Historical Tour de Genre discussion

A place to share historical true crime reviews, opinions and recommendations. Examines an actual crime and details the actions of real people. May include examining political assassinations, well-known unsolved murders, or deaths of celebrities.

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
5 stars

This non-fiction book interweaves two tales taking place in Chicago at the end of the 19th century. The first is the tale of Chicago winning the bid for the World's Columbian (as in Christopher Columbus) Fair of 1893 and second is a story of Dr. HH Holmes who charmed and swindled his way into building a "hotel" near the fair and then killed an unknown number of people (mostly woman).

I loved the justaposition of the two stories and as noted in the afterword, Larson was playing with the idea of pride. The pride of the city of Chicago which had the audacity to think that they could create a fair to rival the previous Paris exhibition, the pride of the architect in assembling a team to create and run the fair and the pride of a serial killer whose motives are lacking ---- he just wanted to see what he could get away with. I think the interplay between the two stories was a key to the book's success: the darkness of the serial killer with the glowing brightness of the "White City" created for the fair as well as many of the common place things that debuted there