Two nights ago, I woke up out of breath, my heart racing, trying and failing to catch the tail end of whatever dream I was just having. I looked out my bedroom door to the top of the stairs and realized I had just seen someone standing there with a flashlight. This is the kind of thing I'll Be Gone in the Dark does to you. It makes you see things that aren't there. It makes you live, again and again, the terror of almost 100 victims of the Golden State Killer. Michelle McNamara's exhaustive research is evident on every page. That the book was published after her death is also evident, for while the chapters themselves flow flawlessly thanks to her unique prose and steady cadence, the way the chapters are laid out feels a bit out of sync with the rest of the book.For ten years, Joseph DeAngelo stalked victims up and down the Golden State - raping more than 50 women and killing almost a dozen. Now that he's been caught, you get a sense of just how onto him Michelle really was. No one would have been more delighted by his capture than her, except of course this terrible person's many victims and their families. I also think Michelle would have done an amazing job piecing together DeAngelo's travels and motivations. I'm sad we won't get to read that book. And I'm sad to think Michelle is likely DeAngelo's last victim, having worked herself into a constant state of anxiety and exhaustion over the research and writing of this book, would she have been led to take the deadly combination of prescription drugs that, together with an unknown heart condition, led to her death? I'm glad her friends and family worked to get Michelle's book published. Some people wouldn't want their name forever connected to a serial killer, but somehow, I can see how this would have honored her memory.
4/5 Stars.
This book came out quite a while ago and honestly I only picked it because it's narrated by Dennis Boutsikaris and after finishing Every Note Played, I wasn't quite ready to leave his voice. I knew nothing about the book, the plot, or even the true life events which inspired them. I'm not above reading novels about countries in which the author has no experience (I have read all these German detective Bernie Gunther novels by Phillip Kerr, who is British and liked them) but I do take them with a grain of salt because it is immensely different when you read a novel by a native of that country.That being said, I read Child 44 with a quiet sort of fascination as it details not only the actions of a methodical and sadistic serial killer but also the casual cruelties of Stalin-era police abuses and political paranoia. And honestly the parts about the Soviet apparatus and why it made it so difficult to hunt for a serial killer were more interesting than the crime facts itself because honestly, the brutal killing of children is not really something I like to read about. The book starts with a cat and a woman in Ukraine in the 1930s, during the famine sparked by forcing everyone onto collective farms. People are starving and dying. And a woman, somehow, still owns a cat. The cat is let go when the woman lets go on her desire to live. But a boy living nearby sees the cat and makes a plan with his brother to trap and eat it. During their trip into the woods, the braver older brother is struck by a man and taken away. We then jump to twenty years later. The "Great Patriotic War" is over and Leo Demidov is a ranking MGB officer who is tasked with finding an alleged spy. In tracking down the spy he is forced to confront the banality of evil existing in his duties as well as the shaky foundations upon which his investigations and executions have been based. He also must convince a grieving family that they cannot speak about the murder of their five year old son, because murder does not exist in Soviet Russia. It cannot. People have no reason to murder, being housed and fed, so any suggestion of murder is the spreading of anti-soviet sentiment.Trapped within this circular reasoning, unable to name and investigate the murder, Leo goes so far as to threaten the family into silence. He is then asked to denounce his own wife, which he refuses to do, and is demoted and sent to a remote outpost. Upon arriving at the outpost he comes upon two children similarly murdered. He must then decide to what length he is willing to go to investigate the murders and to catch the killer. The events of the book are loosely based on the most notorious Russian serial killer of all time, Andrei Chikatilo, who evaded capture for decades as he killed as many as 56 women and children. He was convicted and sentenced to death for 52 of these murders in October 1992 and executed in February 1994. He was arrested several times over the course of his killing spree, but bungled investigations and shoddy police work led to his release and continued destruction until he was finally arrested in November 1990.
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| Chikatilo's mug shot. |
Everyone you care about in this novel has a sad and complicated back story that informs their decisions, and I really liked how the author teased out each of these issues in time. I may have to read the next book in the series to find out what happens to Leo later on.
4/5 Stars.
Yikes. What more can you ask for in a book like this.... serial murders in the beautiful Tuscan countryside, conspiracy theories, blood feuds, clan mentality? It's all in here. In The Monster of Florence, Douglas Preston chronicles at first the murders beginning in 1981, later connected to 1968 and 1974 killings, which are investigated and covered by journalist Mario Spezi. Spezi watches as the investigation makes several missteps including the basic fundamentals of crime scene security. Suspects are arrested and then freed after the killings fail to stop. The brutality of the murders create panic in the countryside as young lovers are targeted in flagrante delicto. And the police seem unable to stop the carnage. A Sardinian clan affiliated with the 1968 murder comes under suspicion, but the investigators are unable to make anything stick against the experienced criminals. However, as it's clear the family was involved in the 1968 killing and the same gun is used for all the subsequent murders, the family and the Monster must be connected, but how? Unable to make any of the convictions stick, aside from the 1968 conviction of the victims cuckolded husband, the investigators give up on the "Sardinian Trail" and disband letting a new crop of investigators pick up the pieces. Instead of a thoughtful review of the evidence, the new inspector Guittare, along with a Perugian judge Menini, embarks on a twisting conspiracy theory involving satanic cults and fancifal explanations for simple facts. The ridiculousness of their pursuits is highlighted in insisting a Perugian drowning in 1985 is related - the proof, the fact that the body buried was not that of the drowned man - but when he's exhumed and found to be the same man the investigators claim there was a double body switch. If this seems far fetched and hard to understand then you get the drift of how absurd their investigation became.Eventually even Preston and Spezi come under scrutiny for their vehement disagreements with the investigators theories. Spezi is jailed and Menini insists he was involved in the 1985 Perugian drowning. If Menini's name sounds familiar, it's because he used the same satanic cockamamie theories to arrest and convict Amanda Knox in the killing of her roomate back in 2008. The complete autonomy with which Menini operates leads to many miscarriages of justice and wrecks many lives. The book is fascinating and blessedly well written. A very good read for true crime fans and law nerds alike.
4/5 Stars.
