Zodiac [Hardcover]

Robert Graysmith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1986

Who was Zodiac? A serial killer who claimed 37 dead. A sexual sadist who taunted police with anonymous notes. A madman who was never apprehended. This is the first, complete account of Zodiac's reign of terror. Is he still out there?

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"SHE WAS YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL BUT NOW SHE IS BATTERED AND DEAD. SHE IS NOT THE FIRST AND SHE WILL NOT BE THE LAST." Few cases in the history of true crime are as colorful and intriguing as that of Zodiac, the bizarre gunman in an executioner's hood who hunted the streets of San Francisco in the late 1960s and sent dozens of taunting letters to the police. Robert Graysmith provides ample details about the police investigation, including the full text and photos of most of the letters. Zodiac is an excellent starting point not only for the casual reader, but also for those interested in retracing the author's steps in order to pursue their own ideas about who the killer may have been. This book has been praised by the San Francisco Chronicle, the very paper in which the Zodiac's eerie messages and cryptograms were published: "Graysmith's taut narrative brings the horror back with jolt upon jolt." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

From 1968 to the early 1970s, the self-styled "Zodiac" killer made headlines in the San Francisco Bay Area. In random attacks, he is known to have murdered six persons; in a series of letters to newspapers, which sometimes included cryptograms, he boasted of many more. To this day, the infamous case remains unsolved and surprisingly little has been written about it. Graysmith, a San Francisco Chronicle staff member, was obsessed with the case from the beginning and he has continued to investigate it as an amateur sleuth. Except for "Zodiac" himself, the author now knows more about the case than anyone. In this full, chronological account, which will fascinate true crime readers, he speculates about the most likely suspect. Recommended. Gregor A. Preston, Univ. of California Lib., Davis
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 337 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1st edition (January 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312898959
• ISBN-13: 978-0312898953
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (106 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,364,820 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reader Beware: Obsession Lies Within, May 28, 2007

By 

D. J. McNamara (San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Zodiac (Mass Market Paperback)

A lot of other reviews note the stretches, hunches and speculation that appear in this book as its primary weaknesses. None of them, however, note that most police work is based on hunches and stretches, and most crimes are solved through nearly blind speculation. In fact, crafting the opening salvo of solving a crime is all speculation, as the only people who were actually at the scene as the crime took place were the victims and their killer, not the police. Thus, the speculation is necessary to approach the task of solving any crime. As a result, the loose ends in this book are a very necessary and a common component to solving any crime.

The Zodiac killings are very close to me as I am a lifelong resident of the San Francisco Bay Area. David Berkowitz was in New York City, Jack the Ripper was a phantom of London and the Manson Family had operated primarily in Southern California. All were far, far away. The Zodiac was right in my backyard. To this day I still get chills when after passing over the Benicia Bridge, I see the green traffic sign hanging over the highway that reads, "Lake Herman Road, Next Right". Lake Herman Road of course, being where the Zodiac first struck by murdering teens Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday, as they sat parked in a remote lover's lane.

The constant interest and apparent obsession with the Zodiac murders is concentrated around two facts of the case: firstly that the Zodiac was never caught. All this book and most others do is outline what the author believes to be the best, most likely suspect. The other reason why people are so drawn to this case is the odd and mysterious way the killer stalked his victims and taunted the police after the crimes. After a killing, the Zodiac would usually call in and report his own crime. More shocking than that, he usually did it within sight of the police stations he had been taunting. If that weren't enough, he wrote ciphers, or coded messages, and sent them into the local newspapers. Some of these ciphers were solved, yet many were not despite the best efforts of the law enforcement community throughout North America.

Graysmith takes us on a rollercoaster ride as the crimes are committed. The reader can visualize and feel the cold, dark night on Lake Herman Road. The same feeling is present when the man who stalked Darlene Ferrin for months prior shows up just a few miles down the same Lake Herman Road where the first double murder was committed, on a turn out for the golf course at Blue Rock Springs. It's here where he takes the life of Darlene and leaves Mike Mageau clinging to life. The reader is transported to the remote, grassy peninsula by Lake Berryessa where the Zodiac first donned his executioner's costume, and where he stalked his victims, leaving only one of them barely alive. Finally, we get inside Paul Stine's cab with the Zodiac as he commits his most infamous crime on the cold, damp streets of the Presidio Heights of San Francisco. Graysmith goes into great detail to make the crimes as real as possible to us, allowing the reader to view the crimes from nearly every angle. The Zodiac's infamous calls to the police and letters to the newspapers are sprinkled throughout, setting the stage for the nationwide manhunt.

