Daniel Stashower, writer of period true-crime book "The Beautiful Cigar Girl," returns to that territory with a look at what Eliot Ness was up to after he finished putting Al Capone behind bars in Chicago.
Turns out he tried to clean up 1930s Cleveland next, with less success. One problem was that Cleveland cops were even more snugly in bed with the mob. A bigger problem was a serial killer slicing up unhoused people and slackers, often depositing their severed heads next to their corpses.
Unlike "Cigar Girl," there's no definitive solution to the murders in "American Demon," but Stashower's portrait of Ness is layered and he vividly re-creates a broken system where a well greased cop often called ahead so gambling houses could tidy up before an imminent bust.
Chris Hewitt is a Star Tribune critic.
American Demon
By: Daniel Stashower.
Publisher: Minotaur Books, 352 pages, $29.99.
