The Laughing Gorilla: The True Story of the Hunt for One of America's First Serial Killers

I loved this book and couldn't put it down. Graysmith has a way of imbuing each sentence with an interesting fact, as he did in "Zodiac." He is definitely one of the best true crime writers out there. This story was fascinating, and how Graysmith was able to put himself so effectively in the time and place of San Francisco in the 1930s is a mystery. I eagerly await his next book.

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.