Torsos - Hardcover

Cooke, John Peyton

3.81

94 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0892965223 ISBN 13: 9780892965229

Publisher: Mysterious Pr, 1994

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In 1935 - in the midst of the Great Depression - Cleveland, Ohio, was terrorized by a brutal murderer of a cleverness and persistence not seen since Jack the Ripper stalked Victorian London. The term serial killer had yet to be coined; the press called him the "Torso Slayer."
By the time his spree was over, more than a dozen hacked-up and headless bodies had been found, and the Torso Slayer had earned the distinction of having become America's first truly modern serial killer.
With the immediacy of true crime and the taut suspense of a gripping mystery, Torsos recreates this sensational case as a novel, starting when a naked, decapitated corpse is discovered in a desolate ravine near a downtown slum. Most of the Cleveland cops think it's another mob rubout. But Homicide Detective Hank Lambert fears it is something far worse. His fears are confirmed when a second, a third, and more bodies appear - similarly headless, some dismembered and neatly packed into burlap bags.
With Cleveland gripped by panic - and a mayoral election nearing - the pressure is on for a quick solution to the Torso Slayings. Newly appointed Director of Public Safety Eliot Ness, fresh from his Chicago triumph over Al Capone, brings his "untouchable" determination to the investigation, while Hank hits the streets hunting for a connection between the victims and their murderer. He finds it in Cleveland's homosexual underground ... a world of Turkish baths, smoky nightclubs, male hustlers, and furtive grasps at forbidden love ... a world that Hank - despite his marriage and his family - knows all too well....

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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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