With NEMESIS: THE FINAL CASE OF ELIOT NESS, William Bernhardt enters the land of the historical crime novel and stakes a claim to ownership. This is one of those books you take home and figure you’ll spend three or four nights on — after work, after supper, after a TV show or two.
Night one: You intend to read just a few pages before you drop off to sleep, then you look at the clock and at the current page number, and curse the hour and the fact that you have to get up early for work in the morning.
Night two: You throw a frozen dinner in the microwave and read while you eat. After you finish your lasagna, you keep sitting at the table, reading for another hour. You finally move to a more comfortable chair and sit there until you finish the book, then you get a little pissed off because you want more.
Night three: You start waiting for a sequel.
The Eliot Ness of the title is the same real-life Treasury agent who kept pestering Al Capone, keeping under his skin by raiding his illegal hooch supplies while the IRS accountants locked up the case against Scarface for income tax evasion that put the Big Boy away. While he was in Alcatraz, Capone’s brain rotted away from syphilis. There are photos of him after his release, sitting in his back yard, fishing in the swimming pool.
Ness’ post-Untouchables life was, in its own way, almost as terrible.
In the mid-1930s, when Bernhardt’s book begins, Ness has become the Director of Public Safety in Cleveland. He’s hired to clean up the kind of messes he was used to — mobsters, crooked labor leaders, juvenile delinquency, traffic disorganization — which he did and did well. His efforts finally removed Cleveland from national “Worst Places to Live” lists.
In the novel, his biggest personal problem is his relationship with his wife, Edna, who has grown weary of being married to a workaholic who gets more pleasure from seeing his own picture in the newspaper than he does from his life at home. He promises to reform, but Edna knows that he can’t really help himself: “That’s what’s so sad about you, Eliot. So tragic. You do mean well. But you’ll forget everything you’ve said tonight the first time you get a tip about some third-rate moonshiner. A mere woman can never compete with tomorrow’s headlines.”
Then an even bigger problem comes along, a cop’s worst nightmare: a serial killer who’s grotesque enough to hack his victims to pieces and spread them around, and smart enough to leave no clues.
There really was such a killer in Cleveland in the ’30s, variously called the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run (the shantytown area from which most of the victims came) or the Torso Killer. Dismembered and headless corpses, male and female, were found in vacant lots, in lakes or neatly left in brown paper packages tied up with strings. With the police department’s frustration at finding nothing to go on, the press — once Ness’ ally — turns on him and demands that he do the impossible: Identify an invisible man.
The novel’s emphasis is always on Ness, a man whose vanity shows in his apparent lack of vanity. He starts out as something of a serious-minded Boy Scout, and Bernhardt is very good at letting us see his devolution into a man who doesn’t mind stomping on Constitutional rights in what he sees as the furtherance of the general good. The author has a Batman/Joker thing going in the book’s climax, when Ness and the murderer meet, and the Torso Killer insists that the two of them are not that different. You almost wonder if that’s right, if fear and pressure can turn you into the same kind of animal that insanity can.
Beyond the solid characterization, well-crafted dialogue and relentless plot, Bernhardt has also drawn a Dickensian picture of American heartland hard times during the Great Depression. Kingsbury Run is laid open with all its squalor and stench. The killer suggests at one point that a favor is being done for the victims by removing them from such a wretched existence. It’s to Bernhardt’s credit as a writer that we almost agree.
In real life, the Torso Killer was never captured or publicly identified. As he was nearing death 20 years later, Ness told anyone who would listen that he knew who the killer was but, for political reasons, promised not to reveal the name if the lunatic’s family would approve permanent commitment to an asylum, which they agreed to do. After Ness’ death, evidence was uncovered that tends to verify his story. Bernhardt is the first writer on the case, in fiction or nonfiction, to take a stand and blame this specific person for the crimes.
NEMESIS is a very good novel is addition to being a very good read. If you want to find out more about the case, check out the true-crime narratives IN THE WAKE OF THE BUTCHER: CLEVELAND’S TORSO MURDERS by James Jessen Badal, TORSO: THE STORY OF ELIOT NESS AND THE SEARCH FOR A PSYCHOPATHIC KILLER by Steven Nickel and ELIOT NESS: THE REAL STORY by Paul W. Heimel. For another novel that explores the murders, try BUTCHER’S DOZEN by Max Allan Collins, and there’s even the graphic novel TORSO by Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko.
