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

Can an independent journalist backed by a dedicated online community bring down a serial predator who terrorized a neighborhood for decades? This gripping, intimately drawn book chronicles McNamara's research into the unsolved rapes and murders of the Golden State Killer in California. McNamara, who blogged at TrueCrimeDiary.com, meticulously covers the long (and ongoing) criminal investigation, giving equal attention to the work of the detectives who have worked the case and the terror the victims faced. The book is also part memoir, as McNamara reveals how her almost obsessive research kept her up nights, sometimes writing notes with her daughter's crayons. Published after the author's untimely death in 2016, the book contains several unfinished chapters and explanatory comments, which in this context add to the somber and disconcerting accounts of life's fragility. Narrator Gabra Zackman delivers a stellar performance. Her steady and calm narration adds to the unsettling feeling and helps to ramp up the suspense and intensity (which might make some people sleep with the lights on).