[Editor: This book review is the first article from a new contributor, caresut]
Author: John Robert Jordan
Publisher: CreateSpace (June 2012)
Availability: Paperback and Ebook format at Amazon.com
I was apprehensive when first seeing a new Zodiac killer book that is almost 600 pages long. Purchasing the book was inevitable, I’ve never came across a Zodiac killer book and been able to pass it up. When the book arrived, I was unsure if I had it in me to read every page. Could there be anything new or interesting in it? Well, I finished it in less than a week.
My favorite chapters involve the author attempting answer the often discussed question: was the Zodiac a bad speller? Mr. Jordan goes into great detail on this subject and offers some interesting comparisons between the known Zodiac letters and the alleged Zodiac letters.
I did not particularly care for the chapters involving the occult and the equinox/solstice theories. These topics have never been of great interest to me. Of course, other readers may have a different opinion.
Each confirmed Zodiac murder and also the possible Zodiac murders and abductions are discussed in this book. The author does a good job of describing these events. Although, I did not agree with many of the author’s theories, I still enjoyed the way he laid them out for the reader to decide.
The book itself is well organized. Each chapter has footnotes. There are 17 chapters and a conclusion where the author describes his profile of the Zodiac killer.
Three appendices offer a Zodiac timeline, a killing claim timeline, and the coroner reports on David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen.
The author does not have a suspect, which is rare for Zodiac killer authors nowadays. He tends to sometimes disparage researchers and detectives, both past and present. This did not bother me, but might offend others. The errors I noticed were minor and mostly typos. All in all, I wish the author would have limited this book to the analysis of the grammatical errors and a discussion of the murders. Nonetheless, I would recommend Hunter Among the Stars to anyone with a good knowledge of the Zodiac killer mystery.
Nice review. Good job.
Thank you for the review. It looks like my wife will be cursing me some more for another 6+ hours of Zodiac Killer related reading. 🙂
Thanks for the review. I will also be ordering this one now.
Too bad he was never arrested. He wasn’t a bad speller, because his mother, who raised me, was the head of the secretarial pool at Standard Oil/Chevron for over forty years. She never allowed bad grammar or spelling.
He started killing at a young age when he joined the KKK. He later joined “an old order of the Masons” where he got the finely tailored hangman’s hood with the mortarboard on top.
I know I know. I’m crazy for INSISTING my uncle was the Zodiac Killer, but then I had to live with him in the summer of 1970 in San Bruno, nobody else did. I KNOW who he was and what he did.
No it’s not a case of me wanting to get revenge on an old dead uncle. He actually was the Zodiac. Our cousin helped out, I believe. Just to confuse cops, witnesses, survivors and the public about his real identity. He spent time in a mental facility in California in 1959.
He was a VERY meticulous man and a great auto mechanic. It is my firm belief that he killed Cheri Jo Bates, whether cops or anyone else agrees.
Anyway have a look at his photo posted on the blog and check out my cousin’s photo along with a sample of my uncle’s handwriting. The reason I think the case was “unsolved” is 1. It’s too much fun speculating and 2. He was involved in an even more covered-up crime earlier in the 60’s.
I have been called crazy before so you won’t hurt my feelings by saying so again.
Let me first of all thank Michael Cole for being generous enough to deem my work worthy of consideration on his web site. Secondly, let me thank the reviewer for being gracious enough to read my book and offer their fair appraisal.
Writing Hunter Among the Stars was the single most arduous experience of my life. Throughout my endeavor I strove to be informative, controversial, entertaining, and above all else, accurate. Though as noted by the reviewer the work runs almost 600 pages, I in fact have almost 200 pages of additional copy I edited from the book before publication. I apologize for any minor errors in the text, but by the time I had completed my work I was experiencing a form of “exhaustion hypnosis.” I was simply too involved in the project to see the “trees for the forest.” I have since made a redited version available at a more affordable price.
It was never my intention to disparage the work of either detectives or later researchers. Throughout the work I describe the endeavors of Bay Area Law Enforcement as diligent and exemplary. Some investigators in retrospect seemed “a tad crusty” and by some accounts overzealous. I suspect that was just their style. I would have been remiss if I had not included as an aside these observations in my work. I was largely silent on the work of other researchers, arguing my own understanding exists independently of their personal perspectives. Where I do comment on the work of others I commend their erudition, experience, and expertise. I also note I disagree with their conclusions. I reserve my opprobrium for a mentality that transcends research on the Zodiac Killer. Having a background in philosophy, I believe the current faith in criminology and forensics as possessing the final solution to the social problem of Good and Evil is erroneous.
I hope my work will become an important and informative addition to the compendium of Zodiac research. I did feel obligated to create the most accurate account of the actual and alleged crimes as humanely possible. I also feel that this area of my research contains important though minor revelations unnoticed by other researchers. I did focus on three aspects of the Zodiac Killer other investigators have perhaps ignored: his, by my understanding, unique ability to structure his own psychopathology with a cognitive skill; his quantifiable orthographic ability/defect; and what I feel was his background in occult belief. I did present my understandings with due respect for any critical audience to accept or reject my theories. I have done no more than offer an alternative map of what remains in part and unknown terrain.
I again thank Mike Cole and the reviewer for acknowledging my endeavor, and hope each reader accepts my research as it was intended; a serious contribution to Zodiac Research.
Sincerely,
John Robert Jordan
It was one of the best books that I read about the Zodiac Killer! I read it little by little due to my lack of time, but when I finished it I wasn’t disappointed; researchers should take the occult angle seriously as any of the other angles of this unsolved case, but sadly in our high-tech Society Occultism is viewed as a “bad joke” or a stuff for lunatics…
Mr. Jordan, 5 stars for your amazing work!!!:)
PS – I am from Brazil…
Although it is unlikely, if Mr. Jordan happens to see this comment I would simply like to say that HUNTER AMONG THE STARS is a stunning piece of work and (no hyperbole) the finest writing on Zodiac that I have read. Thank you for producing a text of such quality and logic on a subject matter far too often mired in wild conjecture and frenzied suspect-obsession.