Torsos - Softcover

Cooke, John Peyton

3.81

94 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0446404543 ISBN 13: 9780446404549

Publisher: Mysterious Press, 1995

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Arriving in 1935 Cleveland with a determination to clean up the city, Eliot Ness is greeted by a series of grisly murders and is introduced to the local underground that threatens to swallow up his own detectives. Reprint.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

Headless trunks litter the grimy, Depression-era Cleveland scenery in a raunchy crime novel--Cooke's hardcover debut--based on actual, awful events. Homicide detective Hank ``Lucky'' Lambert, perhaps the only cop in Cleveland not on the take, leads the investigation into a growing number of grisly murders. It's revealed early on that the victims have all been decapitated and largely dismembered by handsome, smooth-talking pharmacist and machete-wielding homosexual sadist Mott Hessler, estranged scion of a prominent oil-refining family. Detective Lambert has plenty of complications in his difficult investigation: local politics are in an uproar as the Democratic machinery breaks down; new safety director and historic figure Eliot Ness's hosing out of the police stables leaves Lambert without his clever-but-bent partner; Hessler's victims are mostly anonymous drifters and prostitutes with no political constituency; and Lambert, gay but married and closeted, is falling in love with handsome young Danny Cottone, a hustler and one of the very few people to have known some of the victims. Ness, fresh from his well-publicized Chicago triumphs, has his own worries: He needs fresh victories; the city fathers would like the case wrapped up without any stink; the mayor is dangling future political office before him; and his marriage is collapsing. Ness and Lambert, both professionally straight and emotionally bent, work well together- -but not fast enough. Butchered bodies keep popping up, and Mr. Hessler gets closer and closer to poor dumb Danny. Not for the fainthearted. Graphic sex and violence and Photoplay-style prose will have gentler readers reaching for the oxygen. -- Copyright �1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Booklist:

This unbelievably lurid novel (the title alone tips it off) is based on a real-life case and is notable for featuring a setting never before used in the annals of fiction: the homosexual underground community of 1935 Cleveland. Cooke introduces Hank Lambert, a bisexual police detective assigned to investigate two gruesome murder-mutilations. The number of decapitated torsos quickly escalates, and in the midst of a political power struggle, city hall enlists the help of world-renowned "untouchable" Eliot Ness to help investigate the crime. Simultaneously, young male prostitute Danny Cottone slowly figures out just who the Torso Killer is, and the final pages are a race against time for Hank and Ness to save innocent Danny (who is treated almost like a female ingenue) from the clutches of the evil madman. This is no literary masterpiece, but it keeps the reader's interest, though the setting alone may be off-putting to mainstream readers. It features some scenes of homosexual sex, and the violence is incredibly graphic; but the gay police detective is treated sympathetically despite his betrayal of his wife and family. (Basically, his encounter with the male prostitute is a homosexual variation on the good-cop-falls-for-the-hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold clich{‚}e.) Ness, in what is obviously a lesser case in his career, is woefully underused, and the novel in general plays like a gay version of a Republic "B" movie from the 1930s. Joe Collins

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