The Murders That Made Us: How Vigilantes, Hoodlums, Mob Bosses, Serial Killers, and Cult Leaders Built the San Francisco Bay Area

This compulsively readable account from Calhoun (Beer, Blood & Cornmeal) brings to life the famous and infamous murders in the San Francisco Bay Area from the mid-19th century to the present. The author admits his interest in this macabre history was piqued by his mother’s involvement as a suspect in a 1959 murder and his connection to the underground San Francisco music scene in the late 1990s. His main focus is on tabloid crimes, from the newspaper wars of the Gold Rush era, which ended in a publisher’s homicide, to the office building massacre in 1993 that left eight dead from shots fired from a Tec-9 and led to the passage of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban in 1994. In between, he covers such sensational crimes as the Tong wars of the late 19th century; the unsolved murders of the Doodler, who preyed on gay men in 1974 and 1975; and the 1978 shooting murders of San Francisco mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk by Dan White, who proffered the “Twinkie defense” (the argument that eating junk food drove him insane) and was convicted on two counts of manslaughter. Calhoun writes with wit and passion about the city he loves and its bloody history. This is a feast for true crime fans. (May)