(hb; 2012)
From the inside flap:
"On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne's fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick's clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn't doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife's head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and media - as well as Amy's fiercely doting parents - the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he's definitely bitter - but is he really a killer?
"As the cops close in, every couple in town is soon wondering how well they know the one they love. With his twin sister, Margo, at his side, Nick stands by his innocence. Trouble is, if Nick didn't do it, where is that beautiful wife? And what is in that silvery gift box hidden in the back of her bedroom closet?"
Review:
I loved parts of this book and hated other parts of it - and by "hate," a word I rarely use in writing book reviews, it's not because the author (in this case Flynn) did her job right. It is not because she made me form attachments with her characters before she started doing horrible things to them; it is because her writing sports some serious mistakes.
The cons of Gone.
The first hundred or a hundred and fifty pages of this four hundred and five-page novel are unnecessary and ultra-chatty, like a Ritalin-addled schoolgirl prattling on about things of little importance (it should be noted that Flynn cuts between Amy's diary and Nick's point of view in this section, but the result is the same: a better writer would have established true-to-the-characters voice variation and important detailed plot points - which do pop up, on occasion - in fifty or twenty-five pages).
I normally give a novelist twenty-five to fifty pages to impress me with their writing. The writing can be flawed, but there has to be something to keep me turning their pages. In this case, I only stuck with Gone for a hundred or so pages because an acquaintance - an excellent writer himself - suggested that I do so. The end-twist, he proclaimed, was memorable in a great way. (More on that later.)
There's a few I'm-so-clever-gotcha moments in these initial pages that were telegraphed in clumsy, voice-true fashion, but again, a better writer would have not made them read like hackwork. So: points to Flynn for the voice-veracity element, but her gotcha-hackery. . . no. Not good.
The ending fits the black-as-a-pulp-noir tone of Gone, but Nick - whose character has matured in the course of the excellent middle section of the novel - suddenly reverts to plot-convenient lazy-noirish stupidity, making a decision that he more likely would have made in the beginning of the novel not the end. Nick's key stroke-forced, unlikely actions near the finish don't ring true, given all that Nick has gone through prior to the novel's denouement.
The pros of Gone.
It is clear that Flynn worked out the twist 'n' turn OCD details of Gone. Once Flynn has passes the awkward and overly long set-up of the first hundred or so pages, the middle section is explosive with pitch black, effective pulp-noir. The writing gets tighter and the chapters shorter, and the book becomes difficult to set down, taking Gone into intriguing, if still-familiar territory. Not only that, but Flynn does role-reversals well in this stretch, made me like a character I normally would, as she puts it, would like to "punch in the face."
Overall review
Check Gone out from the library or buy it used, at an ultra-cheap price. Flynn is a writer with great promise - that middle section is proof of that - but the overly chatty hackery she evidences in with Gone shows that she has a ways to go before she could be called a great, or even a good, writer. Or don't read Gone at all, and watch the film version, which hit stateside movie screens on October 3, 2014.
David Fincher directed the film from Gillian Flynn's screenplay.
Ben Affleck played Nick Dunne. Rosamund Pike played Amy Dunne. Neil Patrick Harris played Desi Collings. Tyler Perry played Tanner Bolt. Carrie Coon played Margo "Go" Dunne. Kim Dickens played Rhonda Boney. Patrick Fugit played Officer Jim Gilpin.
David Clennon played Rand Elliot. Lisa Banes played Marybeth Elliot. Missy Pyle played Ellen Abbott. Emily Ratajkowski played Andie Hardy. Casey Wilson played Noelle Hawthorne. Sela Ward played Sharon Schieber. Scoot McNairy played Tommy O'Hara.
(hb; 2005, 2008: first book in the Millennium series. Translated from the Swedish by Reg Keeland.)
From the inside flap:
"A[n]. . . amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue.
"It's about the disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden. . . and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder.
"It's about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet's disappearance. . . and about Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old pierced and tattooed genius hacker possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age -- and a terrifying capacity for ruthlessness to go with it -- who assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, astonishing corruption in the highest echelons of Swedish industrialism -- and an unexpected connection between themselves. . ."
Review:
This is one of the best dark-family-history/conspiracy novels I've read in a long while.
