Nemesis

November 24, 2008
Framed by an older Eliot Ness reminiscing with a biographer in 1957, this uneven imagining of the later career of the famed lawman by Bernhardt (Capitol Conspiracy
) takes place mostly in mid-1930s Cleveland. Hired as the city's new safety director, Ness focuses his efforts on cleaning up a town mired in gambling, racketeering and juvenile crime. When dismembered corpses start turning up around Kingsbury Run, a notorious slum, public pressure forces Ness to put his anticorruption plans on hold and turn his attention to catching the Torso Murderer. As more bodies appear, Ness takes drastic steps to smoke out the killer, a gamble that could cost him his career and his life. While Bernhardt's research into Ness's last major case and one of the country's first serial killers is commendable, his heavy-handed prose style turns what should have been a crackling procedural into a plodding melodrama.

December 1, 2008
Once he 's jailed Al Capone, what does the nation 's foremost gangbuster do for an encore?

His rollicking, racket-smashing days in Chicago behind him, Eliot Ness, treasury agent extraordinaire, languishes in Cleveland, restless and underchallenged. When the city fathers suggest that he quit Uncle Sam and sign on as their safety director, he 's more than ready. The task? Clean up the police force, clean up the gangs and put a shine on Cleveland 's reputation as one of the worst-run cities in the United States. At first, things go well. Ness wastes no time reclaiming some 200 badges from crooked and/or gold-bricking cops. He deals serious blows to big-time gambling. He basks in the return of the glory that was his in Chicago. The press loves him. Kids ask for his autograph, and Ness does little to hide how highly he rates himself as a hero: "Right up there with Charles Lindbergh. " But the adulation and self-praise are stopped by the entrance of Andrew W. Andrassy, or rather his dismembered corpse, followed by a succession of dismembered corpses. Suddenly Ness is dodging brickbats. A terrified city demands that its heralded safety director keep it safe. Ness protests that he 's not a homicide detective. Too late: Hubris is hubris.

Sticking fairly close to the historical record, Bernhardt (Capitol Conspiracy, 2008, etc.) delivers an interesting rise-and-fall story that would have been more compelling if it were better written.

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Starred review from November 15, 2008
Bernhardt takes a break from the Ben Kincaid series to tell a lightly fictionalized version of the last major investigation conducted by Ness, the famed treasury agent who put Al Capone behind bars. In the mid-1930s, a killer dubbed the Torso Murderer was on the loose in Cleveland, Ohio, cutting up bodies and leaving them lying around the city. After the police made no headway in their investigation, the mayor put Ness, then the citys public-safety director, in charge of the case, but he was never able to solve it. Now recent developments reveal that he seems to have had a suspect and that the suspect may have been the killer. Bernhardt stays as close to the facts as dramatic license will allow, except that he invents a conclusion that, in his words, is consistent with the historical record, that still allows Eliot Ness to solve his last big case. This is a thrilling novel that is both a fast-paced action-adventure and a character study, a portrait of a resourceful and determined lawman whose political navet' and straight-arrow demeanor put off many of his colleagues. Fans of The Untouchables will get that same period feel from the book as the film version, and it will be a surprise if some clever Hollywood producer doesnt snap up Bernhardts novel and put Ness onscreen yet again. A rousing success, highly recommended for fans of Max Allan Collins series starring Ness.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)