After Jack the Ripper and before Son of Sam there was only one name their equal in terror: the deadly, elusive, and mysterious Zodiac. Beginning in 1968 the hooded mass murderer terrified the city of San Francisco and the Bay Area with a string of brutal killings. A sexual sadist, his pleasure was torture and murder. His first victims were a teenage couple, stalked and shot dead in a lover's lane. After another slaying, he sent his first mocking note to authorities, promising he would kill again. The official tally of his victims was six. The real toll may have reached 50. He was never caught. Graysmith, who was on the staff of the San Francisco Chronicle at the time of the murders, gives this gripping account of Zodiac's reign of terrorReview -"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.