Tom portrays a guy who pretends to have written Graysmith's work and you need to have your own copy of Graysmith's book to follow along with the mysteries Tom imagines. It really is fun to play along with the gag.
Tom, like the supposed Zodiac lives with his mother and has many of the same habits, so it's not surprising that Tom may actually be a character in a play to create more discussions about Graysmith's writing.
The book is thick with info as is the humorous website based on the book. Graysmith while very serious in his investigations is not so full of himself as to poke fun by creating controversy with his website.
Enjoy this book as all my students have.
While Graysmith is to be commended for his research and knowledge of this subject, he should be reprimanded for his writing skills. Much of what he says is redundant and seems to to talk in circles for several pages with only the intention of lengthening the book. Aside from this shortcoming, the book is worth reading for true crime fans. Graysmith gives many details to support his argument. Because the story is not told chronologically, many of the details can be lost in the confusion by the average reader. It is advisable to take notes. The last few pages mark a timeline of the Zodiac killer as well as noting many of his communications.
Overall, the book would be most interesting to those who are interested in true crime and the Zodiac Killer specifically. It is probably not the best book from which to start your knowledge of Zodiac.
Zodiac has been the subject of many films and books. The bad guy in the movie Dirty Harry ("Scorpio") was loosely based on him. He engendered such curiosity not just because he killed some people and threatened to kill more. It was also the letters that he wrote, filled with strange codes and bizarre demands. The writing itself was bizarre, a weird printing with strange symbols in it and bizarre mispellings of words. He demanded that everyone wear Zodiac buttons, and when no one complied, threatened to torture his slaves (those people he had killed) in the afterlife. He was altogether a strange guy.
Graysmith, a political cartoonist in San Francisco, became obsessed with the Zodiac killings. He spent years gathering evidence, and checking suspects, and became as much of an expert as some of the police detectives on the case. In the early '80s he wrote a book called Zodiac, chronicling the story of the killings and the information that the police had gathered. There was a principle suspect, who the author identified by a pseudonym for various reasons. This suspect fit all of the criteria for the killer, and didn't have a convincing alibi for any of the killings. However, the police couldn't elicit a confession, and didn't have any hard physical evidence. Also, by the time they became convinced, the suspect was old, legally blind, and past his killing days, so they weren't that enthusiastic about pursuing him.
The present book follows this man (his name was Arthur Leigh Allen) throughout his life, and contends that he was the Zodiac killer. There is a lengthy discussion of his motivation and mindset, including the various movies, radio shows and books that influenced him to think the way he did.
The problem is in the way the book is structured. Since Graysmith already wrote another book on Zodiac, he feels apparently that he shouldn't go over new ground, and so he assumes you remember all the details of the killings that he chronicled in his previous book. I would recommend reading Zodiac before this book, even if you already read it. I read it about a decade ago, and I have a good memory, but I was lost at times in this book, and found it rather tedious going over details which were only partially enumerated, trying to figure out what his point was.
That being said, there is a lot of information here. It's difficult to imagine someone else turning out to be the Zodiac killer, though I suppose it's possible. Hey, I noticed someone's solved the Black Dahlia thing again! Someone will no doubt re-solve the Zodiac killing someday, but in the meanwhile, this book and Zodiac itself are the best books on the subject.
