This is the Zodiac Speaking Michael D. Kelleher and David Van Nuys Praeger $26.95

This is the Zodiac Speaking," by crime and violence expert Michael D. Kelleher and Sonoma State University psychology professor David Van Nuys, is a rare combination. It offers a gripping inside look at a still-unsolved series of murders.

Engaging enough to command a wide popular audience, it is also insightful enough to be a genuine contribution to the developing discipline of criminal profiling. When a serial killer surfaces and does his evil deeds, often they erupt into front page headlines.

The nation is caught in a grip of fascinated horror until, inevitably and eventually, the evildoer is tracked down by the forces of law and order and brought to justice. Then we all breathe a sigh of relief and go back to such normal everyday horrors as getting killed by reckless drivers.

"This is the Zodiac Speaking" chronicles another kind of serial killer story and outcome -- one in which the killer is never caught, escapes scot-free and may just be biding his time, waiting to emerge from hiding to sweep through our communities with yet another streak of murder and mayhem.

The Zodiac carried out many of his murders in the Bay Area. Not all the attempted murders were successful. There were a few survivors. Details of the crimes, some from the victims and others from crime-scene reconstructions and other evidence, rival those of the best of detective stories.

In Kelleher and Van Nuys' powerfully written account, the level of horrific detail adds to the sense of immediacy. With many of the murders, I felt like I was right there at the scene, an eyewitness to the events: "Cheri Jo Bates was an 18-year-old freshman attending Riverside Community College," write Kelleher and Van Nuys. "She stood a bit over five feet tall and weighed 110 pounds, with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a deep wholesome tan.

"On the evening of Sunday, October 30, 1966, Cheri Jo drove her green Volkswagen to the RCC library to work on a term paper. While inside the library, an unseen individual disabled her vehicle by removing the distributor coil and condensor and then disconnecting the center wire of the distributor ..."

For the gruesome details of this and the other hackings, stabbings and shootings this book chronicles, you will have to read it for yourself.

Another fascinating dimension of "This is the Zodiac Speaking" is revealed in its subtitle: "Into The Mind of a Serial Killer."

The Zodiac did not merely kill but warned in advance that he was about to kill again. His warnings were a media event, pasted together from letters cut out from newspaper headlines and sent to a major metropolitan daily for publication. He later sent material evidence from a crime, like swatches of bloody clothing, to prove that he was indeed the killer.

Drawing on all this and on the exceptional depth of reporting and analysis in the Zodiac files, Kelleher and Van Nuys have done their best to wiggle into the Zodiac's mind, report what they found going on there, and tell us what they think makes him tick. What are their conclusions? What drove him to his string of murders?

I won't spoil their story with the answers, but you might want to read their conclusions.

The Zodiac was no fool. Not only was he never caught but, declare Kelleher and Van Nuys, "With his first written communication, the killer established his understanding of the role of the media and how it could be manipulated for his own purposes."

His own purposes included making himself a celebrity, an anti-hero, a source of terror in his readers' minds. There is an intriguing sociological turn as well as a psychological turn in these pages. The Zodiac's victims appear to have been targets for an alienated hostility toward society as a whole.

For me this conclusion raises the disturbing question of whether anologous homicide sprees are likely to become more frequent as perceptions of society as a hostile controller of individual lives come more and more to reflect changing economic and political realities.

"This is the Zodiac Speaking" is a nonfiction work that I found as gripping as most good crime novels. Kelleher and Van Nuys offer their readers a story that brings insight and new perspective into the deranged mind of a merciless killer.

If you like crime, suspense or horror stories and are willing to edge even closer to reality than fiction allows, then this fascinating book is for you.