I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer

by Michelle McNamara

Michelle something notably unauthorly, like, “You are the coolest!!!” The truth was, I was unsure whether I wanted to meet this writer—I felt outmatched by her. I create characters; she had to deal with facts, go where the story took her. She had to earn the trust of wary, weary investigators, brave the mountains of paperwork that may contain that one crucial piece of information, and convince devastated family and friends to needle around in old wounds.

Michelle’s doggedness in pursuing this case was astounding. In a typical instance, she tracked down a pair of cuff links that had been stolen from a Stockton crime scene in 1977 on the website of a vintage store in Oregon. But she didn’t do just this; she could also tell you that “boys’ names beginning in N were relatively rare, appearing only once in the top one hundred names of the 1930s and ’40s, when the original owner of the cuff links was likely born.” Mind you, this isn’t even a clue leading to the killer; it’s a clue leading to the cuff links the killer stole.

I want to know more about Michelle. As she detailed her search for this shadowy man, I found myself looking for clues to this writer I so admire. Who was the woman whom I trusted enough to follow into this nightmare? What was she like? What made her this way? What gave her this grace? One summer day, I found myself driving the twenty minutes from my Chicago home out to Oak Park, to the alley where “the girl” was found, where Michelle the Writer discovered her calling. I didn’t realize until I was there why I was there. It was because I was in my own search, hunting this remarkable hunter of darkness. —GILLIAN FLYNN