I'll Be Gone in the Dark (2018) by Michele McNamara

I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer (2018) by Michele McNamara, Paul Haynes, Billy Jensen, and Patton Oswalt:

The Golden State Killer of the sub-title got that name from author Michele McNamara 20 years after his last known crime, named thusly by McNamara on the Internet because GSK's other nicknames -- The Original Night Stalker, The East Area Rapist, EAR/ONS, and The Diamond Knot Killer -- did not cover the full range of the rapist-murderer's crimes. 

He had instead been given different names in different areas of California at different times between 1976 and 1986. He has never been identified or caught.

McNamara was married to comic actor Patton Oswalt. She died of complications related to prescription medication (probably) in 2016 at the age of 46. She left behind Oswalt, a daughter, and the unfinished manuscript that would become this book. Oswalt, lead researcher Paul Haynes, and investigative journalist Billy Jensen finished the book, or at least completed it.

It's a solid, clearly unfinished 'True Crime' text. What makes it different than a lot of True Crime books is that it's as much about McNamara's (self-admittedly and in the title) obsessive search for the identity of the Golden State Killer. 

Her search uses Internet resources and message boards, real-life interviews and consultations, and a lot of sifting through the seemingly endless boxes of evidence. But she also outlines the reasons for her interest in the case, the toll it takes, and her family background.

McNamara isn't an elegant prose writer (and someone should be severely chastised for letting the neologistic abomination 'pre-planning' through the editorial net on several occasions). This isn't Truman Capote's In Cold Blood or even Erik Larson's The Devil In the White City. What it is, is a straightforward crime story that gradually mutates into another riff on Ahab and Moby Dick. That McNamara's insomnia over the last few years of her life led to the prescribed drugs that may have killed her only makes the Moby Dick comparison more poignant, especially with the killer uncaught.

So we're left at the end with facts, aided by advances in DNA technology, and aided even more by crowd-sourcing the investigation via message boards and McNamara's own website. McNamara speculates on crimes that may have been committed by the man who would become the Golden State Killer prior to 1976. She also speculates on why the GSK went from brutal rapist to a serial murderer of couples, on why he stopped, and on whether he lives today.

But McNamara is also attentive to the limits of speculation, detailing failed leads and referring to wrong assumptions in other, solved serial-killer cases. It's grim stuff at times. Here there be monsters. 

I wish the completists had found a better way -- or better writers -- to deal with the unfinished portions of the manuscript rather than the somewhat clunky concluding prose by Haynes and Jensen. But I also understand why those involved with McNamara's writing legacy wanted the text to appear in its current state. Recommended.