“A gothic whodunit for the Internet age…nearly unputdownable…[LOST GIRLS is] a horrific, cautionary tale that makes for a very different kind of beach read…Kolker expertly chronicles the sad cycle of poor, uneducated white women faced with lots of kids and few resources.” - Mimi Swartz, New York Times Book Review
“The absence of the killer is the making of this book, a constraint that allows it to become extraordinary…humane and imaginative…[Kolker] shows the dented magnificence and universal sorrow within ordinary lives, and makes you realize how much more they are worth.” - Laura Miller Salon
“Meticulously reported and beautifully written, Robert Kolker’s Lost Girls is a haunting and powerful crime story that gives voice to those who can no longer be heard. It is a story that you will not be able to forget.” - David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon
“Robert Kolker unflinchingly probes the 21st-century innovations that facilitated these crimes… ...An important examination of the socioeconomic and cultural forces that can shape a woman’s entry into prostitution.” - Kirkus Reviews
“Beautifully and provocatively written.... [Lost Girls] will make all but the hardest-hearted empathetic. Add a baffling whodunit that remains, as the subtitle indicates, unsolved, and you have a captivating true crime narrative that’s sure to win new converts and please longtime fans of the genre.” - Publishers Weekly starred review
“Beautifully and provocatively written. . . . A baffling whodunit . . . a captivating true crime narrative that’s sure to win new converts and please longtime fans of the genre.” - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A rare gem of a book that not only tells a riveting story but illuminates something about a slice of America and gets into a lot of very deep issues. It’s really great on every front.” - Slate, Double X
“Captivating.” - Boston Globe
“Riveting and often heartbreaking . . . a lashing critique.” - New York Times
“A gothic whodunit for the Internet age . . . nearly unputdownable. . . . A horrific, cautionary tale that makes for a very different kind of beach read.” - New York Times Book Review
“A gothic whodunit for the Internet age…. Compelling, nearly unputdownable." - New York Times Book Review
“Kolker has grabbed hold of a ghost story, one he grounds in insistent detail.... His book becomes a lashing critique of how society, and the police, let these young women down.... Reading this true-crime book, you’re reminded of the observation that easy reading is hard writing."
- New York Times
“It’s the empty freakishness of the serial killer that makes him superficially fascinating, the stuff that so much bad pulp fiction and so many trashy documentaries are made of. It takes a rarer, more humane and imaginative writer to show the dented magnificence and universal sorrow within ordinary lives, and make you realize how much more they are worth.” - Salon
“Immensely evocative . . . we are left with is a visceral understanding of the lives of the victims and why they should have mattered more.” - New York Daily News
“Terrific...vivid and moving...Grade: A-” - Entertainment Weekly
“So masterful.” - Megan Abbott, author of Dare Me , via Twitter
“By learning the intimate details of the women’s lives, seeing them as humans rather than victims, we see our similarities…Lost Girls is possibly the realest, fullest picture of what is happening with sex work in the US right now.” - The Guardian (UK)
Lost Girls
An Unsolved American Mystery