When I first saw Steve Hodel’s 2003 book Black Dahlia Avenger, I was skeptical. Hodel thought his father had committed the infamous, unsolved 1947 murder? Well, he wasn’t the first; Janice Knowlton had beat him to the punch with her 1995 Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer. I’d skimmed that book–which is all it merits–and found it ludicrous. Knowlton’s claim relied entirely on her “recovered” memories, and she also made some horrifying accusations against the victim, Elizabeth Short. In my other reading about the Black Dahlia case, I’ve found no evidence whatsoever to suggest Short was a child abuser, as Knowlton claimed–in fact, Mary Pacios, who knew Short as a child, has written a book of near hagiography about her. At any rate, Knowlton herself was clearly a troubled, tormented woman, unprepared for the ridicule her book engendered; she committed suicide in 2004.

Back to Hodel. I read the back of Black Dahlia Avenger, learned he’d served as an LAPD homicide detective, and quickly accorded him more credibility than I had Knowlton. I didn’t have a theory about who’d committed the murder, and I was curious to see what he said. Well, he persuaded me. I’ve since read other arguments (including “Bugsy Siegel did it”), and Hodel’s remains the solution that I find most credible.

So when I saw that Hodel had released a sequel–Most Evil: Avenger, Zodiac, and the Further Serial Murders of Dr. George Hill Hodel–I was intrigued.

And now I’ve read it, and I’m kinda disappointed. Here’s why:

1. As a friend to whom I loaned Black Dahlia Avenger pointed out, one of the biggest problems with Steve Hodel’s books is Steve Hodel. She found him arrogant and unlikable. I wasn’t bothered by him as much in that book, but in Most Evil, he becomes most intolerable. Here’s a drinking game: Take a shot every time he mentions that he’s a former LAPD detective with more than 300 homicide investigations under his belt. You won’t be lucid enough to finish the book, but you won’t really care. Given the duration of his time on the force and my family’s relationship with a renowned and highly successful homicide detective whose life total was much lower than that, I find the 300 figure a bit implausible. Then again, we are talking about LA.

2. Drinking game number 2: Take a shot every time he reminds readers of how brilliant his father, George Hill Hodel, was.

3.Any book that makes me think of drinking games…well, ’nuff said. I don’t even drink 11.5 months out of the year.

4. I thought Steve Hodel’s homicide-detective take on Zodiac would be interesting, but he thinks his father was Zodiac. He offers “evidence,” but it’s all quite abstract and esoteric. He doesn’t know whether his father, who lived in the Philippines but traveled frequently to and within the United States, was in San Francisco during the Zodiac killings. He seems not to have asked the SFPD to test any of their Zodiac DNA against his father’s, which would be an easy way to prove or disprove his hypothesis.

5. The only concrete proof he offers is the opinion of a handwriting expert who says that based on the photocopies she’s seen, she believes George Hill Hodel wrote the Zodiac notes. Not to impugn the credibility of his handwriting expert, but he uses the same one for all his evidence. A second opinion would, in mine, strengthen his case.

6. A good portion of the book rehashes Black Dahlia Avenger, and Most Evil also features multiple images that are repeated at least twice. There is some interesting new content, especially information that Hodel discovered after the publication of his first book, when the Los Angeles DA’s office gave him access to their Black Dahlia file. His theory about his father being the Chicago “Lipstick Killer” and Short’s possible investigation of this as cause for her death is particularly intriguing (although he leaves some holes–he claims Short was trying to speak with Chicago homicide detectives, then talks about evidence that his father had a Chicago homicide badge, but he doesn’t explain how that would have fooled Short, who already knew George Hill Hodel as a California doctor).

7. In his first book, Hodel says he connected his father to the case after seeing photos that resembled Short in his father’s photo album. I didn’t think the photos looked at all like her, and after the models in them were identified (as other women), even he conceded he’d been wrong about that, but not about where his subsequent investigation led. In Most Evil, however, Hodel claims a comment from his half-sister is what caused him to start looking into his father’s possible connection to the Black Dahlia. I don’t like this kind of revisionism.

Summary: Steve Hodel has made some very interesting and, I think, accurate discoveries in regard to his father, but he’s also developed an obsessive case of tunnel vision. I don’t buy his theory of his father as Zodiac, and I think that at this point, he’s seeking out facts that will fit his theories rather than following the evidence.

Verdict: There’s interesting content here for Black Dahlia junkies, and it’s by no means the worst book I’ve read about the case. (I’m afraid that dishonor goes to Knowlton.) But for anyone who hasn’t read Black Dahlia Avenger or who really doesn’t care enough to wade through repetition and ego, I doubt Most Evil will hold much appeal.

Note: This may be the last book review I post on this blog, at least for quite some time, because I have an exciting new project in the works. Details to come soon…