The New Yorker

“Lost Girls” tells the story of the unsolved murders of five young women, all of whom worked as escorts in the New York area, and all of whose remains were discovered off the highway on one of Long Island’s barrier islands in 2010 and 2011. Kolker, an investigative reporter and contributing editor at New York who previously covered the case for that magazine, presents the myriad rumors and theories about the perpetrator, known as the Long Island Serial Killer, that emerged once the women’s bodies—and then even more bodies—were discovered. (On the book’s Web site, an interactive map shows the area of Long Island, in and around Gilgo Beach, where, since 2010, eleven sets of human remains have been discovered; several others have turned up in other parts of Long Island.) But detailing the still unresolved case is only one focus of the book. Through extensive interviews with the victims’ families and friends, Kolker creates compassionate portraits of the murdered young women, and uncovers the forces that drove them from their respective home towns into risky, but lucrative, careers as prostitutes in a digital age, when “the method is easier, seductively so, almost like an ATM—post an ad, and the phone rings seconds later—but also deceptive about its dangers.”

- "Books To Watch Out For," NEWYORKER.COM