Customer Reviews

Torsos

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

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Noone should miss the novel, especially those interested in Elliot Ness' search of a mass murderer.

We meet Hank and many other characters. Outstanding flavor of America's 20's