Yeah I found the dialogue around the book really misleading once I'd read it. She had a lot of theories, but none of them fit the guy who was ultimately caught. And the investigations were languishing but clearly active, that's how she got so much info after all, by talking to investigators who were still trying to figure it out.

You could definitely attribute the popularity of the GSK (and that name) to her, but not any of the actual solving. He was caught through DNA, like so many are.

I will mention though, that the GSK was actually found by a civilian genealogist personally uploading a DNA sample (from one of the rapes) to a civilian genealogy website as if she were a normal person, and then using the suggested family connections to figure out who he was. This was all in violation of the genealogy websites usage agreements (other databases had also been searched legally, but this one was not aware and had not agreed to disclose customer info in this way).

It's entirely possible that if this had gone to court it would have been thrown out, and there are some really questionable privacy issues at play, so I have wondered and heard others wondering if Michelle McNamara and her book were useful distractions away from how this guy was actually caught.

That book isn't a book about the Golden State Killer, it's a book about Michelle McNamara writing about the GSK, who she was fascinated by and through whom she was on track to realize her lifelong dream of becoming a book author.

Ultimately, she did not succeed in either identifying the GSK (apparently his name was not in any of her notes, much less the actual manuscript) or in finishing her book, and the friends and family who pushed for it to be completed after her death succeeded in what amounts to a vanity project, imo.

It is interesting from the perspective of real crime solving, especially from the civilian angle. A lot of us feel like we could solve these cases if only given the right access, and she did succeed in getting a lot of access.

But we do often consider murder acceptable already. A lot of soldiers in wartime are religious, for instance, and the death penalty is not the sole work of athiests.