I’ll Be Gone in the Dark – A Powerful and Gut-Wrenching True-Crime Book

One day soon, you’ll hear a car pull up to your curb, an engine cut out. You’ll hear footsteps coming up your front walk……The doorbell rings…….This is how it ends for you…….“You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark,” you threatened a victim once. Open the door. Show us your face. Walk into the light.

Journalist and creator of True Crime Diary Michelle Eileen McNamara spent nearly a decade researching for her true-crime book I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, which focuses on the unsolved crimes of a serial rapist and killer who terrorized Californian suburbs between mid 1970s and mid 1980s. Unfortunately she died in 2016 at age 46 (from the effects of prescription drugs and a heart condition) before completing her book. Michelle’s husband, the actor/comedian Patton Oswalt sought the help of investigative journalist Billy Jensen and researcher Paul Hynes to piece together his wife's manuscript and get it ready for publication. The book was published in February 27 this year and became an instant best-seller. Early in April, there was news that HBO will be producing a documentary series based on the book. And then followed the fascinatingly shocking news: a suspect named Joseph James DeAngelo was arrested in link to the serial murder-rape cases (72-year-old DeAngelo was a Navy Veteran and a former police officer). ‘One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer’, the caption in the book’s cover now felt evermore perfect.

It was Michelle McNamara who coined the moniker ‘Golden State Killer’, a man responsible for at least 100 burglaries, 50 home-invasion rapes, and 13 murders. He has also gleaned other nicknames during decades of police investigation and reporting: ‘Visalia Ransacker’, ‘East Area Rapist’, ‘Original Night Stalker’, ‘Diamond Knot Killer’, etc. As a dedicated researcher, accomplished armchair sleuth, and author of the website True Crime Diary, McNamara has possessed a long-standing fascination for cold cases (crimes that go unsolved). Earlier in the autobiographical portions of the book, she remarks, “The part of the brain reserved for sports statistics or dessert recipes or Shakespeare quotes is, for me, a gallery of harrowing aftermaths”. She sneaks into her little daughter Alice’s playroom in late nights, noting down penal codes in crayon and jolting notes for her next article. But McNamara terms her obsessive investigation to unmask the identity of Golden State Killer as more of a personal endeavor. She recalls the cold-blooded murder that happened closer to her neighborhood in 1984 (when Michelle was 14; a murder attributed to the serial-killer whom she pursued later in life).

Patton Oswalt and Michelle McNamara

For years, Michelle McNamara has interviewed rape victims, surviving kins of the murder victims, tracked down old police reports, forged a strong working relationship with members of law enforcement in the hopes of seeing the culprit behind the jail bars (“There's a scream lodged permanently in my throat now”, she writes when thinking the killer is still at large). There may have been many disappointments in the path she chose, but at the same time her continuous coverage on the 3 to 4 decade-old crimes of Golden State Killer brought renewed attention to the cases. Most importantly, the vicious nature of these crimes was broadcasted beyond the confines of Californian police reports (I also possess an eerie fascination for serial-killers and true-crime subjects yet I have never heard about Golden State Killer before the release of McNamara’s book).  Nevertheless, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark isn’t a book full of cold facts, as vouched by author Gillian Flynn in the foreword, trying to render an edge-of-the-seat narrative by plowing through the savage acts of an unfathomable killer, while treating his victims as mere ciphers. McNamara’s writing rather flows with nuance and humanity. She is deeply empathetic in narrating the hell the rape victims went through, and without delving much on violence and lurid details she pushes us into those distressing atmosphere. When it comes to portraying killer’s macabre habits at his victims’ homes, McNamara tells things with unbearable clarity, but in a way that blocks one’s unnecessary curiosity in the killer’s perverted indulgence.

While the first part of the book concentrates on the crimes, killer’s M.O., and the trauma of the victims, the second part follows array of cops from different counties, most of whom has retired after chasing dead ends throughout their career. The 2^nd part of the book also contains the author’s various theories (including the ones shared by her equally obsessive online patrons), and in-depth researches made by studying maps of crime scenes (geographic-profiling). Many of the chapters are pieced through from McNamara’s notes and the book’s third part, entirely written by Billy Jensen and Paul Hynes conveys the depth of her involvement in the case and the avenues she was about to chose to identify the killer. One of those things is that she wanted run the killer’s DNA through public databases like Ancestry.com, which was what the investigators eventually did to nab James DeAngelo.