After the rollercoaster ride that is the Zodiac's killing spree, we are immersed into the facts of the crimes, the strange coincidences and the lives of those chasing the Zodiac. We are even introduced to unsolved murders that are not credited to the Zodiac, but have the same traits as Zodiac crimes and are within what is considered to be the Zodiac's territory. Graysmith explains to us how he became involved and how a novice approach yielded the best Zodiac suspect and the one widely excepted as the most likely by the law enforcement officials closest to the case. In a pure literary sense, this book is as engaging and riveting as they come. I don't believe it to be a scary book; some people mentioned that they wouldn't read it late at night or while alone. In fact, those are the only times I did read it. The setting in which a book is enjoyed is an important element to how the book's presentation comes off to the reader. I remember reading it on a cold night, with the rain beating against my windows. It took me out and made me think of how quiet and cold Lake Herman Road must have been at that moment. A place where people say that a haunting, grey fog still sits over the road and the place of the murders...even after the rest of the fog as blown inland, or on a night where no fog is present anywhere else.

If you're into true crime or even some Northern California history, this book is a must read. Take it all with a grain of salt, don't allow the author's conclusions to automatically become yours. Instead, take the book in, try and put yourself into the scenes and try to solve the crimes yourself. The Zodiac murders have captivated the minds of novice detectives and common folk alike; so don't be surprised if you end up with the urge to read this book a second and third time. I know I did.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Page Turner and Thrilling Mystery!, April 23, 2007

By 

Paul Manfredi (Pittsburgh, PA USA!) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Zodiac (Mass Market Paperback)

I bought this book after seeing David Fincher's excellent film "Zodiac" and the book is even better! It's a real page turner! It's in diary format and is very suspenseful, told in mystery style. I was expecting a fact by fact book, but this is a story and the book progresses as each suspect is identified. Even though I knew that the killer is not caught, I kept hoping that he would be caught. Robert Graysmith is a very good writer and a great investigator! I enjoyed this book so much that I immediately bought "Zodiac Unmasked". If you enjoy a page turning, suspenseful book, then read "Zodiac"! You won't be disappointed!

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Incredible detail, August 21, 2007

By 

Dave Schwinghammer "Dave Schwinghammer" (Little Falls, Minnesota USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Zodiac (Mass Market Paperback)

Robert Graysmith is no Vincent Bugliosi, but he does know more about the Zodiac killings than anybody else on the planet. The detail about each of the five known killings is incredible, and Graysmith unearths another killing that occurred in Riverside prior to the Zodiac killings that may have been committed by the same person. And he does come up with a likely suspect.

Prior to reading ZODIAC, I rented the David Fincher movie. I was expecting the movie to follow the book pretty closely, but there are some composite characters in the movie. Graysmith tells us about three main suspects; whereas, there were only two in the movie. Graysmith also speculates (pretty much believes) that Zodiac went right on killing after the murder of cab driver Paul Lee Stine. He lists 41 possible Zodiac murders, the last one occurring in 1981. Graysmith also had access to the Zodiac letters in which the murderer claimed credit for many more murders than those generally attributed to him.

Graysmith has some annoying habits. For one thing, he describes every stitch of clothing one of the early murder victims is wearing. He's also awfully skittish about using real names. So many people are given pseudonyms this might as well be fiction. Later on he goes into elaborate detail about the phases of the moon, and how the Zodiac could have been planning his murderers to correspond with them. Then there's the sycophantic description of Filcher's movie as an addendum to the book. Here's Graysmith's description of Filcher's attention to detail: "His eye is calculating, more precise than any mechanical optics."

Something else that I find puzzling was the police's inability to keep track of two of the victims who lived through Zodiac attacks, Mike Mageau and Kathleen Johns. Kathleen got a really good look at him. I would have liked to see a "where are they now" epilogue concerning some of the major characters. Mageau is barely mentioned, strange since he supposedly identified the man who tried to kill him. I would imagine that's covered in ZODIAC UNMASKED, the follow-up.