Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker: Reshelved Books

Book Cover provided by Amazon

I took a break from reading middle grade novels and graphic novels, and YA fiction at the end of 2020 and the very first weeks of 2021.

I think I've mentioned it before on the blog that I am a fan of true crime, and true crime podcasts are my favorite to listen to (especially Billy Jensen and Paul Holes! They can be found at the "Jensen and Holes: The Murder Squad").  

I don't like that there has been a case that has piqued my interest quite like the case of the Long Island Serial Killer.  There are so many moving parts to this case.  It has been covered on multiple different outlets - more recently there's a Netflix movie out there about this book, this book was published in 2013 about the case, it's been featured on different TV shows - it was part of The Killing Season on A&E for their 2nd season, it has it's own podcast entitled LISK and there are probably more places that it's been discussed that I can't think of. 

Even with all of this media attention surrounding it, there really hasn't been any movement in who LISK could be, why he did what he did.  Law enforcement doesn't even know if the victims found in Suffolk County near Gilgo Beach had their lives taken by the same person or if it's two different actors!

I was poking around the podcasts available through Apple when I found a podcast called LISK: Long Island Serial Killer - which discusses a lot about LISK: who the victims were, while providing a lot of bonus content about with Shannan Gilbert's Estate attorney, the 911 tape and a discussion with Robert Kolker.

Simply put, how I came across Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery is from the LISK podcast. 

I remember hearing about the case back in 2010, I remember it being all over the news (which makes sense because living in the Tri-State area means that most of our news comes from NYC). As it's mentioned in Lost Girls,  Shannan Gilbert is the most prolific victim of this case and her name is the one that's most often associated.  

Much like the LISK podcast, Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker discusses who the women that made up the Gilgo 4 were (in great detail), and it discusses how the search for them went, who Joe Brewer and Peter Hackett were.  

Lost Girls was very well written and with a great amount of detail.  As the reader, you could tell how much time Kolker spent in interviewing the family and friends to make sure that an accurate picture of these women was done.  

The problem that I had with this book is that, it's focus was just on the victims! What about the investigation (or maybe the lack there of)?? It left me wanting to know about what the heck happened and what is actually going on because let's be honest, it was 10 years in December and I don't think that there any sooner in solving this now than they were 10 years ago.  Only 2 of the other Jane Does discovered have been identified. 

Maybe with Lost Girls being on Netflix will mean that there's a renewed interest in this case and it'll make waves to discover what really happened to these women. 

I would give this book 3.5 coffee beans out of 5.

Update:

Having since read and wrote this review, Billy Jensen ("Jensen and Holes: The Murder Squad" and "The First Degree") and Alexis Linkletter ("The First Degree") did a podcast AND a special on Discovery+ called Unraveled: The Long Island Serial Killer. I would DEFINITELY go check out both.  The information that they found and shared is totally worth the deeper dive. 

- Jillian