3 Seriously Scary Must-Reads for True-Crime Junkies

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

Journalist McNamara describes her unrelenting search for the identity of California’s most notorious serial killer, a man who terrorized the state with at least 13 murders and 50 rapes in the 1970s and ’80s. Sadly, the author passed away suddenly in 2016 at age 46, before she could finish either her quest or her fascinating book, which was completed by writer Paul Haynes and investigative journalist Billy Jensen (see his own book below) under the guidance of McNamara’s husband, the comedian Patton Oswalt. What’s gratifying to keep in mind as you read this book: Just two months after it was published last year, a former police officer named Joseph James DeAngelo was arrested, identified as the Golden State Killer thanks to familial DNA matching, and is now in jail awaiting trial. If only McNamara, who helped keep investigators’ attention on the case, could have lived to see him there.        

Chase Darkness With Me: How One True Crime Writer Started Solving Murders by Billy Jensen 

Jensen, a journalist and cohost of the podcast The Murder Squad, helped finish I’ll be Gone in the Dark, as mentioned above. He describes being stunned by McNamara’s death (they were friends, bonded by their passion for crime-solving), as well as the thrill of seeing the elusive killer finally identified. The rest of the book is about his compulsion to solve lesser-known, often-ignored cold cases, which he does by devising paid social media campaigns targeted to residents in a crime’s vicinity, hoping someone can identify the perpetrator from what’s typically grainy video footage. Jensen also offers tips and encouragement for readers interested in doing their own crime-solving, arguing that there’s no excuse for criminals to go unidentified in an age when we all carry phones with hi-def cameras and DNA analysis is so advanced. “Nothing is more important than making things right,” he notes, “or at least as right as they can be righted.”