At only 219 pages, Last Call - A True Story of Love, Lust and Murder in Queer New York by Elon Green, really packs in a whole lot of information and research. This is the story of a serial killer, dubbed The Last Call Killer, who preyed on New York’s gay men in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
In the hostile environment of the dawn of the AIDS epidemic, killings of gay men in New York – even when there are multiple victims found dismembered, stuffed in trash bags and left in rest stop barrels or on the side of the road – didn’t really garner too much police attention.
Through his thorough research, the author reveals the faces and personalities of the unfortunate victims who perished at the hands of this killer. Due to the efforts of a few dedicated detectives plus advances in fingerprinting technology and crime scene forensics, this case was eventually solved... a decade later.
Although the narrative does tend to go off on a few tangents here and there, everything presented in the book is relevant to the story. The author does a very good job at painting a picture of the New York gay bar scene during the ‘80s and ‘90s.
In the hostile environment of the dawn of the AIDS epidemic, killings of gay men in New York – even when there are multiple victims found dismembered, stuffed in trash bags and left in rest stop barrels or on the side of the road – didn’t really garner too much police attention.
Through his thorough research, the author reveals the faces and personalities of the unfortunate victims who perished at the hands of this killer. Due to the efforts of a few dedicated detectives plus advances in fingerprinting technology and crime scene forensics, this case was eventually solved... a decade later.
Although the narrative does tend to go off on a few tangents here and there, everything presented in the book is relevant to the story. The author does a very good job at painting a picture of the New York gay bar scene during the ‘80s and ‘90s.