Rather than focus on the killer—who has all the allure of a wet cocktail napkin—he foregrounds the lives and milieus of the victims. It’s a reparative act that doubles as an extended elegy for the decades of closeted or bullied queers who encountered similar demons in schoolyards, across dinner tables, in pews, or in the browser histories they desperately erased ... Green, who identifies as straight, never explains why the victims obsessed him ... a salvage operation not only for individual lives, but for a whole bleak chapter of underground queer life ... Such offbeat details compensate for Green’s smooth but bland prose ... preserves the poignant irony that the trust and vulnerability that once made gay bars synonymous with gay community were also vectors of death, both in the form of murder and, later, HIV/AIDS ... Most true-crime writers favor the crime half of the equation. But there’s also the imperative of truth—not just the factual tally of names, dates, and numbers, but the existential question of why such horror happened at all.
... a stunning addition to the gay corner of the true-crime genre ... Green does a superb job describing how this dark force invaded the one place where gay men sought solace in song and drink, where they could finally let their guard down. Some drank too much and, looking for love or just a trick, never returned ... As an investigative crime writer Elon puts in the work, with a sense of sensitivity and compassion ... The care, the research, the investment on display in...Last Call signals to me, at least, that Elon Green rises above the function of a dispassionate observer. He writes like a communal friend.
Last Call is Green’s first book, and it admirably demonstrates his commitment to sidestepping easy sensationalism for the far grittier work of checking sources, poring over police reports and reinterviewing witnesses ... Instead of focusing on the killer, Green opts to humanize his victims ... With great compassion, he widens his scope to explore the social value of gay bars to the queer community and the vital work of grass-roots groups ... Green proves a conscientious crime writer. He provides an adrenalized police-procedural plot without ever losing sight of the fact that these were innocent human beings who were duped, butchered and discarded. We are never allowed a moment of perverse awe for the murderer. Ultimately, that strength is also the book’s weakness ... Green acknowledges that Rogers, who is serving two consecutive life terms in prison, declined his attempts to interview him. That missing confrontation creates a fissure in his otherwise impressive reporting ... More than once in the abrupt final chapters, in the midst of reading about him, I forgot the murderer’s name. But it is to Green’s credit that I never forgot the names of the four known victims.
