to the report of her sudden death during the writing of this book. The passing of McNamara at so young an age adds poignancy to the project, and it can't help but nudge readers towards understanding the author's intent – to finally catch California's most prolific, yet underpublicised, serial killer – and that helps to elevate this beyond the merely prurient: There is evidence that McNamara has reinvigorated the investigation in this cold case and hopefully the GSK will eventually, finally, be brought to justice. (In both the online version of the original article that led to this book, In the Footsteps of a Killer, and McNamara's own blog, True Crime Diary, there are discussion boards in which others can join in the investigation; who knows what such crowdsourcing will uncover? Someone knows this guy, even if he's long dead himself.)
If you commit a murder and then vanish, what you leave behind isn't just pain but absence, a supreme blankness that triumphs over everything else. The unidentified murderer is always twisting a doorknob behind a door that never opens. But his power evaporates the moment we know him. 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.Okay, I've only focused so far on the author, but I'll Be Gone in the Dark does also outline every attack and piece of evidence linked to the GSK; it is graphic without being gratuitous, which must be a tough line to walk; McNamara handles this expertly. With an introduction by Gillian Flynn, a third section of evidence added by McNamara's fellow researchers after her death, and an Afterword by McNamara's husband (comedian Patton Oswalt, whose Netflix special Annihilation deals in part with his wife's passing and the year following; I laughed and cried watching it last night), the entirety of this book is a unique and important read; it just might lead to justice.
Later Edit: Just two months later, they've caught the monster. In her book, McNamara always thought that a breakthrough might come from some DNA website, and it turns out she was right.
