3. 5 stars

A man who broke into homes, assaulted women, tied up the men and left a trail of devastation behind him. Someone who got away with his crime for decades until 2018 when a DNA site for family roots finally took him down. Michelle McNamara was obsessed with the man behind the crimes, and the type of person who could commit them, as well as the victims he left behind. This true crime book explains how McNamara looked into the story of the Golden State Killer until her untimely death in 2016, and the book is finished off by other true crime aficionados that helped her, and her husband.

I thought this was a really interesting, and well-told tale. I'm not a massive fan of true crime, or at least I wasn't - I might be now but will wait till I have a few more under my belt to confirm - but I found this easy to read for the most part, and I would have got through it a lot more quickly if I hadn't been away and not reading a lot for the week I was reading it.

I do think at times, the structure of this book felt a little off, and there wasn't much that could be done about this. Unfortunately, Michelle wasn't around to finish off her book, and make those final decisions on structure and what chapter should follow another. It seemed linear for the most part but sometimes another chapter would start, and I would feel a bit disjointed and thrown out of the story.

The Golden State Killer is truly terrifying, and Michelle was a brave woman for delving deeper into the crimes and trying to help solve the case.