GENRE: Nonfiction/True Crime
PURCHASE: link
MY GRADE: D
FROM PUBLISHER: 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.
MY THOUGHTS: Michelle's a great writer and I like her style and humor at times but she got off track quite a bit. I've been following this case since 2001 and she didn't do it justice. I liked the autobiographical parts a lot but most of it wasn't relevant to this case. As I feared, this was very much The Story of Michelle McNamara. There should have been background information on all of the victims, not just one. We got more on Michelle's than we did theirs. Example: So much time was spent on Cheri's failing relationship with her daughter which is fine, I genuinely like hearing about it and can related to it to a degree, but an equal amount of time should have been spent on telling us about Cheri's own background. I learned nothing at all about her childhood, and nothing about the childhood of most of the other victims, including Brian and Katie Maggoire. The story of the victims took a back seat to her own, which is such a shame because that's not how this should have been.
The crimes are out of order and instead of starting with the first rape in 1976 she jumps to a murder in 1981 and I can't figure out why. It's disjointed as hell. In the middle of a story about one of the crimes she'd get off track and start talking about the town it happened in. Back to the story, please.
Too many unimportant things were added, possibly to fill space, like pages dedicated to cleared suspects. Too bad the two guys who helped finish writing it, Paul Haynes and Billy Jensen, couldn't have cleaned it up more. I suspect they weren't allowed to mess with it too much. I don't see where they were thanked in the book by her husband Patton or the publisher.
One thing I found odd was her mentioning an issue a rape victim had with something a former investigator said about her in his book Sudden Terror. Why bring their drama to your own book? None of that is relevant to your book and it doesn't involve you. It was only done to try and shame Larry Crompton.
I don't think this book would have been published had she not been married to a celebrity. It seems rushed and unfinished and not too interesting. I don't think someone new to this case will care much about it, after reading this. I think a casual reader of true crime wouldn't be compelled by what they've read in this book to look into the other books about this criminal. To be honest, it's not as good as a few of the self-published ones on this case. This is the only book of the lot to have been published by a major publisher and it's a big disappointment because I know it could have been so much better.
I've uploaded some images from the book here.
Other nonfiction books on this case, listed in order of publication are:
Sudden Terror by Larry Crompton, detective on case
Hot Prowl by Jack Gray
Frozen in Fear by Jane Carson-Sandler, victim #5
Hunting a Psychopath by Richard Shelby, detective on case
Murder on His Mind by Anne Penn, relative of Lyman Smith
Case Files of the East Area Rapist/Golden State Killer by Kat Winters and Keith Komos (the best of the bunch)
Fiction- Terror at 3am: When PTSD Turns Deadly by Duane Wilson
I received this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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