This was a bit slow to start with, but ended up being an overall interesting read. I've enjoyed others recently more, including I'll See You in the Dark and the BTK's daughter's memoir, but this was an interesting read about a less well none offender.

As a lot of reviews stated- I hadn’t heard of Israel Keyes until this book. On top of that, turns out one of his probable victims was in my own backyard. Each case was more bazaar and horrifying then the next. This was very well written, I recommend. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book, which I voluntarily chose to review.

This book is fascinating. Well written, well researched. Highly recommend for any true crime buffs, Great addition to any shelf

***Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review***
True crime at its best!

An absolutely spell binding true crime story of Israel Keyes, a serial killer that would kill for 14 years before authorities catch him, and then only by chance. Maureen Callahan has obviously spent a considerable amount of time and nightmare raising investigating to give us this very detailed and disturbing look at Keyes' life as a loving father at home in Alaska and a cold, calculating killer in the lower 48. His ability to plan and carry out his crimes for so many years with law enforcement unable to stop him, makes a story so good, you will not be going to sleep until the last page of the last chapter is done and you know he is dead and gone!

I feel like serial killers have a time and a place, and I feel like that time and place is somewhere in the late 70s in the PNW, and I feel like those double-bridged dad glasses have to be involved. I feel like we think that because of technology and surveillance that serial killers wouldn't be very prolific today.

I feel like we're wrong.

I enjoyed this book from the jump. Callahan laid out the facts thoroughly and methodically, starting from the death of a young girl in Alaska that lead to the apprehension of Israel Keyes, and then followed Keyes' own sparse retelling of his nation-wide trail of death. I enjoyed it (as much as one can enjoy, in that morbid way, the recounting of the exploits of a serial killer), yes, but at about the 50% mark, I felt like something was missing. Everything was a little stilted. A little hollow. A little off. I felt like there was no voice to the book; it was all just there, on the page, just the facts, the interviews, the incompetence of the prosecutor who would botch and botch again, the failure of prison staff to take Keyes' incarceration seriously. It was flat. It was simple. It was... Well, it just was.

Israel Keyes took his own life in prison in December 2012. And that was when it hit me. The affectless prose of the book was, in some weird, unsettling, Lynchian way, a sort of mirroring of the fact that that's all we have. That because Keyes, a serial killer operating in the time of Facebook and Twitter, of the TSA and CC cameras, died by suicide, we're left with a sort of hollow emptiness. We might never know the true extent of his crimes. We might never know how many missing persons, how many J. Does can be attributed to him. Our information, our recollection is stilted. Hollow. Off. The stories of the victims of Israel Keyes may never entirely be told. And that's hard, and it's terrible, and it's possible the most troubling part of his violent, awful legacy. Callahan has managed to incorporate that into not just the facts laid bare on the page, but in the way in which she's offering them. Maybe there's no other way to do it. Maybe no matter what they would always feel a little incomplete.

Maybe it just is.

Callahan's book is both informative and fun to read. She weaves a story like a novel, but gives you hard-researched facts. I think her writing enhances the story.

First things first- my family thinks I have a problem, I have an almost encyclopedic knowledge of serial killers. Don't know why, and people are pretty horrified to find their sweet, kind librarian loves to read true crime. So I was excited to read about one that was "new" to me. Israel Keyes killed a young woman in Anchorage, Alaska. This murder and follow up were well covered in this book. The book also alluded to many other murders committed by Israel Keyes, but they were not proven. Interesting book- the murder almost takes second stage to the botched police investigation. The police in the book make you wonder how any crime is solved. I enjoyed this book, but I can't say I learned a lot about the man and the other murders he supposedly committed.
Thanks to Netgalley for allowing me to read an ARC of this book .

I'm afraid to leave my house after reading American Predator. Callahan presents a pretty straight forward account of Israel Keyes' kidnapping and torture of Samantha Koenig. No gratuitous gore is necessary; it's terrifying enough on its own. I have new respect for law enforcement who walk a tenuous line among politicians, families, criminals, etc.

Good books, even good crime books, don't usually keep me up at night, but this one did. This book was genuinely creepy. Well, written. I will definitely read another book by this author. She has me hooked.