Motor Spirit: The Long Hunt for the Zodiac

Extraordinary – brilliant, unconventional, original, edgy.Somewhere between Hunter S. Thompson -- perceptive, irreverent, fresh -- and William Vollman -- ambitious, sweeping, edgy.I read How to Find Zodiac, then Motor Spirit. Readers not familiar with the case might read Motor Spirit first.First, a bit of context. I’m a Bay Area native, and was 14 years old when Zodiac was in the headlines in 1969. I remember it all as it happened -- the taunting letters to the Chronicle and Examiner, the ciphers, and more. I’m curious about the case but not obsessed with it. I had never read any of many books about Zodiac, nor visited a website or listened to a podcast, much less spent and time trying to investigate the case. What interests me is how people think about the case -- wrongly or rightly.The evidence has been compiled and scoured closely for decades, with no progress or solution. We might imagine that we’ve been looking in the wrong place.Enter Jarett Kobek, who looks at things very differently. Zodiac was not some hippie or believer in the occult, but wanted to appear like one, to blend in with the counter-culture of the times. He’s someone who wanted attention. He’s not a deranged killer who can’t control himself. After four attacks he stopped killing, and the letters stopped a couple of years later.So Kobek uses a bit of lateral thinking. Someone who writes letters to editors may have done so at other times. Someone who makes many popular culture references may have written for the many fanzines of the era – now searchable on-line or in libraries. Someone who wore an executioner hood on one occasion might have found use for it elsewhere. And so on.Quickly there’s a hit: Paul Doerr, who lived in the Vallejo–Fairfield area, worked at the Mare Island Navy base. With a name in hand, Kobek searches for Doerr and find many, many links to Zodiac. Descriptions of bomb making, with similar phrasing and an identical omission. Mention of hand stamping letters. Similarities in penmanship. Participation in “creative anachronisms,” one that took place the same day as the murder with the hood. Skill in ciphers and the same spellings – cipher and cypher. And much more. Have a look.Each time Kobek says he’s looking to see if he can exclude Doerr, but time after time, he’s unable to do so. Absence of proof is not proof of absence, but still ...Impressed by the many plausible connections, most never made before, I reached out to the author of a well-received set of books about Zodiac, and to a website dedicated to the case. What do you make of Kobek’s book, and what about Paul Doerr as a suspect?I get replies from both within 24 hours, both saying the same thing: 1) I’m aware of the book but have not read it; 2) it’s probably another example of the confirmation bias – people identify a suspect and then find reasons to confirm that supposition.Maybe they’ve been so inundated with "solutions" for so many years that they can’t be bothered to read one more. Maybe.My guess is that something else is at work.First, if the case is solved, what happens to our little industry? Poof. There may be a vested interest in rejecting a solution, which we might call a disconfirmation bias. (As the saying goes, “If you shoot the fox, what is left to hunt?”) Second, how did Kobek find the solution and not me? A bit embarrassing, perhaps, for folks who have dedicated themselves to the case.Has Kobek found Zodiac? Definitive proof might come be a fingerprint match. Can one be found from his employment files with the Navy, or lifted from a possession?Until then, this is the most original, creative, provocative, and insightful treatment of a case that has baffled many for 50 years. And, I would guess, very likely correct.

This is excellent, and much more than just an account of the Zodiac killings. You get a real feel for what California was like at the end of the 1960s, the dark edges. Kobek has been previously compared to Kurt Vonnegut with some justification but I have to say that this book reminds me more of the late David Seabrook’s work, especially his much maligned and (at least in my opinion) underrated second novel, Jack of Jumps, which chronicles the unsolved Hammersmith Nude killings in London in the 60s, by the so-called Jack the Stripper. That book gave me much the same vibes as this one, it’s author paints a bleak unrelenting picture of the times and, like Kobek, is not unafraid to leave the main narrative to pursue interesting connected tangents. I find this approach quite refreshing. With Seabrook’s sudden and untimely death (murder?) I am glad that someone else seems to have taken up his mantle. I recommend this unreservedly. I’ve had an abiding interest in the Zodiac case for over twenty years and have been continually frustrated at the lack of decent literature on the subject. There are a few diamonds in the rough but not many. This is certainly one of them.I shall now embark on his second Zodiac book about his suspect. I confess I always have to force myself to be interested in Zodiac suspects. I’m much more interested in the mystery of the events themselves than his identity and I suspect that when or if he is finally identified he will be a massive disappointment. As rightly he should be of course.

