Patterson, that industrial-strength writer, adopts a sort of semi-noir tone in this true-life procedural, opening when news of the murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin reaches the chief of police of Moscow, Idaho: “And again he presses harder on the gas. One good thing about being the police chief is that no one is likely to arrest him for speeding.” The murders, committed with a military-grade fixed-blade knife, were grisly enough, but the clues were relatively few. There was a reason for that: Bryan Kohberger, who admitted to the killings in July 2025, had been a graduate student in criminology at nearby Washington State University; as an undergraduate, he had learned the art of criminal profiling, how murders are investigated, and what weapons are usually employed (“Typically…white men choose knives”). Kohberger, by all accounts, was a psychological mess with an inflated sense of self-worth and the certainty that women “must spot his looks, his intelligence, and they must want him.” Writes Patterson, “They don’t.” This occasions a discussion of “incels”—involuntary celibates—and their purported place “at the heart of rising gender-based violence.” Kohberger was one such incel, well known in school for insulting female students and making them feel threatened, so much so that he was removed from his teaching assistantship, likely a step toward expulsion. The best part of this meandering book is Patterson’s description of the courtroom maneuvering of Kohberger’s defense attorney, a skilled litigator whose client, as part of a plea deal, will be spared the death penalty.