But start with NEMESIS. If your interest is limited to one book, this is it. —Doug Bentin
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
I would be curious to know if Doug Bentin has actually read my novel, BUTCHER’S DOZEN, which covered this same case in a remarkably similar format. BUTCHER’S DOZEN is the first book-length treatment of the case (either non-fiction or fiction) and reflects ground-breaking research by my associate George Hagenauer and me, in Cleveland, where we discovered the long-forgotten massive Ness scrapbooks at the Case Western Reserve Library, which included the postcards written to Ness by the apparent Butcher. There are three other Ness-in-Cleveland novels, and NEMESIS begins with material covered similarly in THE DARK CITY, my first Ness novel (BUTCHER’S DOZEN is the second). These books appeared in the late ’80s and early ’90s. I have also covered Ness and in particular the Butcher case in my Edgar-nominated play (a one-man show), ELIOT NESS: AN UNTOUCHABLE LIFE, which became a film not long ago (and is available on DVD). The author of NEMESIS has dismissed my work as “fictionalized” and is apparently unaware of the reputation of my historical fiction for accuracy, and that my approach is to use primarily real people with occasional composites as well as time compression, always spelled out in my bibliographic end notes.
As for a sequel to NEMESIS, my novel ANGEL IN BLACK (in the Nathan Heller series), which came out in 2001, pits Ness (and Heller) against the Butcher again, as I explored the theory that the Black Dahlia murder was committed by the same serial killer. (BUTCHER’S DOZEN was an expansion of the much-anthologized Nathan Heller story, “The Strawberry Teardrop,” first published in 1984. The novel dropped Heller and substituted Sam Wild, a composite character representing several Cleveland reporters.)
I can’t stop others from doing historical novels that I have already written, even when they make use of research I have uncovered. But I can point readers to the originals.
I don’t know if Doug has, but I sure as hell wanted to when I learned of its existence … and then saw it was being sold for $55 or something by greedy sellers who managed to have a copy of the out-of-print work. Argh!
Biblio.com has it much cheaper
It’s well worth the search, as are his other Ness projects. Collins is the expert on Ness, in my opinion.
The Five Star hardcover reprint can be found at Amazon (their secondary sellers) for as low as $24.95. Only a handful available there. I’m in early stages of talking to a publisher about another (this time paperback) reprint.
I agree with Craig that Collins is the Ness expert. Hell, he’s the king of historical hard-boileds based on fact. I’m just sorry he’s not writing much in that mode anymore as I miss both the Ness and Heller books. I’m sorry if I put my foot (unintentionally, for sure) into hard feelings between Collins and Bernhardt as I have a lot of respect for the work of each of them. I have to admit to not realizing BUTCHER’S DOZEN is still in print. I read it on first publication but I haven’t read it again since then. Had I been able to re-read it, I might have modulated the language in my review of NEMESIS. But the fact is, Bernhardt’s book is a page turner and I enjoyed it very much. I have no reason to puff it beyond the praise I think it deserves and, truth be known, I wrote Collins a fan letter in relation to the Ness series while it was being published. Obviously, there’s no reason for him to remember that (he sent me a gracious postcard in reply). A happy solution would be for Hard Case Crime to reprint the Ness series. All in favor, raise your hand.
I know when I think of Eliot Ness, I think of three people: Robert Stack, Kevin Costner and Max Allan Collins.
Doug, I just want to know if anything Bernhardt writes is as thrilling as his real-life crime spree: http://tinyurl.com/bhyfxx
I don’t mean that as a cheap shot; that’s a genuinely compelling story!
Doug, I do not mean to beat up on you, but I find it frankly dismaying that someone who had read and enjoyed my Ness novels enough to write a fan letter would not mention more directly that I had written the same novel already. You relegate BUTCHER’S DOZEN to a laundry list of other Ness books, and then advise readers “if you limit your interest to one book, this is it.” By the way, the other books on that list share two things (a) they were written after BUTCHER’S DOZEN, and (b) they drew upon my work with little or no acknowledgement.
