Billy Jensen

I wanted to like this book so much more than I actually liked it. While I greatly appreciate all the author does to help solve cases (and he does a lot) I felt this frantic sense of urgency throughout the entire book that made me seriously concerned for his own personal health and relationships.
He jumps from case to case all over the place and while I can understand that this is how he is living his life it's hard to keep it all straight as a reader.

The one blaring thing that I could not get past was the close and loving relationship he describes having with his dad. Clearly his father was a very influential part of his life, yet there is no evidence of any relationship he has with his own children. In fact, at one point he moves away and only sees them on the weekends. While I'm not sure how long this lasted, it just seems like he put his health (the man never sleeps) and his family in the back seat while he tried to solve crimes and make a TV show. Maybe he is actually really close with them and just didn't feel the need to include his family in his book. Maybe I am just too selfish to really appreciate all that he has done, I'm sure the families he has helped feel differently, but it was all I could think about while reading this book. I feel bad for his wife and his two kids who seem like they never spend any quality time with him.… (meer)

Chase Darkness With Me is a memoir of Billy Jensen, a true crime enthusiast who turned his passion for journalism and unsolved murders into a full-time job. He started small, writing small stories first for his local Long Island newspaper, and then for the New York Times. Eventually he ended up in Los Angeles, pitching ideas to TV studios, working on his own blog and on a televised one, and then, one night, he decided to become a detective. Sickened by a video released by the police in order that the public might recognize the assailant in a Chicago murder, Jensen made Facebook posts targeting specific geo-locations, and particular citizens, and with the information he eventually got, was able to supply the Chicago PD with a suspect. He spent years trying to trace a serial killer who had left behind dead women and children in barrels across the country, and succeeded in putting a name to the perpetrator.

One of the things I enjoyed about this book was that Billy Jensen was a friend and colleague of Michelle McNamara, the crime writer and investigator behind I'll Be Gone in the Dark, a tense and deeply fascinating tale of her years trying to solve the cold case of the Golden State Killer. I read that book and was thrilled with it; knowing that Jensen was someone she knew and respected made me listen more intensely to Jensen's tale. [Jensen was one of the two men who finished McNamara's book after her sudden death.]

As an audiobook, this was a hit. Jensen has a really nice voice, he's very articulate and sounds slightly American without having much of an accent to distract my attention from the story. He described incidents in great detail without ever being boring, and added dark humour here and there to relieve the inevitable anxiety that comes with listening to a tale of criminals and evil when you live alone and it's after dark. This is my third or fourth true crime audiobook, and for reasons unknown to me, I find such books more satisfying as audiobooks.

I didn't give the book five stars because Jensen lived in Los Angeles while his wife and children lived in Phoenix, and I found that I didn't approve of his career being put ahead of family. Yes, that's a judgemental stance to take, but I don't apologize for it. It's my rating, my feelings about the book. Otherwise I can only praise the excellence of the book, and hope that Billy Jensen continues to help solve crimes and catch the bad guys.… (meer)

Hmmm. Hmmm.

Something about this book doesn't sit right with me, but I couldn't quiet put my finger on it. It's interesting, for sure, and of course the though of starting to solve crimes is appealing ... or is it?

I volunteer for an organization that looks for missing people. A lot of what Billy Jensen talks about is kinda similar to what I do. We require permission from police and two next of kin before looking for someone, because otherwise shit can go wrong.

But because of this I'm also extremely wary of citizen sleuths (and I know a lot of police officers don't love them either). There's nothing in particular that I think is wrong in this book, it's just leaves me with a vague sense of unease that I can't shake.

It's a good book, though.… (meer)