Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York

True crime is decidedly not my genre (I can't even force myself to read or watch In Cold Blood even though I love Truman Capote), so this was, at face value, an unusual choice for me to pick up. However, an author on Twitter with 150K followers raved about it and described it in terms very un-crime-like, so I got the Kindle free sample and started reading.The storytelling is so excellent and absorbing and humane that the book is hard to put down. It focuses mainly on gay men and piano bars in New York in the late 1980s and the 1990s. That's an interesting, colorful subject, so I would recommend this book to anybody, especially if you have an interest in LGBT subject matter, gay history, or even just great nonfiction/biography.A lot of meticulous research, not to mention footwork, went into this book (apparently three years' worth), but that's not enough to make a book readable. It takes a skilled writer, and more than that a great storyteller, to pull something like this wide-ranging book off. And Elon Green has done exactly that. Hats off to him.I highly recommend this to anybody. If, like me, you have a Kindle, check out the free sample. My bet is that you'll be sucked in right away just like I was.

In a group interview with other writers of true crime, which is included as an appendix in this volume, Elon Green mentions that he doesn’t think serial killers are interesting. And his approach to telling the story of the brutal murders of gay men during the early 1990s in the NY metropolitan area bears that out. Unlike most writers of true crime, Green focuses on the victims—he tells their stories so that we get to know them, and it’s quite an effective method for creating empathy. The horror of the crimes is accentuated when the victims are three-dimensional, complex individuals rather than the disposable degenerates that some in law enforcement might view them as.Green waits until more than halfway through the book to mention the killer’s name, and while he provides some background on the perpetrator, he’s far more interested in developing the characters of the unlucky men who fell victim to his psychotic behavior. Much to his credit, Green also focuses on the context within which the crimes occurred—the piano bars of midtown Manhattan and a collection of jurisdictions of law enforcement officials who didn’t quite understand the gay community and didn’t quite know how to handle the investigation. Nestled within this true crime narrative is an intriguing sociological study of how a culture reveals its values through the pursuit of justice.Recommended.

The book is a page turner and so much better than the TV series (read the book first). I highly recommend this true crime book.

“Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York”, is a good true crime book. It is the story of four dead bodies found in plastic garbage bags, in bins located along major roads in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. There were many garbage bags per victim because the killer cut all the bodies up into five or so pieces. “Headless Body Found in bodyless bin”, and all that. These men were all murdered and found between 1991 to 1993. Who was the murderer? And who were the victims?Author Elon Green wanted to write a book that was more about who was killed, rather than who did the killing. All four victims were middle aged men. Two men were closeted married gay men and the other two were a little more “out”.Three were picked up by the killer in New York City piano bars which were gay hangouts. Green details their lives until their deaths. He writes about worry within the gay community to. The threat of AIDS, job discrimination, and problems with the police in all three locations.We learn about the murdered but given fairly little information about the killer and how he killed and disposed of the dismembered bodies. That’s a big hole in the middle of the book. WHY, WERE, WHEN, and HOW are questions left unasked and unanswered.Elon Green’s book is actually quite good, if you can move past those pesky W and H questions. Green has many interviews with friends and family of the killer, the victims, and members of law enforcement. However, I don’t think he interviewed the killer.

I wouldn’t have found this book if it hadn’t been for @bookaddictpnw ‘s fabulous review and I am so glad I read it. I don’t read much true crime but this one was truly gripping and I was so amazed by the changes in our society during my lifetime, there’s quite a difference between the early 90s when the crimes in this book took place and now.A particularly vicious serial killer was preying upon gay men in New York. Body parts were found stuffed in trash bags in areas around the city. The victims frequented various bars that catered to Manhattan's gay community and the consensus was that the killer was very likely a patron, too. The police placed a low priority on the investigation into the grisly crimes and, during the years when AIDS was cutting its own swath of death across the city, there was little outcry from the public. This painstakingly researched book about the hunt for a monster is also a concise, fascinating history of the quite recent period when gay people were cast off in shadows of secrecy and denial and the delayed rising to the power to demand equality.

Very much appreciated that the author told the story from the POV of the victims and their stories as opposed to devoting a book to a murderer. Found the writing to be understanding and celebratory of each person being detailed so that they could be fully formed people and remembered for who they were in life instead of how their death defined them. Interesting read for true crime enthusiasts craving to know more about the victims than the killers.

Brilliant read, very well researched and written.