Cleveland Dick Dave Cowles shows the reconstruction mask bas relief of Mr. Edward Andrassy, a murder victim to be sure, but one of the lucky ones as he has his name. Most of the other victims are left only with names such as "Lady of the Lake", "Tattooed Man" and a handful of regular old "John Doe" followed with a number. It is a trade off though--as Edward DOES have a name, when the killer was finished he did not have a penis...win some lose one Ed. The Cleveland Torso Murderer is credited with 12 hits. There MAY be as many as 40. Most of the victims lived in the shanty towns which turned up in Cleveland during the depression. Big Daddy Elliot Ness got involved in the case and couldn't solve the crime...but it did insure books, films and such would be produced. Some book titles? The Maniac in the Bushes, In the Wake of the Butcher, Butcher's Dozen, Torso (a recent graphic novel) and many more. Unusual to see Paper-Mache as grisly.
Original Press Photograph November 1939 Collection Jim Linderman
I haven't done a book review in a while, since like all the rest of us, I only look at pictures. It will be a few weeks before Kindle figures out how to incorporate graphics like these into their digital downloads, so I'll use the time to suggest a hardcopy purchase.
Canadian true crime pulp magazines! Written by Carolyn Strange and Tina Loo, I presume their real names...a fabulous collection of covers and entertaining text providing the history of detective rags from above. I suspect these magazines are FAR more scarce than those churned out in America during the 1940s and 1950s and as such seldom seen, so the writers have done us a service. As you can see, the covers are just striking. More primitive than ours, the Canadian illustrators opted for a sparse, open, esthetic as forlorn as their landscape during December. With their muted colors, these pulps seem as lonely as the folks who read them. Even the man on fire seems cold! I see a few soggy and nearly frozen pages of these in a pile on a cabin floor in my mind's eye as I type. The book, 100 pages of true north crime bliss was published 6 years ago, so my review is a bit late...but it doesn't diminish the appeal. Using images from the National Library of Canada and a wonderful layout and design, this is an inexpensive book as cool as a Canadian on a cooling bed...and even though it was published in 2004, It's still good...after all, it's a BOOK. Put on your cyber mukluks and go buy one.
(Book Linked at Amazon on the right here under "GOOD THINGS)
