Zodiac

Zodiac
by Robert Graysmith

Jake Gyllenhall, author Robert Graysmith and Mark Ruffalo

If you want to know something about cooking, you read a cook book. If you want to know something about the Zodiac Killer, you read Robert Graysmith's book.
Robert Graysmith was a political cartoonist for the San Fransisco Chronicle during the time that the Zodiac killer had the state of California on edge. The killer wrote messages to two newspapers and the local police department taunting them with future threats and baffling them with unbreakable codes. One such code, known as the 340 cipher, named because of the 340 characters in the code, has yet to be broken. The Zodiac, in another letter, tells that this unbroken code has his name in it.
Graysmith has taken every single piece of information relating to the murders and methodically organised them into this book. Back in a time when not all police stations spoke to each other (some didn't even have fax machines) and keeping information from other departments was an unfortunate regular occurrence, Graysmith saw the need to make his own bible which has since been a best seller for decades.
The book is jam packed with information, all catalogued chronologically, including reprints of the Zodiac's letters, Christmas cards and codes. After extensive interviews with family and friends, he details the lives of the victims, their actions and movements up until they meet with the Zodiac. The appendices include a list of the Zodiac's victims and possible victims, what kinds of cars the Zodiac killer was thought to have been driving in what year, even notes on his hand writing patterns.
He tells about the obsession that fills not only himself but also the lives of the detectives involved in the case, families torn apart, fingers wrongly pointed at the innocent. The case was both physically and mentally draining for all involved.
In the latest edition (2007) Robert has included his notes from when David Fincher took his book and created the Zodiac movie with Jake Gyllenhall and Robert Downey Jnr. He writes about his interactions with the cast and crew and marvels at how meticulous Fincher is in trying to do his book justice. He definitely succeeded.
One can't help but wonder that if only this information was so freely available to the various jurisdictions at the time that the killer, who still is unknown to this day, may have been found earlier.
Graysmith has also written another book called Zodiac Unmasked which I'll be reviewing in the not too distant future.