Gone at Midnight
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Average rating5
A missing young woman. A Los Angeles hotel with a haunting history. A perplexing real-life mystery. With stunning new insights and impeccable research, investigative journalist Jake Anderson explores the case that captivated a nation and inspired the Netflix series Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel! Exclusive interviews and photos included. Twenty-one-year-old student Elisa Lam was last heard from on January 31, 2013, after she checked into downtown L.A.’s Cecil Hotel—a 600-room building with a nine-decade history of scandal and tragedy. The next day, Elisa vanished. More than a week later, guests’ complaints of poor water quality led to a grim discovery: Elisa’s nude body floating in a rooftop water tank. The only clue was a disturbing elevator video of Elisa, uploaded to YouTube in a plea for public assistance. As the video went viral, journalist Jake Anderson set out to uncover the facts. In Gone at Midnight he chronicles eye-opening discoveries about who Elisa Lam really was and what—or whom—she was running from, offering stunning new insights into one of the most chilling and obsessively followed true crime cases of the century. “Outstanding . . . What really happened to Lam may never be known, but true crime buffs won’t want to miss this gripping search for the truth.” –Publishers Weekly STARRED REVIEW “Extremely detailed and featuring new evidence. . . . Anderson’s thorough research and passionate writing make a fascinating read.” --Booklist “Gone at Midnight is the type of true crime book that you stay up all night reading.” --New York Journal of Books A Fortune magazine“Most Anticipated Books of the Year” Selection A Goodreads Featured Release An Oxygen Best True Crime Book of the Year
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This is the definitive book on this case. The author explores all avenues—mental health, foul play, the paranormal, the outside role of websleuths muddying the waters, and the corruption within the LAPD and the coroner's office—deftly and compassionately. He has a rich understanding of the role Elisa's bipolar disorder may have played, because he, too, struggles with it. He also is an incredibly skilled writer, and some sentences are just truly beautiful.
DNF @ 15%
I kept trying to push myself to pick this up, but just couldn't press any further. The writing leaves a lot to be desired; I didn't feel engaged with the content at any point. It really felt like the author was just regurgitating info they found online, and jumping from topic to topic without much of an idea of where they're going.
There were several points at which I had to wonder how much independent research they had really done. One of these involved a quote from Elisa's tumblr, where some thought she could have been commenting on graffiti from the roof. But I recognized it right away — it's literally a quote from the Game of Thrones books. Could she have just been reading asoiaf? Yes! There's no way for me to know whether the author knew this but either they intentionally left it out to make it look like Elisa had written it herself or they didn't do the bare minimum of research it would take to realize this was a popular quote from a popular book series.
Regardless, I just didn't feel like putting time in energy into reading a book I wasn't at all enjoying.
