LAST CALL: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York

LAST CALL: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York
ELON GREEN
Celadon Books
$27.00 hardcover,available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

NOW A DOCUMENTARY SERIES STREAMING ON MAX!

A 2022 BEST CRITICAL OR NONFICTION WORK NOMINEE FOR THE ANTHONY AWARD! Bouchercon takes place 8 through 11 September 2022.

WINNER OF THE 2022 EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST FACT CRIME

The Publisher Says: The gripping true story, told here for the first time, of the Last Call Killer and the gay community of New York City that he preyed upon.

The Townhouse Bar, midtown, July 1992: The piano player seems to know every song ever written, the crowd belts out the lyrics to their favorites, and a man standing nearby is drinking a Scotch and water. The man strikes the piano player as forgettable.

He looks bland and inconspicuous. Not at all what you think a serial killer looks like. But that’s what he is, and tonight, he has his sights set on a gray haired man. He will not be his first victim.

Nor will he be his last.

The Last Call Killer preyed upon gay men in New York in the ‘80s and ‘90s and had all the hallmarks of the most notorious serial killers. Yet because of the sexuality of his victims, the skyhigh murder rates, and the AIDS epidemic, his murders have been almost entirely forgotten.

This gripping true-crime narrative tells the story of the Last Call Killer and the decades-long chase to find him. And at the same time, it paints a portrait of his victims and a vibrant community navigating threat and resilience.

SOMEONE SENT ME A SIGNED COPY! THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

My Review: It's an awful feeling to realize that you're not a serial-killing statistic by sheer chance. I'm taller and a little younger than this serial killer's victims. But I was there, in the relevant places at the relevant times; absent a quirk of chance, I would be dead like any one of those poor closeted bastards.

And it took a straight man to shine a long-missing light on the case. One case, not several as it was treated for a long time. In fact, I was pretty much unaware of the case until Elon Green's book hit my shelves.

I’d found the story by accident, surfaced by an errant Web search. Most of these so-called true crime cases don’t stay with me, but this one I couldn’t let go. Once I got past the murders and the investigations, and my own disbelief that it had all been forgotten—a string of killings in New York City didn’t merit so much as a Wikipedia entry?—I became obsessed with the lives of the victims. I became obsessed with the lives they wanted but couldn’t have. Here was a generation of men, more or less, for whom it was difficult to be visibly gay. To be visibly whole.

Doesn't that just say it all. Yes, things are...or were...getting better for the QUILTBAG community. The world's scum, however, can't abide that and decided to start victimizing the most vulnerable among us, the trans folk and the kids just figuring themselves out. How long before this kind of targeted killing spree happens again? If it hasn't, that is, and we're just unaware of it because it suits the statistics collectors not to look for this particular pattern.

I'm not going to say the name of the perpetrator of these disgusting crimes. He's still alive. That would be unthinkable in capital-punishment obsessed Murruhkuh...except his victims are faggots, so, well...maybe he didn't oughta have done it but, you know....

This list is of the men whose lives, blighted by homophobia and the dishonesty it's forced on so many for so long, were taken by a man without a soul.

Peter Anderson
–and–
Tom Mulcahy
–and–
Anthony Marrero
–and–
Michael Sakara
–and–
Fred Spencer

You are not forgotten. Thanks to a straight man, whose intersecting interests and requirements...he didn't suddenly become a writer, he was alert to the story that wasn't told, and that is how good work gets done!...led him to come and tell us all about what we weren't really supposed to know, or to hear about even. It makes law enforcement look as thuggish and homophobic as, sad experience has taught me, most any gay man can tell you they actually, regrettably, but inexcusably are.

As to the overall journalistic establishment...look into a mirror, y'all. Say it aloud: "I am homophobic." Because, you know by now, you slept on a story that wasn't about you, or about people you love. (This most definitely includes gay journalists.)

Sleep tight.

THE LAST POLICEMAN by Ben Winters...Apocalypses are no excuse for not doing your job

THE LAST POLICEMAN
BEN H. WINTERS
Quirk Books
$14.95 trade paper, available now

Y'know how you've been flip-flip-flipping through your Kindlebrary but nothing looks appealing?
Author Winters (a lovely human as well as talented writer) gotcha covered: THE LAST POLICEMAN is only $1.99 today!

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: What’s the point in solving murders if we’re all going to die soon, anyway?

Detective Hank Palace has faced this question ever since asteroid 2011GV1 hovered into view. There’s no chance left. No hope. Just six precious months until impact.

The Last Policeman presents a fascinating portrait of a pre-apocalyptic United States. The economy spirals downward while crops rot in the fields. Churches and synagogues are packed. People all over the world are walking off the job—but not Hank Palace. He’s investigating a death by hanging in a city that sees a dozen suicides every week—except this one feels suspicious, and Palace is the only cop who cares.

The first in a trilogy, The Last Policeman offers a mystery set on the brink of an apocalypse. As Palace’s investigation plays out under the shadow of 2011GV1, we’re confronted by hard questions way beyond “whodunit.” What basis does civilization rest upon? What is life worth? What would any of us do, what would we really do, if our days were numbered?

—FIRST REVIEW HERE—SECOND REVIEW HERE—THIRD REVIEW HERE—

My Review: I just loooooooooove it when the author, while playing fair with me, still surprises me with the solution to the crime(s). Mr. Winters has done this, and to a very satisfying T.

As apocalyptic tales go, this is one of the few that doesn't make me wrinkle my nose and schplurgle my lips in distaste. I completely buy that, facing extinction, the privileged population of the US would go all Bucket List and do all the stuff they didn't or couldn't before The End was writ large across the skies. It seems solipsistic, selfish, and inconsiderate...pure-D Murrikin behavior. But even with The End coming, gun-hoarders are seen as nutballs, just like they are now. I can believe this.

I also completely understand Henry Palace, our detective, staying on the job. He loves the job. He needs a challenge so he doesn't go nuts. He believes in a large, abstract greater good called "Justice" and he doesn't think that a little detail like the impending end of the world diminishes the need for and the right to Justice.

Gag...I'm making him sound like some kind of Eagle Scout...if it helps dispel some of that distasteful miasma, he also sleeps with a key witness. What ensues from that has to be read to be absorbed, especially in light of the killer's identity.

Off to pick up book two for some bedtime reading!