Dragon Tattoo was unputdownable -- though I reluctantly did so, for social and writing schedule necessities.
The characters, the plot layers, reveals and twists (all skillfully interwoven) are often surprising, intelligent, relatable and reader-hooking, with an ending that left this reader aching for more.
Worth owning, this.
Followed by The Girl Who Played With Fire.
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A Swedish film version of Dragon Tattoo was released in Denmark and Sweden on February 27, 2009. The film got a "wide" stateside release on March 19, 2010.
Michael Nyqvist played Michael Blomkvist. Noomi Rapace played Lisbeth Salander. Lena Endre played Erika Berger. Michalis Koutsogiannakis played Dragan Armanskij. Jacob Ericksson played Christer Malm.
Ingvar Hirdwall played Dirch Frode. Sven-Bertil Taube played Henrik Vanger.
Marika Lagercrantz played Cecilia Vanger. Peter Haber played Martin Vanger. Ewa Fröling played Harriet Vanger. Gösta Bredefeldt played Harald Vanger. Gunnel Lindblom played Isabella Vanger. Willie Andréason played Birger Vanger. Julia Sporre played "Young Harriet Vanger". An uncredited Linn Björland played "Young Anita Vanger".
Peter Andersson played "The Lawyer Nils Bjurnson". David Dencik played Janne Dahlman. Tomas Köhler played "Plague". Tehila Blad (billed as Teilla Blad) played "Young Lisbeth Salander".
Björn Granath played Gustav Morrell. Sofia Ledarp played Malin Erikson.
Niels Arden Oplev directed the film, from a script by Nicolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg.
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An American remake was released stateside on December 21, 2011.
Rooney Mara played Lisbeth Salander. Daniel Craig played Mikael Bloomkvist. Robin Wright played Erika Berger. Joel Kinnaman played Christer Malm.
Stellan Skarsgård played Martin Vanger. Embeth Davidtz played Annika Vanger. Christopher Plummer played Henrik Vanger. Joely Richardson played Anita Vanger. Julian Sands played "Young Henrik Vanger". Geraldine James played Cecilia Vanger.
Goran Visnjic played Dragan Armansky. Steven Berkoff played Dirch Frode. Elodie Yung played Miriam Wu. Yorick van Wageningen played Nils Bjurman.
David Fincher directed the film, from a screenplay by Steven Zaillian.
(pb; 2002: non-fiction)
From the back cover
“In the 'provocative' (San Francisco Chronicle) true-crime classic, Zodiac, Robert Graysmith tracked the violent path of a sadistic sex killer whose true identity was shrouded in mystery. Now, after twenty-five years, Graysmith unmasks the killer...
“Between December 1968 and October 1969 a hooded serial killer called Zodiac terrorized San Francisco. He claimed responsibility for thirty-seven murders. His actual death toll may have reached fifty. All the while, he manipulated the media with depraved cunning, inundating the San Francisco Chronicle with warnings, dares, and tantalizing cryptograms that baffled the brightest FBI code-breakers. But as suddenly as the murders began, they stopped. Zodiac disappeared into the Bay Area fog forever and was never brought to justice.
“Now, through painstaking research and exclusive interviews, Robert Graysmith closes the last chapter on America's greatest unsolved mystery. Accumulating overwhelming evidence, Graysmith, who was on the staff of the San Francisco Chronicle when Zodiac's first letter arrived, finally exposes the elusive killer's true identity, reveals the twisted private life that led to the crimes, and provides startling theories as to why they stopped.
“With never-before-published photos, a complete reproduction of Zodiac's letters, incriminating envelopes, confidential notes, secret messages, and puzzles, Zodiac Unmasked is an important and fascinating coda to one of the most notorious crime sprees of the twentieth century.”
Review
Author Graysmith concludes the real-life Zodiac drama in his follow-up to Zodiac.
Robert (“Bob”) Hall Starr, not the man's real name, had been named as the prime suspect in the Zodiac killings near the end of Zodiac. Many cops “liked” him for the murders, but there was that can't-match-his-handwriting-with-Zodiac's snag they couldn't get around.
Graysmith, armed with a plethora of new leads, proves that Starr, whose real name was Arthur Leigh Allen, was the killer. It was a teenage boy who led the authorities (and Graysmith) to Allen in 1987.
