Michelle McNamara

Michelle McNamara was an American true crime writer and blogger whose posthumously published investigation into the Golden State Killer became a cultural phenomenon.

Michelle McNamara was a true crime writer and the founder of the blog True Crime Diary, where she developed a devoted readership for her meticulous, deeply personal approach to cold cases. She spent years obsessively investigating the Golden State Killer — a serial rapist and murderer who terrorized California in the 1970s and 1980s and had eluded law enforcement for decades. McNamara died in 2016 before finishing the book, and I’ll Be Gone in the Dark was completed by her husband, comedian Patton Oswalt, and her research team.

The result is an extraordinary document: part investigative journalism, part memoir, part literary essay. McNamara’s prose is vivid and controlled, and she renders both the specific horror of the crimes and her own obsessive process with equal clarity. The book captures something true about the psychology of true crime devotion — the way certain cases burrow into certain minds — without romanticizing it. Her frustration at the limits of amateur investigation is honest and earned.

A remarkable coda: just months after the book’s 2018 publication, a suspect was identified and arrested using genealogical DNA matching, bringing the case to a close McNamara never lived to see. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark stands as both a compelling piece of journalism and a tribute to one writer’s consuming pursuit of justice.