Nemesis
The Final Case of Eliot Ness A Novel
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
In his bestselling legal thrillers, William Bernhardt has explored the dark side of contemporary politics, power, and the law. Now Bernhardt turns back the clock to the city of Cleveland, Ohio, in the fall of 1935. Based on true events and new discoveries about Eliot Ness, Nemesis is a brilliantly told story featuring this legendary lawman’s fateful duel with a terrifyingly new kind of criminal: America’s first serial killer.
In Chicago, Eliot Ness had created “the Untouchables,” the fabled team of federal agents who were beyond corruption and who finally put Al Capone behind bars. Now the headline-grabbing Ness has been moved to Cleveland, where a new mayor desperately needs some positive publicity. The heroic, squeaky-clean Fed is the perfect man to become the city’s director of public safety, but by the time Ness starts his new job, a killer has started a career of his own. And this man is as obsessed with blood and mayhem as Eliot Ness is obsessed with justice.
One by one, bodies are found, each one decapitated and uniquely dissected with a doctor’s skill and a madman’s bent. The police are baffled, the population is terrorized, and newspaper headlines blare about the so-called “Torso Killer.” Though it’s not his turf, Ness is forced to cross bureaucratic boundaries and take over the case, working with a dogged, street-smart detective and making enemies every step of the way. The more energy Ness pours into the investigation, the more it takes over his life, his marriage, even his untouchable reputation. Because in Cleveland, there is only one true untouchable: a killer who has the perfect hiding place and the perfect plan for destroying Eliot Ness.
From the first primitive use of forensic psychology to a portrait of America battling the Great Depression and a man battling his own demons, Nemesis is a masterwork of mystery, murder, and vivid, dynamic historical suspense.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