True crime bleeding out of genre spilling everywhere and touching everyone.Motor Spirit by Jarett Kobek is a great book.The term Motor Spirit describes amphetamine psychosis/drug mania, though this isn't it's original meaning. Read the book for that particular horror.This well researched and expansive look at the dying moments of the Age of Aquarius will sit on your chest whiilst the paralysis of your night terrors will have you retreating back into the furthest recesses of what little comfort you can find in your fake nostagic safe zone of a happy place - a time you've convinced yourself was better then it was.A time like all times when organised religions, the state, and the present culture are rejected by the young and in their zeal they re-make the world.You could describe this book as a comment on the world remade as Hell. If that's your thing.Kobek gives us a book that isn't just about the Zodiac, the murders, the letters or the schism of the times, but a story that gives a humane and considerate treatment of everyone traumatised by the Motor Spirit exhibited from the Sixties and with us ever since.Once you've read this book you'll want Kobek's follow-up, How To Find ZodiacBoth Motor Spirit and How to Find Zodiac are print on demand, probably the future of publishing for many reasons.

The facts on Zodiac. The author is a great writer.

As a Zodiac novice, this was an enthralling read that filters through decades of misinformation, junk science, and forgeries to relate to the reader what is definitively known about Zodiac... not The Zodiac. In doing so Kobek also provides context to the Zodiac phenomenon by delving into the wild period in American and Californian history of the 60s and 70s. A time bookended by the Manson family and Son of Sam terrorizing headlines. When the hope brought by JFK and MLK had been stamped out by assassin bullets. When the idea of the free-loving liberal west coast is forever shattered with the election of the star of Bedtime for Bonzo. A time when criminology was pure fanfiction. By understanding the times, we can better understand the subject, and by the end Kobek paints a fairly clear picture of the psychology of the man behind the blue felt tipped pen.Don't be one of the 95% of people who buy the object but don't read the text. This is an enlightening and myth shattering account of one of the most speculated about killers in American history.Worth noting that this is a self-published book and likely did not see an editor as there are a number of spelling and grammar errors throughout. These errors do not detract much, and hopefully as this is printed on demand, future readers will see less and less of these errors as they get corrected.

This book is remarkable, and you will sometimes feel like you are sipping on motor spirit yourself. This embeds the Zodiac murders in the broader milieu or zeitgest of the late 1960s and early 1990s. Kobek digs up all kinds of information to help paint a broad portrait of the killer and the motivation behind the deeds. This is meta-textual analysis that might help establish a better profile of who did them. I do not think he digresses into political views but is rather trying to remind us that there were culture wars and turmoil at that time as well, and Zodiac lived and responded to that. Great read!

Kobek expertly paints a picture of the American landscape that backdropped the Zodiac saga of the late sixties and early seventies. I didn't just read it like words on paper, I felt it.Zodiac has been on my *BIG INTERESTS* list for many years. Books, podcasts, Reddit, the forums. Im versed in the crimes and their intricacies. So being adequately knowledgable, I found this book was fantastic for painting a more solid timeline of a whirlwind of facts, dates, names and times. The research speaks for itself, painstaking. And appreciated.The author's opinions are almost always backed by a sane persons logic and I really felt like he laid out the entire Zodic mythos with coherence.From newbie to novice. From Morf to Voigt. Everyone should be able to appreciate this truly hidden gem. Even though the latter may feel emerald green with envy. Kobek will take his place among the most iconic Zodiac researchers. All the while, self published and not once seeming to care whether you buy the book or not. For him, seemingly, it's there and you can take it or you can leave it. His works, if not right now, will come to be highly respected in the years ahead.The way the book is written is in a fantastic and unique style. Written almost as if the reader is being spoken to by who was there, someone with whom paid keen attention to the times as much as the crimes.I never review. I never voice an opinion. So for me to type this out, I do it only to urge those on the fence about this purchase to go ahead and grab it. You truly won't regret it.And once you're done with the green, make sure to read the red.

If you remember the Sixties closer to as they actually were with the aid of Kobek’s captivatingly rendered research here, you may breath some new life into civil dialogue in our time. Kobek has located that precise period fueling Canetti and Baudrillard’s melancholy over our dropping out of History and being cast into a thousand fragmented images awarded nothing more than a hot take flushed into the dumpster tendrils of our electronic card catalog system.This book is about so much more than Zodiac. By Pax Americana, the American experiment wasn’t working for a lot of small men in small rooms, and with the new reproductive media tools they found their own expressive conduit for the dead speaking to the living, the immortality of the manqué.This is a tremendously important work, and vital conversations about the shape of civil society will emerge between and amongst careful readers.Can you get to that, jack?