Cold Case

In the 1970s and 1980s communities across California lived in terror. In the San Joaquin Valley there was the 'Visalia Ransacker'. Sacramento had the 'East Area Rapist', while Orange County had the 'Original Night Stalker'.  In the decades before DNA profiling and centralised crime databases, each county worked independently and there was little sharing of information. It wasn't until DNA testing in 2001, that it became clear all of these criminals were the same man. 

Crime writer Michelle McNamara gave this criminal a new name - the 'Golden State Killer'. She sought to explore this cold case in an attempt to help solve it. McNamara wanted to understand how a peeping tom who prowled the suburbs escalated from ransacking and burglary to rape and then increasingly brutal murder.  McNamara kept interest in this case alive by launching her TrueCrimeDiary website in 2006 and writing a series of articles about this killer published in Los Angeles magazine. 

McNamara's search for the killer is detailed in her book I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer (2018).  Part police procedural, part true crime saga, I'll Be Gone in the Dark is a fascinating exploration of the mechanics behind cold case investigations. Despite its gruesome subject matter, McNamara avoids sensationalism and is always respectful of the victims and the trauma they experienced. 

What makes it a compelling read is McNamara herself and the lengths she went to try to solve this mystery. With Nancy Drew pluck and DCI Jane Tennison's resolve, McNamara investigates thoroughly, interviewing witnesses, visiting crime scenes, combing through thousands of pages of evidence.  When she teams up with Paul Holes, Contra Costa County cold case investigator, they make quick progress on the case - ruling in and out suspects, developing a profile and zeroing in on the killer. 

McNamara died suddenly in 2016 and her book was completed by writers Paul Haynes and Billy Jensen. Her husband pushed to have the book published, and it ended up as a New York Times Bestseller. There is now also an HBO documentary series about McNamara's investigation. 

The final chapter of the book is McNamara's 'Letter to an Old Man' where she writes directly to the Golden State Killer. She tears him down and foreshadows his eventual capture, writing

'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...'

Two months after publication of the book, Joseph James DeAngelo (age 72) was arrested on 24 April 2018 charged with eight murders and later charged with 13 kidnapping and abduction attempts. While he is suspected of committing at least 50 rapes, the statute of limitations has expired on these crimes. To avoid the death penalty, DeAngelo plead guilty to all these crimes, including the rapes, and on 21 August 2020 he was sentenced to life without parole. 

While McNamara never managed to identify DeAngelo and died before his capture and arrest, her work undoubtedly raised awareness of his crimes, made him the Golden State Killer, and contributed to his downfall.

Booker Prize Shortlist 2020

The Shortlist was announced today for the 2020 Booker prize. The thirteen titles on the Longlist have been whittled down to this six:

• Diane Cook - The New Wilderness (USA)
• Tsitsi Dangarembga - This Mournable Body (Zimbabwe)
• Avni Doshi - Burnt Sugar (USA)
• Maaza Mengiste - The Shadow King (Ethiopia/USA)
• Douglas Stuart - Shuggie Bain (Scotland/USA)
• Brandon Taylor - Real Life (USA) 

This is an interesting shortlist. The judges have bumped Hilary Mantel (thereby denying her the trifecta for her Cromwell trilogy) and have chosen five American/US based authors. While the snubbing of Mantel is one thing, but the over abundance of Americans on the shortlist will likely be the more controversial choice given the decision to allow non-Commonwealth nationalities into the running for these awards in 2014 is still a problematic for many in the publishing industry. 

Of all these titles, the ones I am most interested in are the books by Cook and Stuart. The Winner of the £50,000 revealed in November.

Survival is Insufficient

Famous actor Arthur Leander is starring as King Lear at Toronto's Elgin Theatre. During a crucial scene he begins to stumble. From the audience, Jeevan rushes to the stage to catch Leander as he falls. The curtain comes down while Jeevan begins CPR on the Hollywood star.  At the same time, across town, emergency rooms are becoming flooded with patients, ill with a deadly strain of flu. In the next few hours the world will change irrevocably, as a worldwide pandemic wipes out almost the entire population leaving scattered pockets of survivors.

In April I picked up Station Eleven (2014) by Emily St John Mandel. I was gripped from the moment it began but had to stop as it was all too real, too frightening, too soon. Now, six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, I felt ready to try again. Over the past few days I have been engrossed in this unforgettable novel.

