When the Night Comes Falling: The Definitive True Crime Investigation into the Idaho Student Murders
by Howard Blum
View on GoodreadsVeteran investigative journalist Howard Blum's account of the November 2022 University of Idaho student murders and the investigation that led to Bryan Kohberger's arrest — a denser, more journalist-driven version of the same case the Patterson book covered.
Core ideas
- Blum's reporting goes deeper into the investigative tradecraft than Patterson's version — specifically the IGG (investigative genetic genealogy) work that produced Kohberger's identification from a knife-sheath DNA trace.
- The criminology framing — Kohberger's PhD in criminology at WSU, his coursework on victim selection and crime-scene behavior — is the book's structural irony, and Blum handles it as character study rather than salacious detail.
- Reading it on Jan 27 — 9 days after the Patterson version — is the kind of comparison-reading you've done repeatedly across the library; the same case from two journalists with different methods.
Published2024
Pages240
ISBN9780063349285
ReadJan 2026
