Customer Reviews

Zodiac

5 star:		(58)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

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.

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!

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.

This was one of the rare books that I could not read close to bedtime. I'm fairly inured to horror and to the stories of other infamous murderers, but Zodiac really gives me the spooks. The story of Zodiac's attack on a young couple at Lake Berryessa is one of the most chilling things I have ever read--the stranger approaches, disappears, reappears wearing a black hood, converses with the youngsters, ties them up, then calmly and coolly says "I'm going to have to stab you people," and then goes about doing just that. I would rather meet up with Ted Bundy or Jack the Ripper than I would Zodiac. I was initially worried about the author's presentation because he included a lot of unimportant details about events occurring before the time of the murders and made comments like the air was "exhilarating" on a particular day--things he couldn't have known and which don't matter at all anyway. However, he quickly settled in to a gripping narrative of events, and his own work on the case was presented fairly well and reveals to us the shifting thoughts and theories he had about the case and the perpetrator who was never caught.

Graysmith tells a good story, but his opinions on the case can be questioned. Also, I have to mention the fact that he was the editorial cartoonist of the San Francisco chronicle at the time and not an investigative journalist. I know this fact should not lead me to discount his conclusions, but it does make me wonder how he came to get as much access to this case as he did. The enigmatic ciphers the killer sent to the newspapers represent unique additions to an already mystifying series of murders, and this book published much of this material for the first time. The longest cipher was eventually cracked by the author; although it was verified by experts as correct, I myself did not feel 100% confident about every detail of the solution. In this and some other matters, the author seemed to make jumps that I could not fully justify; with countless suggestions and theories surrounding this case, it was sometimes difficult to see why Graysmith subscribed to one but not another. When he lists details about other possible Zodiac victims, he leaves the waters pretty murky. His remarks about astrological aspects and the moon perhaps determining the dates of Zodiac's actions are interesting but too vague in description for me to fully consider valid.

I first read this book several years ago, and I have recently seen allusions to the fact that Graysmith named the killer in this book. I did not remember him doing that, so I finally decided to re-read the book now. He does identify a suspect (pseudonymously) whom he believes to most likely be the Zodiac killer, but he has nothing beyond circumstantial evidence with which to "convict" the man. In the years since this book was published, facts have arisen which essentially exonerate this individual of the crimes. Thus, you will not find out who Zodiac was in these pages, but you will find a riveting story about one of the most infamous mass murderers in history. Graysmith's efforts are sincere and to be respected, but they cannot be accepted without a critical eye toward the evidence that has accumulated in the years since this book's publication.

I really couldn't put down this book. It reads like a first rate fiction book. It is horrifying to think that all the events in this book actually took place, and more terrifying still that the serial killer is still at large after over 30 years of evading the police.

The killings are gruesome, with some victims repeatedly stabbed to death, while others shot at close range with a hand gun. None of the victims are sexually molested, and they are not robbed of their personal belongings. The killer derives pleasure from killing his victims. As he later tells police in letters sent to newspapers, he kills in order to collect his victims as slaves for the next life!

There was one instant where the killer might have been caught. After the Zodiac (as the killer calls himself) shoots a taxi driver, a police car is called to the scene after the gun shot is heard. However, witnesses mistakenly reported a black man at the scene. The Zodiac is a chubby white man. When the police arrive near the scene, they see the Zodiac walking, and stop by him to ask him if he had seen a black man in the area. He says yes and points to the direction he allegedly saw a black man with a gun running. If the police would have stopped and interviewed the Zodiac more carefully, they would have seen his bloody hands. There is no telling what would have happened then. The police could have been shot dead, or maybe it could have been the other way around (there were two policemen in the car.) The Zodiac also called the police after committing some of the crimes - from phone booths adjacent to police stations!

Another chilling instant was when the Zodiac stopped a pregnant woman and her child on a road claiming that her back tire was wobbling. He volunteered to fix the tire, and while the woman watched from her side view mirror, he appeared to do just that. However, as soon as she drove off, the back tire completely came off and she had to stop. She was then kidnapped by the Zodiac and driven around for almost an hour, as if the Zodiac was looking for an ideal place to kill his victim. However, the woman together with her child manage to jump out of the car, and escape death!

Not all of Zodiac's victims died. Although some victims were repeatedly stabbed, some survived! In all, it is believed that the Zodiac might have killed about 37 people. He is still at large!