I have been through this before. TORSO is a graphic novel by somebody who had written me fan letters. When (after TORSO was published and successful), he was scheduled to be on a panel with me at a San Diego Con, guess what? He didn’t show. And I’ve had to watch TORSO get huge praise and movie options from people who (unlike the author of TORSO) were unaware of BUTCHER’S DOZEN.
It interests me to learn that I’m “not writing much in that (historical) mode anymore.” Since CHICAGO CONFIDENTIAL appeared in 2001, I have written and published both ROAD TO PURGATORY and ROAD TO PARADISE, prose sequels to my graphic novel ROAD TO PERDITION, and heavily dealing with the Chicago mob. ROAD TO PURGATORY is in part about Eliot Ness’s last-ditch attempt to take Frank Nitti down (the Butcher Case was hardly “ELIOT NESS’ FINAL CASE”). Under my not-secret penname Patrick Culhane, I’ve done BLACK HATS (old Wyatt Earp meets young Al Capone) and RED SKY IN MORNING (WW 2 Naval thriller based on my father’s experiences). In addition, I’ve published two Heller-style novels about the world of comics: A KILLING IN COMICS (about DC diddling Siegel and Shuster) and STRIP FOR MURDER (detailing the Al Capp/Ham Fisher feud). And it’s been fairly widely announced that I’m doing Heller again, for TOR — working on one this year.
Beyond that, the rather major Ness project — ELIOT NESS: AN UNTOUCHABLE LIFE — was done recently, and I’m about to edit it into a two-part version for Iowa Public Television on HD. With luck, that will hit more stations than just the Iowa ones.
I understand the appeal of the latest new thing. But is it surprising to you that Max Allan Collins would request you develop a sense of history?
I am aware of Bill Bernhardt’s 2007 problems (that’s a year, not a number of problems) brought about by alcohol abuse but I didn’t think discussing them in public would add anything to a review of his book. Or is he the first novelist who had a drinking problem? I’ve interviewed the man for a book-discussion local cable TV program produced by the library system I work for. He seems like a decent man and he is a long-time advocate of libraries and reading. He was certainly an easy interview.
As for Mr. Collins’ annoyance by the fact that others have built on his original concept, that’s certainly understandable. It must be the way Conan Doyle felt when Sherlock Holmes clones sprang up in magazine stories of his time. (Poe missed a similar feeling when Holmes got started as he was already dead.) Carroll John Daly might have been pissed when other Black Mask writers ripped off his hard-boiled dicks. I wonder how S.S. Van Dine reacted to the debut of Ellery Queen.
Building on what has come before is the way pop culture works. Science, too, of course, but that’s another website.
First, Doug, I agree that Mr. Bernhardt’s private-life problems have no bearing here.
Second, you otherwise cop out. This is not a case of others building on my work — this is a case of others using my research and my writing to create very similar works on the legal loophole that there’s a basis in history (often history I uncovered) to the story. My frustration with you is the lavish praise you heap upon one of these works without mention of mine, except in dismissive passing, when you profess to have been a fan of the original work. That you imply you’ve turned to NEMESIS in part because I am not producing much in the historical novel field these days is particularly frustrating, since in the last decade I’ve done 13 historical novels, several historically-based graphic novels, and a play/film on Ness, including the Butcher case updated.
There is nothing wrong with doing a new historical novel about a famous criminal case. A number of my Heller novels explore cases other novelists had already visited; but such works need to bring something new to the table, as I hope I did with the Black Dahlia in ANGEL IN BLACK and with the Massie case in DAMNED IN PARADISE.
Max, thanks for caring so much about the way popular fiction works. I mean that. This is a strictly No Sarcasm zone. You’re one of bookgasm’s favorite writers (do you, like Mickey Spillane, object to being called an “author”?). I frequently get frustrated by my place in this site’s pecking order because I never get to write about your novels. Those bastards Lott and Grossman grab the newest Collins when it comes in. If I start whining now I may get to review the next Nathan Heller. Good luck, too, in getting the Ness books reprinted. Even a big fat omnibus, like the one reprinting your first CSI books, would be welcome.
And if you decide, in a new book, that you want to kill off a character named Doug Bentin, I’ll understand. dgb
Very gracious of you, Doug. You need not fear turning up as a corpse in one of my books. I don’t have Mickey’s aversion to “author,” by the way, though being a writer is always enough.