When veteran LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel discovered that his
late father had known the victim in the infamous Black Dahlia murder
case in 1947 Los Angeles, the ensuing three-year investigation became
the New York Times bestseller Black Dahlia Avenger. Publication led
directly to the discovery of a cache of hidden documents, covered up for
decades, that confirm George Hodel had long been law enforcement's
number one suspect in Elizabeth Short's grisly death. A lurid murder
mystery that had endured for more than fifty years was finally solved.
But for Steve Hodel, that revelation was only the beginning. With
twenty-five years of experience investigating homicides as an LAPD
detective, Hodel's instincts told him that a man capable of bisecting
Elizabeth Short's body, arranging it in a gruesome and public tableau,
and taunting the police and the public with notes and phone calls, did
not begin or end his killing career with the Black Dahlia. A chance
encounter in the wake of Black Dahlia Avenger's publication led Steve
to consider a question as preposterous as it is compelling:
Twenty years after shocking the world in Los Angeles, could Dr. George
Hill Hodel have returned to terrorize California as the killer known as
Zodiac?