Tellement riche que l'on suit une douzaine d'enquêtes avant la bonne... Très (trop?) documenté. ( )

This is a fascinating piece of writing. It is exceedingly difficult to create readable and enjoyable no fiction, and particularly when one is travelling into the past. Graysmith carries this off brilliantly and with brio.

That being said I would have attributed the top 5 stars and was hesitant but there are places in the book where it does seem to drag a bit, particularly the first 69 pages or so. Additionally, while very precise historically, I had to keep thumbing back through the index to remind myself who was actually who with an enormous slew of central characters.

The story captures well the mood and atmosphere of these troubled times and one wonders in the surge post WWI violence is not related to the hopelessness of the depression period itself. The author cleverly introduces the new technologies of criminology being developed as well as the historic changes taking place, at the time in San Francisco. The shifts between New York, Ohio and California are not as clean cut as I'd have liked and at times I found myself a bit confused over this hopping about.

I'd never honestly been aware of the "gorilla man" phenomenon prior to having read this book and found that a tantalizingly interesting bit of lost history. Graysmith knows his subject deftly and spent nearly 6 years developing the research. I thought that part of his mastery was in the depiction of characters who no longer exist, her really brought them to life. The author carries the reader along faithfully though his discoveries, reviving characters long since departed and opening doors, long since shut.

The wealth of details were just one element which made this book come to life and yet, at the same time, were one of the major obstacles in the reading. Detailed geographical descriptions are hard on a reader who has never visited a specific locale. At times I tried to imagine the different streets hat were mentioned only to draw a hopeless blank. In much the same spirit, the descriptions of the docks left me cold since I could not form the necessary mental imagery required. This is not to detract from the work which is a brilliant piece of research rather just a personal quirk and observation. It was like Hemingway but in black and white, without the flourish.

His psychological autopsy of the assailants, the serial murderers, was also well done. It is important to emphasize that the book is an amazing manuscript and that any 'complaints' are just personal peccadilloes.

I would heartily recommend this to anyone who likes murder mystery and and wants to understand the criminological aspects of this bleak and torturous period. For the historical and criminological aspects alone it is well worth investigating. As an added bonus, figures like Elliot Ness and Al Capone are woven into the narrative and the entire story of the foul and corrupt administration of the police during the period is given a thorough and talented examination.

As I mentioned earlier in this review I really hesitated giving the 5 stars, however the occasional tedium and some geographical ambiguity led me to finally fall on the side of caution.

Graysmith has several other titles which I intend to read in due course and review as well,

Happy reading! ( )

The True Story of the Hunt for One of America’s First Serial Killers

This book is non-fiction, true-crime. I added the tag ‘historical’ because the crimes took place in the 1920s, so in addition to reading about a crime (or in this case a series of crimes) one also learns about San Francisco in this decade.

The author covers the lifestyle of the time and the differences in police procedure. He includes some trivia, he explains why police cars are called ‘growlers’. The San Francisco police department was very corrupt, the author also covers this. Captain Charles Dullea was in charge of investigating the murder of Bette Coffin, the ‘first’ victim of “The Laughing Gorilla”, or so they thought at first, he was also one of the few honest police officers on the force. We learn his history and also his efforts to oust the corrupt chief and clean up the department.

It’s this variety of information, all connected that intrigues me. I like learning about the crime and all the background information. In total there were three or four murderers caught, two suicides of accused men, another plead guilty to avoid the death penalty and many victims. The one thing I didn’t like was that there was no information about what happened to the main ‘Gorilla Man’ after his arrest, did he plead guilty? Was he convicted? Was he executed?

There is a lot in this book and Mr. Graysmith keeps it interesting. I would recommend this book to people who like true crime and also people interested in America in the beginning of the 20th century. ( )

The Gorilla Man was the first serial killer to travel from place to place. After strangling a woman, he would proceed to violate her dead body. Onlookers who saw this beast attacking a woman, said that he laughed like a lunatic and he appeared to be an apelike figure. Most of his victims made the mistake of letting people know that they had a room available in their home.

Charles Dullea was an honest man and the police captain in San Francisco. He's probably the only honest man on the police force at that time. He was trying to track down this maniac but at the same time was faced with corrupt officers everywhere he looked. He was determined to get this killer off the streets but what he found shocked him more than his fellow crooked cops.

I don't know what to say except that I loved this book! Certain things were hard to read because it is based on a true story. If you like to read about bad cops and murderers, pick this book up! You won't want to miss it. Now I'm going to have to purchase Robert's other books, ZODIAC and ZODIAC UNMASKED. ( )