Kelly (and the Book Boar)'s Reviews > Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York

If you were here a couple of weeks ago for the Great Author Tantrum of ’24 when apparently I should have been drawn and quartered for failing to read/review an advanced copy within a week of receiving it, then maybe I should be burned at the stake for this one since it was released in 2021, I received it as an ARC and three years later I just now finally got around to it. And to be 100% honest, I probably wouldn’t have even then if I had not been looking for a murder show to binge on the television and saw this title pop up which led to “hmmmmm, don’t I have a book by that name????” Also? I didn’t even read it. This was my latest “walk ‘n talk” that I finished during my lunch hour just now that I checked out via audio from the library.

But I digress . . . .

I REALLY appreciated the way this was delivered. I’m not a big true crime reader, but this approach to tell the VICTIM’S story with the perpetrator only coming in at the end to wrap up how he was caught and for him to get his comeuppance was such a change of pace.

This story of a serial killer literally didn’t even have a Wikipedia page before the book was written was one that had already been mishandled for eternity, so I appreciated the sensitivity with which it was told. I also “enjoyed” (wrong term, but I’m no tortured poet so you get what you get) the history of the hole-in-the-wall sort of gay bar scene in NYC during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s instead of only ever hearing about the Stonewall Riots, the terror of the AIDS epidemic, and how newfound technology so often cracks the cold case (like the new way of lifting fingerprints here or “23andMe” with the Golden State Killer).

If you are looking for a gory detailed sort of bloodbath serial killer book, this won’t be for you, but I thought it was so well done and the narration was great. Orrrrrrrrr, if you have Max you can simply watch the docuseries.

ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.