Basia1971 wrote:I'll be gone in the dark by McNamara.
Very very bad book on the crimes of Joseph James DeAngelo although it gets the Heath Ledger effect because McNamara was a celebrity wife who died abruptly, and a woman the press could exaggerate as the provider of the solution to the identity of the perpetrator, as they tried to do initially before it was made very clear that genealogical DNA techniques alone located the suspect. Her husband even went around to bookstores claiming that she had "solved the case", which was worse than ridiculous.
Most of McNamara's book is just column reprints in which she outlines well-known case details. Very little original information is included. Very few useful or unique personal insights. Mostly just the author tearfully lamenting that she couldn't shoehorn some innocent guy into the role of the East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker, no matter how hard she tried from the comfort of her bedside laptop.
McNamara tried to play Internet gumshoe and failed. The only reason to read her rather short book is to glean a few modern updates provided to her via law enforcement. Not very well written either as it was largely unfinished at the time of her death and disjointedly completed by a two or three other people.
Finally, her naming of the criminal (Golden State Killer) is simply terrible. It makes him seem like an all-star globetrotting athlete instead of a highly-prolific burglar, rapist, home invader, stalker, thief, kidnapper and (finally) killer.
If you want to read a few good books on the crimes of VR/EAR/ONS, try Hunting a Psychopath by Richard Shelby or the very highly recommended book Crimes of the East Area Rapist by Kat Winters. Both are VASTLY superior in terms of facts and even narrative structure. At least the latter is chronologically coherent.
It'll depend on you though. If you're just a generic crime groupie and run with whatever the media elites tell you to read, McNamara's subpar book will suffice. Certainly it'll gain you approval from the hive mind.
Other great books I've read is Scotland Yard's Prime Suspect by Robert House (Jack the Ripper) and This is the Zodiac Speaking.
Graysmith's books, considered the "best" by many, are rather ridiculous. Both are full of lies, distortions and wild speculation. Zodiac Unmasked is virtually useless. Robert House's book on Jack the Ripper is a meat and potatoes, common sense investigation into who was most likely the culprit. All of the books I've mentioned stray from wild, fantasy-minded speculation and stick with how a real world detective would think.
If you want goofy inventiveness and fantastical constructions, read one of Patricia Cornwell's terrible Jack the Ripper books or that awful, downright laughable Man from the Train by Bill James.
Who Killed These Girls? and The Cases That Haunt Us are also very good.
The Dracula Killer and Evil Brothers are two others worth mentioning, if you can find them, plus the few books on Joseph Bowne Elwell and Julia Wallace are recommended although they are hard to locate.
Finally, if you want to blow your mind, start researching cases from this stupendous list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_deaths
From the above, you should find plenty to do for the rest of your life.
