McNamara, who died in 2016 at the age of 48, was the author of True Crime Diary, a blog of her efforts to research and solve crimes in general and one especially horrible series of crimes in particular. The Golden State Killer, who is also known as the East Area Rapist and Original Night Stalker (EARONS), raped and killed an extraordinary number of Californians in the 1970s and 1980s. It took years before the many disparate law enforcement jurisdictions involved connected his attacks, and he was only caught in 2018, after McNamara's death.
Given the extent of McNamara's work and the strenuously well-documented ferocity of her obsession with the GST, it's understandable that her family (and publishers) wanted to bring her work to fruition in book form as quickly as possible. Without McNamara, though, it's clear that editors and other researchers struggled to give the story, in its tremendous complexity, the top-down feel it needs to produce a satisfying read. Too often the zigzags in time and place don't make sense to the reader, and certainly don't aid in either comprehension or suspense.
What's impressive here are the long passages on the GST's 'work' in Sacramento, which sometimes experienced multiple home invasions and rapes in a week, and whose residents became understandably terrified and paranoid. The GST was brutal but he was also efficient, and the extent of his crimes is breathtaking. One can now Google the Golden State Killer and see photos of the man in custody for his crimes. He looks depressingly ordinary, and I suspect one could write another book about why seeing this nondescript old man in an orange jumpsuit feels profoundly disappointing.
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