This is a curious thing – Ted Bundy isn’t mentioned in this book, as a kind of refocusing of attention on the victims of a crime rather than the killer himself.

The way Knoll refocuses the narrative is by…not naming the killer, but fictionalizing victims and survivors, while leaving many events true-to-life. She doesn’t indicate what’s real or fiction.

But the only thing that separates this from being a too-complex, somewhat creative crime thriller is that it was based on the Ted Bundy killings. It’s just puzzling. All the non-Bundy characters are fictional, I think.

If this is written as a fictional killer, I’m not sure that the accolades would hold up. I found it dull and confusing, weaving four different story/timelines together without a stylistic difference. It’s more complicated than I felt was warranted, and easily 50 pages too long.

To me the real question is this: Isn’t Knoll leveraging Bundy’s notoriety to sell her books?

In a way, the Ted Bundy connection detracts from this book for me. The positive reviews that I’ve read highlight the inherent misogyny and distrust of women that exists within law enforcement and media, the bonds between the women that are affected by these crimes, the lengths to which the media are pulled into positioning the killer as some kind of mastermind, when really they’re generally maladjusted incels with an axe to grind. That part of the story resonated with me, but I couldn’t stop wondering Why Ted Bundy?

It’s complicated, I guess, and there’s a meta-level to this that I don’t want to think about. At any rate, this book reminded me of how much I liked The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule – she worked as a crime writer and crisis hotline operator with Ted Bundy, and this book documents that. It’s excellent, and feels like a clear-eyed assessment of the monster.

Other books that came to mind are Last Call by Elon Green (the book and the HBO miniseries) and Missing from the Village by Justin Ling, and I’ll be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara, all of which do the true-crime thing well by centring the victims, while also telling the story, rather than fictionalizing things.

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