Goodreads Choice Awards Book Club discussion

Winner of the Nonfiction award.



I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara

A masterful true crime account of the Golden State Killer—the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California for over a decade—from Michelle McNamara, the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case.

"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.

Loved this book! Shocking and scary, but amazing how technology has tipped the scale in favor of investigations now. You have to feel for the author that she never got to see the outcome.
I do love true crime, but I think this will appeal to a wider group of people.

my review

Nice review, Vicki. I got this one from the library a while back, but didn't have time to read it. I'll have to add it to my list again.

This has been on my list for a while, but I finally picked it up to read with some friends. I'm struggling a little bit with the memoir bits of the book (I'm just not a memoir fan) so it's starting out a bit slowly, but it seems like it'll be really interesting.

On a side note, Gillian Flynn's introduction was...a page and a half of nothing. She half-assed it so much it almost felt disrespectful.

This is a chilling, thorough true crime investigation. I knew nothing of this serial killer prior to reading the book.

The research, interviews, details enabled me to understand and partake in Michelle McNamara's obsession with the Golden State Killer (aka East Side Rapist).

To all of those that worked to complete her work and this book posthumously, well done.

Just finished it last week. Loved the book thought it was beautifully researched and wish Michelle was able to finish.

I loved this book, too. And it was so sad how she died before he was arrested.