Station Eleven follows the lives of Leander, his ex-wives and child, a young co-star, a friend, the paramedic who tried to save him, and various other survivors of the pandemic. Non-linear, the story is told in switching timeframes - from decades before to twenty years after the world collapsed. We learn about how people adapted to a world without electricity, the internet and modern medicine. 

There is so much I loved about this book. Parts of it were set in Cabbagetown - the area of Toronto where I grew up - so deep nostalgia crept in as Jeevan walked along Carlton Street, visited Allan Gardens and spoke of places from my childhood. The Travelling Symphony - a ragtag troupe of musicians and actors - that roam the territories to bring culture to the survivors. To my delight, their motto - 'Survival is Insufficient' - is taken from Star Trek Voyager. The way Miranda pours her heart into creating comic books which link together so many of the characters. The 'Museum of Civilisation' Clark creates, with its defunct technology, to preserve the past.  The efforts of a librarian to record the memories of those he meets. All of these intriguing elements add to the richness of the story. 

Mandel writes beautifully. She paces the story by packaging the chapters and altering the narrative style. The characters were well crafted and, through them, Mandel raises issues like the vacuity of celebrity culture, the role of technology, the desire to leave a legacy, and the burden of memory. While in the 'After' there were post-apcocalyptic hints of The Walking Dead and Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Station Eleven presents a more hopeful view. Despite the bleakness and the devastating carnage of the virus, human empathy and morality will bring people together and the world can reinvent itself. Just the message we need at this time.

HBO has created a mini-series of Station Eleven which was filming as the pandemic began. I look forward to seeing it when it airs.

Women's Prize Winner 2020

The winner of the 2020 Women's Prize for fiction has just been announced, and I am delighted that Maggie O'Farrell has been recognised for her incredible novel, Hamnet.

Women's Prize Winner 2020

A live online ceremony took place with Chair of Judges Martha Lane Fox announcing the winner. Fox said of Hamnet, 

“The euphoria of being in the same room for the final judging meeting was quickly eclipsed by the excitement we all feel about this exceptional winner. Hamnet, while set long ago, like all truly great novels expresses something profound about the human experience that seems both extraordinarily current and at the same time, enduring.”

Maggie O’Farrell received the £30,000 prize and the award - ‘Bessie’, a limited-edition bronze figurine - from judge Paula Hawkins in Edinburgh. 

I absolutely loved this novel as have the friends and family members I shared it with. I am so pleased that it won and that O'Farrell will get a wider readership as a result. Read my review of Hamnet here.

Knowing Me, Knowing You

Many people I know and admire rave about the writing of Rachel Cusk. Each time she released one of the novels in her recent trilogy I would be asked if I had read her work yet. While I had bought the books when they came out, I never felt in the right reading mood. However, for some unknown reason, I decided that now was the time to move at least one off my towering 'To Be Read' pile.

Outline (2014) tells the story of Faye, a woman who travels from her home in London to Athens to teach a summer writing course. While it is narrated by Faye, we know very little about her, as she is only revealed through how she relays the stories of those around her. A keen observer, she entices people to share their stories and we learn about their families, lovers, dreams, careers, passions - while at the same time our narrators shares very little of herself. We learn, over time, that she is divorced and has children, but for the most part she remains elusive. 

It begins on the flight to Athens when Faye is seated next to a thrice-married man who reveals key moments from his life story. Along the way we learn about her students, writers and others she meets as she dines, sails, swims, and teaches.

This was a really intriguing book. Cusk is an intelligent writer and I cannot recall another time I have read a book with such an ever-present narrator that I know so little about. Her voice propels the book along, as she shapes the narrative, yet she so rarely gives insight into herself. 

It was not until the last section of the novel where it became clear what she was doing. Cusk writes (p240) how one can reveal themselves in the contrast to those around them:

This anti-description, for want of a better way of putting it, had made something clear to her by a reverse kind of exposition: while he talked she began to see herself as a shape, an outline, with all the detail filled in around it while the shape itself remained blank. 

Outline is an intriguing novel - smart, perceptive, ambitious and unconventional. It made me keen to learn more about Faye and desperate to travel to Greece! Cusk has followed Outline up with two more volumes: Transit (2017) and Kudos (2018), which I look forward to reading.