I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer

How it reads

I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer is narrative nonfiction (true crime investigation, specifically), and its dominant mood is tense. The suspense is the kind you feel in your shoulders. It moves fast: plot-driven and hard to put down, the kind of book that carries you along even when you're tired.

It's set in several locations, in the recent past, told in the first person by a single narrator. Its central concerns are justice and secrets. In weight it's heavy and literary — denser, more serious, and more demanding of you.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending resolves happily. At 352 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.