Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher: Hunting America's Deadliest Unidentified Serial Killer at the Dawn of Modern Criminology

Today’s Nonfiction post is on Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher: Hunting America's Deadliest Unidentified Serial Killer at the Dawn of Modern Criminology by Max Allan Collins and  A. Brad Schwartz. It is 558 pages long and is published by William Morrow. The cover is red with pictures of Ness and the city. There is some mild foul language, no sex, and mild violence in this book. There Be Spoilers Ahead. 

From the dust jacket- In 1935, the nation’s most legendary crime-fighter—the man who had just taken down the greatest gangster in American history—arrived in Cleveland on the eve of hosting the World's Fair. It was to be his coronation, as well as the city's. Instead, terror descended, as headless bodies started washing up on shores of Lake Erie. 

Eliot Ness's greatest case had begun. 

Now, the acclaimed writing team behind Scarface and the Untouchable uncovers this lost crime epic, delivering a gripping and unforgettable nonfiction account based on their groundbreaking research.

During Prohibition, Ness had risen to fame for leading the “Untouchables” unit, which had helped put Al Capone behind bars. Soon after, he was hired as Cleveland's public safety director, in charge of the police and fire departments. Cleveland, then a rising industrial hub nearing the height of its powers, was preparing for a star-turn itself: in 1936, it would host the "Great Lakes Exhibition," a world's fair which would be visited by seven million people. Late in the summer of 1935, however, pieces of a woman’s body began to show up on the Lake Erie shore—first her ribs, then part of her backbone, and then, on September 5, the lower half of her torso. The body soon count grew to five, then ten, then more, all dismembered in gruesome ways.

As Ness zeroed in on a suspect—a doctor tied to a prominent political family—powerful forces thwarted his quest for justice. In this battle between a flawed hero and a twisted monster—by turns horror story, political drama, and detective thriller—Collins and Schwartz find an American tragedy, classic in structure, epic in scope.

Review- An interesting look into Ness’s life after being an Untouchable. Eliot Ness had more than just getting Capone to his credit. Cleveland invited Ness to help clean up the city and help raise the city’s reputation. Ness does that by cleaning out the dirty cops and creating some laws for traffic that we would consider normal now but was innovated at the time. But Ness is not a homicide detective and so he did not have the right mindset or tools to handle a case like the Butcher. He does his best but it should have been left to homicide guys not a man who specializes in getting racketeers. Still is an interesting book about an interesting man. 

I give this book a Four out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.