Everything matches. The dates of Zodiac “inactivity” (the lapse in murders and letters) stem from a prison stint Allen was serving for molesting two prepubescent boys (1974-1978); the murders declined about the same time that Allen started encountering health problems; Allen was a cineaste, particularly obsessed by the movies A Game of Death (1945) and Run for the Sun (1956), as well as the story that spawned those movies, Richard Connell's “The Most Dangerous Game.”
Also, Allen's hobbies coincided with the Zodiac's: skin-diving (explaining why Zodiac utilized the Zodiac SeaWolf watch logo as his own); Allen hated women, especially his mother, and was a pedophile; like many serial killers, Allen had applied to a police academy, only to be rebuffed, therefore fueling his hatred of cops; like his father, Allen had been in the Navy (Zodiac displayed Navy knowledge and references in his techniques and cryptograms); Allen was hyperthymic (highly emotional), as was Zodiac in his letters; Allen was a mechanic (Zodiac, in trying to lure his victims to him, had tinkered with their cars); Allen knew a hippie named Robert Emmett Rodifer, which linked him to the “ROBERT EMMETT THE HIPPIE” cryptogram in one of Zodiac's early media letters; Allen intentionally misspelled words in letters to friends, many of the misspellings similar to Zodiac's (e.g., eggs = “aigs”); Allen's birthday (December 18) coincides with Zodiac's, as well as one of the Zodiac's victims, S.F. cabbie Paul Stine (who was shot in the back of the head).
As for the handwriting snag, Allen's handwriting, both real and altered (he was ambidextrous), was also matched to the Zodiac's, as was his DNA (though the DNA evidence was kind of sketchy).
Before the cops and Graysmith could prove Allen's guilt, Allen died of a heart attack on August 26, 1992.
Zodiac, along with Jack the Ripper, has the distinction of spawning stylistic, stated copycats.
In 1990 (and later in 1994), Zodiac II (as he was called by the press) appeared in New York, shooting people with a zip gun. Heriberto “Eddie” Seda, whom the cops had also dubbed “The Vampire,” was arrested on June 18, 1996, after a shoot-out with New York's finest, and subsequently revealed to be Zodiac II via Seda's confession, and numerous Zodiac II-consistent weapons in his apartment.
Zodiac III (as he was called the press) struck in Kobe, Japan in March 1997, beheading a retarded neighborhood boy. On June 28, 1997, a fifteen-year old boy was arrested and convicted of attacking five kids, two of whom died.
This teenager, Zodiac III, had been emulating a murder he'd seen in the 1990 film, The Exorcist III, which was based on William Peter Blatty's 1983 novel, Legion (book sequel to Blatty's novel, The Exorcist). In one of his 1972 media letters, the original Zodiac had found the (1973 wide-release) film to be “the best saterical comidy that I have ever seen.” [misspellings intentional]. Eleven years later, in a nod at Zodiac's mention of the film version of The Exorcist, William Peter Blatty modeled his Gemini (originally called Zodiac) killer in Legion after the original, real-life Zodiac.
Author Graysmith ends his two-book serial-killer odyssey in dovetail fashion by mentioning new evidence linking Allen to the first stated Zodiac casualty, Darlene Ferrin. (Zodiac had killed two people before Ferrin, but only later took credit for their deaths.) It's a fitting finish, bringing the real-life drama back to the Ferrin murder, which began the first book, Zodiac.
As necessary as its predecessor, this is as perfect a close as one could hope for. Definitely worth reading.
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Zodiac Unmasked, along with Zodiac, is the basis the film Zodiac. Released stateside on March 2, 2007, it was directed by David Fincher. James Vanderbilt wrote the screenplay.
Jake Gyllenhall played reporter/author Robert Graysmith. Robert Downey Jr. played Paul Avery. Mark Ruffalo played Dave Toschi. Anthony Edwards played Bill Armstrong. Brian Cox played Melvin Belli. Clea DuVall played Linda Ferrin. Donal Logue played Ken Narlow. Dermot Mulroney played Captain Lee. Chloë Sevigny played Melanie.
Other films inspired by the Zodiac murders include: The Zodiac (2005); Dirty Harry (1971); Zodiac Killer (2005 – most reviews I've read about this film have said this film was horrible, as in badly-made).
