I'll Be Gone in the Dark

Michelle McNamara's book was published by HarperCollins on 27 February 2018, nearly two years after she died. Its subtitle, One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, describes what the book sets out to record.

McNamara became interested in a series of crimes that had been committed under several different names, among them the East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker. She wrote about them for Los Angeles magazine in 2013, then signed a contract with HarperCollins to write a book, and it was her own name for the offender, the Golden State Killer, that stuck and that did a good deal to bring the case back into public view.

The title is taken from something the attacker is reported to have said during an assault in 1976 on a fifteen-year-old girl, his tenth known victim. McNamara's book appeared two months before an arrest was made in the case, and it combines the story of the crimes with the account of her own pursuit of them and of the other investigators and survivors she worked with.