I did not find this a boring read, nor did I find it dry. I found it interesting and kept reading when I knew I should put it down and do something else.

“American Demon: Eliot Ness and the Hunt for America’s Jack the Ripper” is a non-fiction book by Daniel Stashower. When I first requested this book, there wasn’t much to base the story on other than Eliot Ness and this case I’d never tripped over before. I thought that it might’ve occurred in Chicago, as my knowledge of Eliot Ness is rather lacking.

Mr. Stashower gives a rather lengthy introduction Mr. Ness’s claim to fame - getting Chicago mobster Al Capone into federal prison. This takes about 20% of the book. Yes, there are some chapters in that section discussing what was happening regarding the murders, but for the longest time I couldn’t grasp how the two events were going to tie together. Around the 40% mark, Eliot Ness finally is in Cleveland and going to work on the murder cases (and it’s explained how/why Ness moved to Cleveland). Ten percent of the book discusses Eliot Ness after leaving the case and the last ten percent (or so) is references/source material.

This book was too long for my liking and I found myself skimming different sections of the book. I did, however, like the discussion of some of the “new” police tool available at the time - such as a man who created a fingerprint database and learning more about polygraph tests. I also liked how, though a titch descriptive, Mr. Stashower gave enough information about the murders but did so tastefully. As a note, the person who committed the murders was never actually known - though Mr. Ness had his suspicions, along with other members of the police force. I found this topic to be an interesting one, as I'm a fan of true crime stories, but this one just didn’t work for me.