What I’m Reading

Zodiac

Zodiac may be my favorite Neal Stephenson book, in no small part because it reminds me of an awful lot of people I know. Plus it’s well-written, clever, suspenseful and incredibly funny. Poor Husband, I followed him around the house reading whole chapters aloud because I thought they were so amusing.

The book is dedicated to Stephenson’s old roommate, Marco Kaltofen, a leader in the field of chemistry and an expert on radiological and biological contamination. Zodiac’s protagonist, Sangamon Taylor, is a chemist working to stop industrial pollution.

Here’s the blurb from Stephenson’s website, because I’m not sure I can do the plot justice without long and twisting digressions that would take you longer to read than the book itself:

Sangamon Taylor’s a New Age Sam Spade who sports a wet suit instead of a trench coat and prefers Jolt from the can to Scotch on the rocks. He knows about chemical sludge the way he knows about evil — all too intimately. And the toxic trail he follows leads to some high and foul places. Before long Taylor’s house is bombed, his every move followed, he’s adopted by reservation Indians, moves onto the FBI’s most wanted list, makes up with his girlfriend, and plays a starring role in the near-assassination of a presidential candidate. Closing the case with the aid of his burnout roomate, his tofu-eating comrades, three major networks, and a range of unconventional weaponry, Sangamon Taylor pulls off the most startling caper in Boston Harbor since the Tea Party. As he navigates this ecological thriller with hardboiled wit and the biggest outboard motor he can get his hands on, Taylor reveals himself as one of the last of the white-hatted good guys in a very toxic world.

If you’ve ever been intimidated by the length and depth of some of Stephenson’s other work (The Baroque Cycle comes to mind), perhaps this is a better place to get acquainted with him.

This book has nothing to do with the recent David Fincher film, Zodiac.