For Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) History Month, I focused my reading theme on AAPI authors, characters, and experiences. My favorite read this month came not from my themed selections but was a new release: Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases by Paul Holes, who is best known for helping identify the Golden State Killer.
The true crime genre is plagued by the ethical questions that naturally arise when the worst moment of someone else’s life is consumed for entertainment. When I engage with the genre, my main requirements are respect for the victims and an emphasis on facts rather than entertainment. Paul Holes does both of these well, which is a big reason why I like both this book and the podcast he co-hosts. Holes’s entire career has been driven by a desire to secure justice, and his empathy for victims and their families is clear in the way he emphasizes their humanity: they are people, not just bodies or numbers.
Holes does not shy away from the negative aspects of police work. He opens the book detailing the physical and mental impact his work has had on him, and he is honest about the ways his obsession with solving cold cases has ruined relationships and upended his personal life. While investigative work came easy to him, it was harder to learn to pursue justice for victims and their families without sacrificing his own family. Holes also notes how the biggest obstacle to closing cases can be the police themselves. Crimes committed across several jurisdictions are often not linked due to a lack of interagency communication, and this lack of communication and cooperation can lead to solvable cases going cold. Holes writes about cases in which agencies lacked the ability or even will to test evidence, yet were territorial about their cases and refused to collaborate in fear that their cases might get solved and their ‘win’ stolen by another agency. A lack of interagency communication and cooperation is partly to blame for the years it took to connect the East Area Rapist cases to the Original Night Stalker cases, and from there to identify the Golden State Killer.
True crime is a complicated genre, and while I am fascinated enough by crime to have an advanced degree in it, I tend toward academic books on the subject rather than those written for a broad audience. Unmasked is one of the latter that I feel confident recommending based on the way Holes presents his cases, treats victims and their families with respect, and does not gloss over the negative side of criminal justice work.
May’s reads and ratings (out of five stars)
Theme reads
- Strange Beasts of China, Yan Ge: four stars
- Suicide Club, Rachel Heng: four stars
- The Silence of Bones, June Hur: four and a half stars
- The Night Tiger, Yangsze Choo: four stars
- How We Fall Apart, Katie Zhao: four and a half stars
- Heart and Seoul, Jen Frederick: three and a half stars
- The Commoner, John Burnham Schwartz: four stars
Others
- The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, Stuart Turton: four stars
- The Cartographers, Peng Shepherd: five stars
- The Sign for Home, Blair Fell: five stars
- Book Lovers, Emily Henry: four stars
- Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy, Anne Sebba: four stars
- Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases, Paul Holes: five stars
- Smile and Look Pretty, Amanda Pellegrino: five stars
- A Show for Two, Tashie Bhuiyan: four stars
- Children of Blood and Bone, Tomi Adeyemi: four and a half stars
- The Pessimists, Bethany Ball: four stars
- Queen of the Tiles, Hanna Alkaf: five stars
- Spear, Nicola Griffith: five stars
- The Downstairs Girl, Stacey Lee: four stars
- The Boy in the Field, Margot Livesey: four stars
Moriah Sharpe 