It was quite amazing how an amateur code breaker was able to break the coded letter of the Zodiac within a day and night. After the coded letter was published in a newspaper, neither the FBI nor the police were able to decipher the letter. However, an amateur man did! The FBI should have hired him!

This book will keep you reading throughout the night. It includes photos of the letters sent by the Zodiac that will send a chill up your spine. I just couldn't put this book down.

Reading this book on Holiday in the San Francisco bay area, I have to admit I did not feel comfortable anymore. I started in the evening, I could not put it down. Goosebumps all-over, every creaking sound magnified...scary!

The way Mr. Graysmith approached the subject, trying to gain some insight in the timeline of the killings, and the hardwork (if unsuccesfull) put in by the various police departments was highly interesting.

The scary part is that the Zoadiac is possibly still out there, all though an older man. Don't forget that most serial killers start in their twenties! Assuming that 1963 were his first 'kills' (not mentioned in the book), and having an average age of 25, that makes him 64!

Where has he been? Where is he now? This book is a definite must read. I can't wait for Zodiac Unmasked!

If you are a fan of true crime books then this will be one of your favorites after you read it, because of the mystery surrounding the case as well as the fact that the details are so odd. The book details the case of the "Zodiac" killer that was active in San Francisco in the 1960's. One of the items that made this serial killer different is that he would send taunting letters to the police. It is also interesting in that the killings were never solved in that the killer was not caught.

The author gives us a mass of details about the police investigation, including the full text and photos of most of the letters. He just does a great job of telling the story. He really "puts" you into the time frame with his writing, you almost feel that the events are taking place now. This is truly one of those non-fiction books that read just like a great novel. You will not regret taking the time to find this book and read it.

Several years ago, I read "Zodiac Unmasked" by Robert Graysmith. The disorganized writing style detracted from my enjoyment of the book. I recently got around to reading Graysmith's original book "Zodiac". While this book is much more professionally written, it only differs from "Zodiac Unmasked" in that "Zodiac" refers to prime suspect Arthur Leigh Allen in the alias Robert Hall Starr. Graysmith still has the same suspect in mind for both books and he has only convinced me that to an 80% degree of certainty that Allen is a viable suspect.

Rather than recount the crimes of the Zodiac in this review, I would recommend using several web sites which might give those interested a concise version of the Zodiac. Many aspects of this story that are not in print are suggested on the web, though truthfulness has to be questioned.

The Zodiac Killer may be the most mysterious and elusive serial killer in American history. The continued question about the killer's identity has left readers looking for answers. This book is a good place to start your search to for an answer that may never be found.

There are two problems with this book. One is that it is very entertaining from start to finish. Secondly, it purports that everything inside its contents is true and correct. The way this book is written, the average reader will take everything in it as gospel. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The problem lies in that Graysmith draws conclusions where there are none, stretches possibilities into truth, and reports as fact without any evidence to support it. There are so many errors that it would take a short story to cover it all.

Allen makes for a very interesting suspect, but the truth is that his DNA didn't match, his prints didn't match and his writing didn't match. Furthermore, there is no evidence (despite Graysmith's claims) that Allen knew any of the victims. Law enforcement has never found anything linking him to the crime, other than a watch that thousands of other people possessed. He was a weird guy no doubt, but there is far more evidence against him being the Zodiac than for it.

Graysmith wants Allen to be the Zodiac so bad he was willing to omit the truth to create this book. The truth is out there somewhere, but it's not here. We may never know who Zodiac is...and yes, your guess is as good as mine. We can only find the truth if we are willing to throw out that which doesn't match, rather than trying to force it to match.

This case wouldn't still be an open case with the San Francisco PD, the Napa County Sheriff's Department and the Vallejo PD if they really believed Allen was the Zodiac. Graysmith was an opportunist who weasled his way into the case. However, in doing so he also became a pioneer in this case, the first to try to put everything together to solve it. He started this wave of amateur sleuths that exist today. In that respect, society owes him a bit of gratitude. Maybe what he started will be the thing that finally breaks this case open.

Without a doubt, this was the scariest book I've ever read. Maybe because its a true story. Maybe because the killer was never caught. Maybe because he was so darn weird. In any case, I actually had a physical reaction while reading this book -- I developed actual goosebumps, the hair on my arms stood up, and I think my heart beat faster. I plowed through this book as fast as I could because I just wanted to read more. Not for the faint of heart.