Torsos [Mass Market Paperback]

John Peyton Cooke (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1995

Witness the modern era's first serial killer. Cleveland, 1935. The first bodies were found in a slum area. Both men had been hacked to pieces with a large knife. Over the next 3 years, there would be more victims--in six of the cases, the heads were never found. Eliot Ness is hot on the case of "The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run".

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Not for the faint-hearted or squeamish, Cooke's fact-based thriller takes a graphic look at a seamy side of 1930s Cleveland. A serial killer stalks male prostitutes and vagrants during Eliot Ness's post-Chicago tenure as Safety Commissioner. In-the-closet cop Hank Lambert recognizes the head lying near other parts of a dismembered body as that of homosexual pimp Eddie Andrassy, the first of many butchered corpses to be found in Cleveland's grimy Kingsbury Run section over the next five years. Lambert's association with a young male hooker with a heart of gold reveals the gay life of the period and eventually leads to the rich, politically well-connected killer, who taunts Ness by leaving gift-wrapped body parts closer and closer to his headquarters. Some readers will be offended by the explicit and kinky sex (notably a bathhouse episode involving a trucker and a chicken), and the ending is an into-the-sunset contrivance, but the talented Cooke ( Out for Blood ) has pulled an interesting switch by casting male characters in the classic women-in-peril roles of a typical slasher novel.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In the politically corrupt Cleveland of 1935, a number of dismembered bodies, mostly male, are discovered in the seedier parts of town. New Safety Commissioner Eliott Ness, working with homicide detective Hank Lambert, suspects the killer may be a psychopathic homosexual. What he doesn't know is that Lambert, a closet gay, has formed an attachment to a young street hustler connected to the victims. Basing his story on actual unsolved murders, Cooke ( Out for Blood , Avon, 1991) nicely re-creates the atmosphere, squalor, and dubious morality of a Depression-era city and provides some nail-biting suspense as the murderer stalks his victims. Shallow characterizations, unnecessarily graphic sex, and a somewhat melodramatic ending mar the author's accomplishment, but this is still a compelling and unsettling read. For large fiction collections.
- Eric W. Johnson, Teikyo Post Univ. Lib., Waterbury, Ct.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Mysterious Press (May 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446404543
• ISBN-13: 978-0446404549
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,049,876 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Peyton Cooke was born in Amarillo, Texas, and grew up in Laramie, Wyoming. His novels include OUT FOR BLOOD, TORSOS, THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER, HAVEN, THE RAPE OF GANYMEDE, THE FALL OF LUCIFER, and THE LAKE (a/k/a STINK LAKE). His short fiction has been published in several magazines and anthologies, including Christopher Street, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Best American Mystery Stories 2003. John currently lives in London with his husband and their dog Ricky, a toy poodle and petty thief.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pulp Fiction Crime Novel Full of Stereotypes But a Page Turner, January 31, 2006

By 

Get What We Give (Georgia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Torsos (Hardcover)

John Peyton Cooke has done some research in writing this book. I have to give him credit for that alone because it must have been very time consuming. However, I suspect some of it is a hobby for him and it shows as it is a bit of a labor of love.

Oddly enough some chapters are more well laid out and shine brighter than others. It's not so much the altering focus on various characters (which I do like) as it seems that either the editor or Cooke seemed to have spent more time developing certain chapters more than others.

Detective "Lucky" Lambert is something unique for the type of writing here and I enjoyed reading about him and getting in his head. Danny, the male hustler with a heart of gold....well, let's just say, this old saw is getting a bit tired by now. I think Margaret Mitchell even wore it out waaay back when with Belle Watling. People's characters aren't black and white good or bad. Cooke even shows us that with Lambert (to a degree, but even Lambert's a bit too goody goody for the era). But Danny's just a little too squeeky clean to be a kid who's had to grow up on the mean streets of Cleveland during the Depression.

The dialogue Cooke gives his characters runs the gamut between believable and saccharinely maudlin. Most of the time it is just "okay". Dialogue is a tough thing to write and many writers just don't have the voices in their heads to get it right. Cooke isn't really bad at it - not like so many writers out there - but he isn't really good either.

All that said, Torsos wouldn't be a pulp fiction novel if it weren't for some hackneyed dialogue and graphic violence - of which there is plenty.

The oft mentioned chicken and trucker scene is a bit too graphic for me, but it is, sadly, probably more real than many other things that could have been portrayed instead.

I like a gritty, pulp fiction novel. I read a lot of books riding the train to work each day. I need a book that can capture my attention and pull me out of where I am. Torsos delivers on that.

It is an engaging and interesting read. It is also quite a page turner.

You could do a lot worse.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lucky, July 1, 2000

By 

Melissa Hardie "mjh1963" (Potts Point, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Torsos (Mass Market Paperback)

Torsos is a great novel. Set in Cleveland, in the `thirties, it fictionalizes the notorious Torso Slayer killings through the figure of Hank "Lucky" Lambert, a cop who knows more than he should of the gay underworld of the city. John Peyton Cooke's meticulous research shows, but the novel isn't at all sluggish - it moves at a breakneck pace to tour tramp dwellings, drug stores, chicken farms and bath houses in search of the elusive Torso Slayer. In the midst of mayhem there's a love story, as Lucky meets and romances the hustler Danny Cottone.

I am not a big reader of crime fiction, but this book reminded me, in good ways, of James Ellroy's fiction. Its panoramic portrait of the city, and its weaving of fact and fiction was complicated, visual, and paranoid, rather like Ellroy's vision of LA. John Peyton Cooke's anal-retentive Eliot Ness is a memorable character, but most memorable to me is his deft, rather audaciously complicated plotting, his sentimental, yet sometimes brutal depiction of male homoeroticism, and his incredibly evocative, though rather spare prose. A wonderful read.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ripping Bodice Off a Lamb, October 11, 2004

By 

Tristanicus (New York, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Torsos (Hardcover)

This is what you would get if you cross Silence of the Lambs w/ a bodice ripper romance. Exciting, engrossing, and definitely a page-turner. Anyone who is a fan of the criminal procedurals now in vogue on TV (CSI, Cold Case and its ilk) will no doubt enjoy this novel tremendously and I'm not even one. That the story is based on a real life crime makes it doubly interesting. It is not without its fault, however. Without giving too much away, the progression to the conclusion is a bit abrupt. One of the major characters change of preference, shall we say, is rather quick and without angst; given this takes place in the 1930s, it's contrived. Not being a psychiatrist, I can't say with authority if the final actions of the characters are psychologically sound; yet I find the resolutions have too much of a deus ex machina feel to them. A character would do things that if he is on screen in a slasher movie, the audience would groan and yell, "Don't do that, stupid." And those unwise actions precipitated the whole climax of the novel. Despite all the flaws, this is one helluva of a memorable read.