Desmond Lawson

English 201

Kelly Austin 

March 28, 2019

                        

                                                                Lit in the Dark                                     

            After reading Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in The Dark, there were some immediate ideas about the true crime genre as a whole that came to mind. Exactly what does it take to from the writer/author’s perspective in order to actually write a true crime novel? Throughout the story, McNamara either unknowingly or purposely showed her audience how consuming the work had become for her. I’ll also be comparing McNamara’s true crime story to what is considered one of it not the first true crime story, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. To start with, I believe McNamara’s “present it as it is” strategy is the best way to go in the true crime genre because the audience wants to understand the mindset/psychology of these criminals, but that does not mean watering down their actions in order to make the audience more sympathetic to the criminal. I believe that what Capote did with Perry. Vs. McNamara and the Golden State Killer (GSK) relationship where she actually resented the man so that allowed her to not sugar coat any of his actions and actually portraying him as the monster he is. From McNamara’s elaborate timeline and setup of the story as well as her ideal portrayal of the Golden State Killer, McNamara adds a refreshing source of credibility to the true crime genre. 

            Through creating an intricate timeline, McNamara restructured how your ideal true crime story should be constructed. There will be photos of the story’s timeline at the end of this paragraph to support my claim as well. McNamara uses her great story telling skills to grab the audience, so well in fact, that it feels that you are in each specific time period she talks about.  She starts off in the 1980s with Irvine and Dana Point, but from here makes a jump to present day/the future in Hollywood, 2009. I believe the way McNamara structured the story is how every true crime story should be created. Creating and describing a suspenseful scene and then jumping to when the author/writer themselves became interested and/or obsessed with the criminals their writing about. It is the act of showing how your work has essentially consumed your life is what gets the reader interested even more because once you realize how time consuming all of this work for McNamara is, the more appreciative and enjoyable the book becomes. I believe in the “Letter to an Old Man” epilogue depicted just how much emotion McNamara had towards the Golden State Killer. From describing the GSK as a “school boy” to suggesting his penis size is small, McNamara goes all in on the GSK and I think that is one of the best sections of I’ll Be Gone in the Darkbecause the reader can literally feel the hatred and discuss from every line she delivers towards the GSK. Her intricate timeline and setup were perfect for the story, but there was another element to the book that really elevated this novel and the true crime genre. 

            McNamara’sI’ll Be Gone in The Darkembodies the true crime genre much better than Capote’s In Cold Blood. There are a couple things I am factoring into this comparison. The first is the idea of being straight forward and telling 100% factual information in a true crime story. There should never be a moment in a true crime story where the author sympathizes with the criminal so much that they essentially water down and portray their crime in a lesser light that is actually was. That is what Capote dead with Perry, because he sympathized with Perry so much, I think he inadvertently tried to dive into Perry’s troubled past as an excuse or reasoning behind his horrific crime. Vs. McNamara portrayal of the GSK, where she had to hold back her own emotions just from not ripping the criminal apart on every page in her book. Instead she put together a well-structured novel that laid out fact after fact which allowed the reader to take the information as it is and make our judgement based off it. The biggest difference between Capote and McNamara is that McNamara does not try to control the narrative, rather present things as it is and allows us to decide on the GSK. And for the true crime genre, I believe being 100% factual along with a proper depiction of the criminal are crucial elements for a true crime story to do its justice and that is what McNamara provides with I’ll Be Gone in the Dark.

Overall, the way McNamara portrayed the Golden State Killer is the ideal way a criminal like him should be portrayed in a true crime story. Along with that, creating an interesting timeline that brought the reader back and forth through time was a revolutionary change to the true crime genre. The accurate depiction of the Golden State Killer mixed with the well thought out timeline structure brought new life to the true crime genre and will change how the genre will be written and understood for years to come.