Genre: Memoir True Crime
Publisher: Celadon Books
Release Date: April 26, 2022
Order Link: Amazon
5 Broken Hearts
Many thanks to Celadon Books for an arc of this book.
Review published in Mystery & Suspense Magazine
#CeladonReads #UnmaskedBook
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.
Review:
If I ever harbored any delusions that monsters aren't real, reading Unmasked shattered them, opening my eyes to the fact that monsters are out there - watching, stalking their next victim, preparing to strike quick as a cobra before fleeing, leaving behind a trail of tears and fear. What do monsters look like? Like you and me and the guy in your neighborhood grocery store, a coach playing ball with kids, a co-worker sharing a cup of coffee, a member of your church. Monsters wear many ordinary disguises while destroying lives, leaving victims and families scarred for life.
Unmasked: My Life Solving America's Cold Cases is the career memoir of a man, a master criminologist, who's made it his life's mission to solve cold cases by unmasking the monsters that have eluded authorities for years. And he does so by following the scientific evidence piece by piece. It's the career story of Paul Holes - his early years working in a lab when he first discovered a cabinet of cold case files, including the Golden State Killer's file, and realized what he wanted to do - what he had to do - with his life, continuing through the middle years as he moved up the professional ranks honing his skills as a forensic scientist and pursuing cold cases, to the later years as he came to understand that his compulsive obsession for hunting monsters and solving cold cases was what he was born to do . . . no matter the cost to his personal life and well-being. Holes, an admitted introvert, opens the door to his inner soul, and allows readers the opportunity to ride along as he relives some of his highest profile cases. He speaks candidly of his panic attacks and nightmares of mutilated bodies, his deteriorating personal life, his ever burning need to solve cold cases and bring closure to victims and families.
Unmasked opens with Holes packing up his office, preparing for the end of his storied professional career. His thoughts turn to the one monster that has eluded him for over twenty years, the one who first lit a burning desire in his gut for working cold cases - the arrogant, notorious EAR Killer aka the Original Night Stalker aka the Golden Gate Killer. How can he retire without apprehending the most terrifying, illusive serial killer of the twenty-first century? In order for readers to understand his obsession with this particular criminal, Holes' memoir follows a chronological path through his storied career as a natural born criminal profiler solving both the famous and little known cold cases. From start to finish, he grips readers' hands and transports them behind the scenes of real investigations, demonstrating firsthand the manner in which forensic science is used to unmask criminals which I find fascinating. Throughout his career, he repeatedly returns to the GSK case applying the newest technology to the evidence, hoping for a breakthrough. This reader became so engrossed while reading Unmasked that I forgot that it's a memoir . . . that it's a true story. I was sucked into the story as surely as if I was reading a favorite suspense thriller. I repeatedly told myself, "This is real. This is r.e.a.l." I was consumed by the cases and while my heart hurt for the personal toll it took on Holes, I kept thanking God for men like him who aren't afraid to follow the science and track down the monsters.
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. I highly recommend Unmasked to fans of Memoirs, True Crime, and Suspense Thrillers. This book entertains like fiction because it's brilliantly delivered in an all engrossing format and pace that makes it impossible to put down and because it's still so hard to comprehend the depravity of some sick humans. While I know he would not agree or want to hear it, Paul Holes is my Super Hero. I highly recommend his memoir to everyone.
Synopsis:
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 had 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.
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 had 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.
“Paul Holes takes you on a fascinating and sometimes disturbing journey inside the mind of someone who hunts monsters for a living—and in order to live. And his insights on Michelle McNamara—whose loss I still feel every day—are incredible.”
—Patton Oswalt
"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
—Patton Oswalt
"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
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