Mr. CSI: how a Vegas dreamer made a killing in Hollywood, one body at a time

In 1990, Anthony Zuiker was just another Hollywood wannabea balding, overweight guy driving a tram in Las Vegas for eight bucks an hour, telling his friends about the screenplay he was writing, dreaming of fame.

Hed grown up in Vegas, where his mother worked the blackjack table at a casino, while his father flitted back and forth from investment schemes that didnt seem to go anywhere.

His friends figured Anthony wouldnt either.But twenty years later, Zuiker stands as the mastermind behind the most popular television show in history, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and its spin-offs: CSI: Miami and CSI: NY.

How he got therea remarkable rise from nothing to somethingis the narrative lifeblood of Mr. CSI, only, like the show itself, theres a catch:On a January morning in 2005, Zuiker got a call from the Las Vegas Police Department while he was working at his desk on a script for CSI: NY.

His estranged father, whom Zuiker hadnt seen for a decade, had put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.So begins Mr. CSI, a book that frames Zuikers astonishing ascendency to fame and fortune with an unsettling and honest appraisal of his fathers suicide.

Its a book that uses the conventions that have made CSI a worldwide success to tell a far more personal story, of what one man left behind in his success and what he gained when he returned.