Customer Reviews

The Chimney Sweeper

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mr. Cooke is one of my favorite authors and for a good reason: he writes an excellent story! In this one, the first-person character, Jesse James Colton, arrives in Isthmus City [a Manhattan-like city in Wisconsin], a place referred to by bigots as "Fairyland of the Dairyland", and immediately gets himself into serious danger after he murders a transvestite who tries to force sex upon him. After hiding the body in a dilapidated old house, he is later raped by a truck-driver, and then out of curiosity calls a number he finds on a bathroom wall at the bus station. The series of events that follow seem to convince him that he is being haunted by his deceased victim and that his action will be discovered. Mr. Cooke's story is very intricate and constantly interesting. The ending is a bit surprising, and I won't spoil it here. Read it. Just read it, and you won't be sorry.

Loved the book, but the frequent trips down the gay porn aisle were not necessary. Yes Jesse is gay and has gay sex, but it started to overshadow the story.

This is one of those novels that you will dig out years after reading it just to read it again. Cooke spins two great stories into one as he first gives the reader the smart aleck, homophobic younger character and the more self-confidant character a few years later. We then watch as both sides crash together with the discovery of the transvestite's corpse in a chimney flue.

This book contains gruesome scenes of violence and attitude which makes it all the more a taught suspense thriller.

The whole time I was reading "The Chimney Sweeper" I found myself wishing John Peyton Cooke had just gone ahead and wrote the gay porno novel he's obviously itching to write. As it is, we're kept well apprised of main character Jesse James Colson's physical attributes, his genitalia in particular. Still, I was willing to suspend disbelief. But when Jesse improbably becomes a policeman and manages to get his police blues in cotton rather than the standard issue polyester by feigning an allergy to man-made fiber, I stopped even trying to take this book seriously. (Cooke takes it further by having Jesse alter his uniforms so they accentuate his Tom of Finland bod.) "The Chimney Sweeper" does have a compelling story, and I kept reading despite its increasing ridiculousness with each chapter. Compared to Cooke's far-superior novel "Torsos," "Sweeper" is a mess.

While this story has some interesting plot twists and good discription of time and place, it's too improbable to become all that compelling. It involves a former teenage runaway who becomes a homeless hood committing street crimes, then becomes a police officer in a fictional Wisconsin city (apparently, a combination of Milwaukee and Madison). People with backgrounds like that don't become policemen. In fact, most have college degrees in law enforcement and/or criminal justice, and have to go through the police acedemy. And that's just the most glaring example. There are too many lapses of logic for me to reccomend this book.

This book is interesting in that it is told from a straight man's point of view .... for a while. Both exciting and engaging, The Chimney Sweeper is a murder mystery that revels in its reverse format. It's not the greatest book you'll ever read, but it is really a fabulously enjoyable one.

john payton cook made me want to meet the character