I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara was a solid book, with McNamara  chronicling her search for the Golden State Killer, a name she came up with for someone also known as the East Area Rapist and Original Night Stalker.

The crimes began in the mid-1970s in Sacramento, with 50 assaults from 1976-1979, and later included assaults and murders committed along the 680 corridor around San Ramon and Danville and in Southern California into the mid-1980s.

McNamara died prior to completing the book, with it finished due to efforts by her late husband Patton Oswalt as well as people she collaborated with in efforts to track down the killer. It's written towards the end of the book how advances in DNA technology could find him, and ultimately that's what occurred with investigators coming up with a listing of potential familial DNA matches and then tracing the branches of the family tree and arresting Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. in April 2018. McNamara wrote a compelling tale of searching for justice and at a minimum, her efforts helped bring attention to the cold case that eventually was solved.