Ninetoes vs AMERICAN DEMON

Ninetoes digs into some true crime for us today with Daniel Stashower’s AMERICAN DEMON: ELIOT NESS AND THE HUNT FOR AMERICA’S JACK THE RIPPER.

TITLE: American Demon: Eliot Ness and the Hunt for America’s “Jack the Ripper”

AUTHOR: Daniel Stashower

GENRE: History/True Crime

PAGES: 347

FORMAT: Ebook

PRICE: $12.99

Hey there book lovers! It’s your old pal, Ninetoes, coming to you from Ninetoes Loves Books Headquarters. Today, I have for you my review of Daniel Stashower’s American Demon: Eliot Ness and the Hunt For America’s “Jack the Ripper”. I have coffee in my system, and my thinking cap on, so let’s get to it!

I love history, especially from the prohibition years onward, and I love true crime documentaries. My wife and I watch the weekly ones on the four major networks, and we will also indulge in others. One of the big names from the Prohibition Era is Eliot Ness, the man who took down Al Capone. I even read the book The Untouchables: The Real Story by Eliot Ness and Oscar Fraley*.

Then I came across Daniel Stashower’s American Demon. Apparently, there is life after Chicago as far as Eliot Ness’s story is concerned. Count me in. I got my hot little hands on a copy, and it went into my eternal TBR pile. This past week, I finally got to it.

The book starts by intertwining two events; Eliot Ness’s war on crime in Chicago, and dismembered bodies being found in Cleveland, Ohio. Pretty soon, one clashes with another. Eliot Ness comes to Cleveland and gets a job as the town’s safety director, which is bigger than it sounds. Here, Ness starts to weed out corruption in the police department and starts to tackle the Torso Killer case. The bodies keep piling up with very little evidence as to who is butchering these bodies. The butcher has no preference; dismembered men and women of various races are being found. The police department and sheriff’s department chase down clues from the higher-ups in society to people living in boxes. The one thing the coroners agree on is the killer dismembers the bodies with surgical skill. The case drags on for years with over two dozen bodies being found. Can Eliot Ness and the authorities catch the killer?

Now, a better subtitle might have been “The Life and Times of Eliot Ness”. This book is as much about his life in law enforcement and afterward, as it is about Cleveland’s butcher. The bright spot is it not not a book of hero worship. You get a look at Eliot Ness, warts and all. He loves the camera and attention and even does his best to put his best face forward in his failures. He is so committed to his job that two marriages fall apart and he dies during his third one. The part that really rings out is he is not the gun-toting shoot first ask questions later figure portrayed on television and in the movies.

The desperation to find the killer is palpable, the bodies are scattered; you will find a torso here and the head elsewhere, the legs and arms in other places as well. It is a grisly game of cat and mouse being played between the killer and the authorities and it becomes repetitive. So much so that I thought I was reading the same page over and over. The book even shines a light on police procedures, both good and bad, for the time. This was an age where police had no problem beating a confession out of a suspect (something Ness abhors) or using various means of light torture (denial of food or water, or using the facilities to relieve themselves) to get their answers.

This book was entertaining and informative but it is the repetition that kills it for me.

I give this one 3.5 bookmarks out of 5.

Darren “Ninetoes” Perdue is a book and media reviewer. When he is not reading, he is watching true crime shows, cooking for his family, or working on a plan for universal domination. If you see him on his porch, say hi. He does not bite…much.