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My Life Solving America's Cold Cases
by Paul Holes
From the detective who found the Golden State Killer, a memoir of investigating America's toughest cold cases and the rewards – and toll – of a life solving crime.
I order another bourbon, neat. This is the drink that will flip the switch. I don't even know how I got here, to this place, to this point. Something is happening to me lately. I'm drinking too much. My sheets are soaking wet when I wake up from nightmares of decaying corpses. I order another drink and swig it, trying to forget about the latest case I can't shake.
Crime solving for me is more complex than the challenge of the hunt, or the process of piecing together a scientific puzzle. The thought of good people suffering drives me, for better or worse, to the point of obsession. People always ask how I am able to detach from the horrors of my work. Part of it is an innate capacity to compartmentalize; the rest is experience and exposure, and I've had plenty of both. But I have always taken pride in the fact that I can keep my feelings locked up to get the job done. It's only been recently that it feels like all that suppressed darkness is beginning to seep out.
When I look back at my long career, there is a lot I am proud of. I have caught some of the most notorious killers of the twenty-first century and brought justice and closure for their victims and families. I want to tell you about a lifetime solving these cold cases, from Laci Peterson to Jaycee Dugard to the Pittsburg homicides to, yes, my twenty-year-long hunt for the Golden State Killer.
But a deeper question eats at me as I ask myself, at what cost? I have sacrificed relationships, joy―even fatherhood―because the pursuit of evil always came first. Did I make the right choice? It's something I grapple with every day. Yet as I stand in the spot where a young girl took her last breath, as I look into the eyes of her family, I know that, for me, there has never been a choice. "I don't know if I can solve your case," I whisper. "But I promise I will do my best."
It is a promise I know I can keep.
"[An] exceptional memoir...Holes's lifelong struggles with panic attacks only make his professional achievements more impressive. This is an essential companion to Michelle McNamara's I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Occasionally overwrought but absorbing...Holes is sometimes a little too worked up and a little too focused on himself, but the stories he tells—and the solutions to the crimes—are fascinating. Grisly, matter-of-fact, and just the thing for aspiring detectives." - Kirkus Reviews
"True-crime superstar Holes takes readers on a gripping journey into the mind of a cold-case detective…a thoughtful yet fast-paced and absorbing amalgamation of personal memoir and true-crime novel. Crime junkies and nonfiction fans will clamor to get their hands on this book." - Booklist
"His refreshing honesty sets the book apart from similar memoirs by detectives, who aren't always this forthcoming about coping with trauma. A captivating memoir of a life dedicated to cold cases. Hand to readers who appreciated Sue Black's All That Remains: A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes." - Library Journal
"Unmasked is a stunning, brutally honest memoir about a complex, highly gifted forensic scientist who sacrificed his own personal life, even his marriage and fatherhood, in his relentless pursuit of monsters." - Mystery & Suspense Magazine
"Paul Holes is a natural criminal profiler with a talent for describing how the process works. In his book, Unmasked, he marches the reader into the real world of criminal behavior and blends his forensic expertise with his unfiltered personal life experiences as he tackles both cold cases and modern crimes. This is a book you will not be able to put down." - Dr. Ann Wolbert Burgess, author of A Killer By Design and co-author of Sexual Homicide
This information about Unmasked was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
In 2018, Paul Holes retired as a cold case investigator after spending more than twenty-seven years working in Contra Costa County, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Paul specialized in cold case and serial predator crimes, lending his expertise to notable cases, including the murder of Laci Peterson and the kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard. Most prominently, Paul's career culminated with his identification of the Golden State Killer, Joseph DeAngelo, the most notorious and cunning serial predator in U.S. history. Since the arrest of DeAngelo, Holes has been very involved on the media side, continuing to assist law enforcement and victims' families with their unsolved cases through the television shows The DNA of Murder with Paul Holes and America's Most Wanted and the podcast Jensen & Holes: The Murder Squad.
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