The alleged Golden State Killer Joseph James DeAngelo

Of course, the book’s incomplete nature shows through. Despite McNamara’s deeply evocative writing I felt the book’s structure makes the narration disjointed and repetitive (an unavoidable consequence after the author’s sad demise). There are chapters that can’t really compensate the absence of McNamara’s voice. Had she lived to finish the work, the final product would have been a masterpiece of true-crime literature.  In the ensuing months and years, debates would go on about whether McNamara’s book truly led to the capture of the serial-killer (already some articles have hailed her as prophetic and condemned certain police counties for not acknowledging McNamara’s book). But shoving aside these sentences that start with ‘if’ and look at the book’s merit, one could still find an enlivening and diligent work. Michelle McNamara robustly conveys the 70s American suburban life, where a rapist and murderer lurked in between the rifts of alienation and isolation that pervaded these communities (where people failed to look out for each other). She has also impeccably captured what it meant for her and the people of her generation to shine light upon this deranged killer (the “Letter to an Old Man” chapter would definitely be hailed as wondrous piece in the history of true-crime writing). Eventually, the devastating image of Golden State Killer turning the Californian dream into nightmare reminded me of the opening shot of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986), when the camera zooms inside a well-manicured lawn to find squalid things that wholly contrasts with the idyllic space of American serenity and domesticity.

 
Patton Oswalt on his late wife's book

 

Little Fires Everywhere – A Superb Novel on the Depths of Motherhood and Suburban Shallowness

“Sometimes, just when you think everything’s gone, you find a way. Like after a prairie fire. The earth is all scorched and black and everything green is gone. But after the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow. People are like that too, you know. They start over. They find a way.”

Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere (published September 2017) literally begins with fire blazing. An elegant house in an opulent suburb is set in flames. The Richardson family, owners and residents of the house, witness the scene with a dazed and detached expression, just as the firemen reports ‘Not an accident’. Who set the fire and Why? There’s not much mystery on ‘who’, because the Richardson couples and their three teenage children are certain that 14-year-old Isabel Richardson aka Izzy, the youngest member of the family, is behind this arson. And, as if to confirm their suspicion, Izzy is conspicuously missing. To know the ‘why’, the story is re-winded back to the months, when a Bohemian mother and her teenage daughter shifted to the affluent, planned community of Shaker Heights, in Cleveland, Ohio. 

Ng’s debut novel Everything I Never Told You (2014) revolves around disappearance and death of teenager Lydia, middle daughter of a Chinese-American family. Ng uses the mystery surrounding Lydia’s suicide or murder to profoundly explore parenthood, suburban life, and racial stereotyping. With her second novel, Ng more gracefully intertwines the tale of two polarizing families to unearth the lurking problems within a seemingly progressive and liberal-minded community. The main focus of Little Fires Everywhere is the mother-children relationship. The fathers are figuratively or literally absent. The mothers in the novel dotes on their girls, determined to give them the best life possible, and in turn build a kind of golden cage, demanding strict adherence to rules and yet they scramble to protect their children from different kinds of maelstrom. On a subtly sociopolitical level, the novel jabs at the grand progressive ideals of mostly-white suburban communities, whom despite their parade of ideals remain blind or unsympathetic to race and class issues.

Little Fires Everywhere is set in the 1990s, dubbed as ‘Post-Racial Era’ in US. Elena Richardson aka Mrs. Richardson is a WASP and her domain is Shaker Heights. She has married her college sweet-heart and settled back in the community, where she grew up. Elena is all about legacy, stability, and rules (‘college, marriage, mortgage, and children’ she says). A husband with a steady job, four beautiful children, big house with flawlessly trimmed lawn, and cars, and what more she could desire for? Elena also believes in doing the ‘right thing’. She proudly claims how Shaker Heights, at the height of Civil Rights Movement, allowed people of other color to inhabit the suburbs. Elena works as a reporter for a local paper, which mostly reports annoyingly positive stories about the neighborhood. Apart from engaging in charity works, Elena also rents out her small apartment house for below market rate; to deserving people who would benefit from her help. She has rented out the lower portion of her apartment to Yang, a genial immigrant from Hong Kong who works as a bus driver. Now the upper portion is rented to Mia Warren, a freewheeling artist, accompanied by her beautiful, spirited 14 year old daughter Pearl Warren.  

