We All Go into the Dark: A Waterstones Best True Crime Read

Product Information

When Wyatt Branson finds a young girl abandoned in a field just beyond the barbed wire, multiple thoughts race through his head. She’s lying in a circle of broken dandelions. Besides being extremely sunburnt, he also realizes that she only has one eye...and that she doesn’t talk.

A young girl is found on the side of the road, surrounded by dandelions and missing one eye. What is this girls story and why was she on the side of the road. She won't speak to anyone. They name her Angel. The figure was never caught or identified. But the intervening years spawned a legend that never quite lost its grip on the popular imagination of Glasgow. As with all thrillers and mysteries, the plot is not able to be told without spoilers. This is a story about strong women characters who stop at nothing to find their missing friend and solving the mystery of what happened that fateful night. Angel’s story is one of courage, and we do learn how Angel lost her eye and Odette lost her leg.

Comments from the archive

I had significant problems with this book. I had to reread the first part of the book more than once to get a handle on what was exactly happening. Wyatt is an unreliable narrator with mental health issues and deep sorrow for his lost sister. He’s a confusing historian that’s for sure. I’m giving my four stars and adding other books of the author because her dark, depressive but also skilled slow building story-telling technique and detailed, well-depicted characterization already won my die hard thriller lover mind! Whether we needed another book about Bible John is arguable, but nobody can fault Francisco Garcia's evidently meticulous research. For those of you who aren’t so willing to take a risk, I’ll give you a brief rundown of the basics. Ten years ago a girl named Trumanell went missing from her family’s farm with only a bloody handprint left behind as a clue as to her whereabouts. The most obvious suspect was her brother – although without a body no one could ever pin him down with the crime. But now . . . .

As the book opens he is driving home and finds a young girl, injured, lying in a circle of dandelions. Dandelions have a special significance for Wyatt and he feels this is God’s way of telling him to help this girl. He takes her to his home and calls Odette, the only police officer that he trusts. When Iwas in Glasgow, Igot talking to someone in apub, as you do,” he says, Zooming in from his home in South London. ​ “He mentioned it was coming up to the Bible John case’s 50 th ​ ‘anniversary’ – Ithought it seemed odd to talk about such an objectively horrifying story in that way, like it was apop culture anniversary.”Special thanks to NetGalley and Random House/Ballantine Books for sharing this splendid ARC with me in exchange my honest review. Odette is then drawn into the case of who the young mute woman is because Wyatt reaches out to her for help. She is now determined to solve the mystery of who she is and whom she may be running from. When Wyatt finds a girl, with a missing eye, on the side of the road, who can’t or won’t speak, instead of calling the police, he assigns her the name ‘Angel’ and takes her home. But the intervening years spawned a legend that never quite lost its grip on the popular imagination of Glasgow. The killings provoked the country’s largest ever manhunt, as well as countless suspects, books, documentaries, earnest speculation, pub theorising and bouts of urban mythmaking.

A creepy, nerve bending, slow-burn mystery about two girls: one is missing for a decade and the other one is found but we don’t know her identity, her secret past and why she is found in the middle of the road. It would have been nice if the author would have added an additional “part” to allow us inside the mind of the killer. To understand his mental state, the mask of his “job”, the thought process of why he justified killing multiple people. Read that -- and you are invested. You will not want to put this one down until the end. Beginning with "Lost" and ending with "Found." If you like this one and have not read the Naomi Cottle books by Rene Denefield, try those next. There are similarities between this book and your previous one, about what makes people worth searching for, paying attention to and what compels authorities and the public to care. Often, the worst people in these scenarios end up being mythologised. Would you agree with that? This is definitely a very slow burn of a mystery and I lost patience with it at times. I think it’s a good story but be sure to set aside a good amount of time to stay focused on what is going on.

If You Were There is the moving and affecting story of one man’s search for his lost family, an urgent document of where we are now and a powerful, timeless reminder of our responsibility to others. We are All the Same in the Dark” by Julia Heaberlin is a twisty thriller that occupied me for over ten hours. The audio is great, narrated by Jenna Lamia, Catherine Taber, MacLeod Andrews, and Kirby Heyborne. Recommend to: If you’re in the mood for a slow moving mystery, Texas style with a contemporary fiction edge. I also really loved Angel, the girl found by the side of the road who Odette eventually helped and cared for for several days, changing her life. These characters were really well-drawn and stayed with me. The suspense never let up and I went to bed dying to know who the killer was. Even now that I know, I would love to read more books about these characters, perhaps from before the killer was found.