All the Colors of the Dark

 

All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker is a remarkable story that centers about a serial killer who continues to commit the murders of pubescent girls over the course of decades. At first in 1975, the killer is operating around a small town in Missouri, and it is the lives of those town people who are the main focus of the story – and how those murders impact them. It’s a story of rich and poor, one of the poor boys being a central figure. He is nicknamed Patch because he wears an eye patch as the result of having been born with only one eye. Over the course of his early life, Patch has been mistreated by his peers because of his odd appearance and poor circumstance. In an attempt to help him with his self-esteem, his mother told him stories about others who wore eye patches, specifically pirates, and it was his identity of being a pirate that became central to his own self-image. It was at the age of 13 that Patch stumbled onto the killer’s attempt to rape and kidnap Misty, one of the prettiest girls in town who happened to come from the richest family. Although he had helped the intended victim flee, Patch was badly injured and his body was not there when Misty brought the police to look for him. He was presumed to be dead.

 

Mixed among the murders that kept happening, there were multifaceted love stories. Patch did befriend one girl, another who was born to poverty and family dysfunction. Her name was Saint and she found Patch to be a most interesting person. After the attempted rape of Misty, when Patch could not be found and the search for him was stopping, it was only Saint who continued her obsessive pursuit and it was Saint who finally discovered he was alive and helped him escape his captor. Despite her eventual romantic interest in Patch, he always was more interested in Misty, or a girl who had befriended him in captivity, Grace. When he escaped his captor, Grace did not escape, and then Patch began his own obsessive search for her.

 

Meanwhile, Saint became a cop, and then an FBI agent where she was most skillful, and her obsessional pursuit of the serial killer continued. Both she and Patch followed clues about missing girls from all around the U.S. That should be enough of a teaser. This book gets my highest recommendation. Chris Whitaker has written a masterpiece, and I was in the grip of this story from the beginning all the way to the last page.