And yet this is all part of what makes I'll Be Gone such a singular, fascinating read. It's lifelike in its incompletion. Had McNamara lived to wrap this book on her own, one suspects the end result could have been a masterwork. It still is, mostly—a posthumous treasure that feels thrillingly alive.

For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area.

I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer is a true crime book by the American writer Michelle McNamara about the investigation of the Golden State Killer.