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Welcome to our newest book club, crime junkies! We'll meet every 4th Friday of the month at 5:30 pm to discuss con artists, dastardly deeds, and general menace. Our January book is Unmasked by Paul Holes. Swing by the store to get your copy or reserve yours online here: https://threebellsbooks.com/item/bIBJ3YVWP3UUQa45p7VOdA##
**THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** "
It’s a mark of the highest honor when I say it’s even more riveting than an episode of 'Dateline'." —The New York Times
From Paul Holes, the detective who found the Golden State Killer, Unmasked is a memoir that "grabs its reader in a stranglehold and proves more fascinating than fiction and darker than any noir narrative." (LA Magazine)
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.
AWARDS • 2022 Audible.com Best of the Year long-listed • 2022 Amazon.com Best Books of the Year long-listed • 2022 Hudson Booksellers Best of the Year long-listed 2022 Audible.com Best of the Year long-listed 2022 Amazon.com Best Books of the Year long-listed 2022 Hudson Booksellers Best of the Year long-listed
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