Celeste Ng (author photo by Kevin Day Photography)

Mrs. Richardson who subtly controls everybody finds it hard to breakthrough reticent nature of Mia. Mia doesn’t believe in rules or in the strict notions of right and wrong. She has had only one principle so far: To not get attached. The mother-daughter team has for years moved through different American states, always renting out shabby apartments, and only owning things which they could fit into their VW Rabbit. She does part-time work in restaurants and preoccupied with photographic art at other times. Now and then, Mia sells her art through a contact in New York art gallery. The allegedly ‘shabby’ lifestyle and remoteness makes Mrs. Richardson to scrutinize Mia as if she’s an alien being. Elena expects Mia to showcase her ‘gratefulness’ or treat her as ‘noblesse’ (for providing a chance to live in orderly neighborhood). Furthermore, Elena offers Mia to be her house-keeper, thinking she could mold this woman, unlike her own youngest daughter Lexie. By this time, Pearl has very well acquainted with the Richardson family. She spends her evenings in the Richardsons’ couch, sandwiched between Moody, who crushes on Pearl, and Trip, the suave brother of Moody, for whom Pearl holds an infatuation. Pearl also looks up to Lexie, a saucy 17 year old and the eldest of Richardson children. Rebellious Izzy, the youngest of Richardsons', often shuts herself in her room, cooking up ways to upend the irritating orderliness of her life. In order to keep an eye on Pearl, Mia accepts the house-keeping job. But as one could expect, trouble brews. And, the seemingly strong ties between the two families turn murkier.

The subtle power in Celeste Ng’s writing lies in how she conjures certain images to our mind and uses it as a spring-board to broaden the story. For example, the house set ablaze or the painting of a mother looking at her baby in a transfixed manner. The later example plays a key role in finding out the hidden depths of the central character (Mia). Moreover, the painting itself (titled ‘Virgin and Child #1’) – the mother’s utterly absorbed gaze – serves as the symbol for mother-daughter relationship, vividly described in the novel. The child custody battle scenario is brilliantly used to expose the racial and cultural myopia of the white liberals. It holds a mirror up to gaze at the utter superficiality of the liberalism and impenetrable bubble of white liberal privilege. The writer asserts that in communities with nuanced hierarchies and codes, the racism and cultural bias is also expressed through subtle means (privilege and progressive ideals doesn’t mean that one is immune to such things). 

There’s no single, authoritative voice in Little Fires Everywhere. The story which unfurls from the perspective of group of characters provides a holistic view of the happenings.Everyone has their say, and it shows how everyone is limited by their perspective and lack of experience or awareness. The novel is character-driven and its beauty lies in how the author makes us see all the characters’ world from inside out. It’s not a full-fledged mystery or thriller, yet it moves at breakneck pace (I read two-thirds of the novel in a single setting). The most impressive aspect of ‘Little Fires’ is how we forgive or even empathize with certain characters, who might be otherwise pigeonholed as the ‘wicked ones’. Mrs. Richardson comes off as the embodiment of the peculiar Suburb’s virtues and flaws. She desires to suppress passion, uphold rules, deny dark truths, and so on. And, even though Mrs. Richardson’s thoughts and actions incite our fury, we tend to understand her, and even shed a tear or two for her circumscribed thinking. Celeste Ng truly pushes us inside the skin of these people to comprehend their nature. Apart from Mrs. Richardson’s characterization, I also loved how earnestly the author depicts the emotional agonies of the childless McCulloughs. But of course, the large appeal of the novel lies in the way we tend to identify or root for Mia Warren and Izzy Richardson. Since, we the avid readers, often celebrate non-conformity, rule-breaking, and rebellious spirits. I think the splendor of any literary work or art lies in how it kindles the little fires within us, while the ‘normal’, hushed-up life inclines to do the opposite. In that vein, Little Fires Everywhere (352 pages) is a multi-layered and expertly crafted novel, which gracefully extracts our whole emotional energies. There might be little too much spelling out or some heavy, unnecessary foreshadowing, but these are just nitpicks compared to the entrancing reading experience I had.