JasonKoivu

The Devil in the White City is one of those enticing little books in which you know what you're going to get, yet you read it anyway, and it delivers all the salacious excitement you desired...you filthy degenerate, you!

Amid of all the magnificence and enchantment of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair...





...a doctor lured countless victims from the 27 million people who attended the fair into his "Murder Castle." His evasive trail is followed and his horrid deeds recorded, all intertwined with the often contentious development and creation of one of the most ambitious World's Fairs ever.

The book is short. There isn't a wealth of information to relate, but Larson squeezes what he can out of it and in an admirable fashion, artfully revealing details and teasing out the tension.

Not long after reading this, I went to Chicago for my first ever visit and a naive part of me hoped to find the World's Fair exhibits still up and running. A hundred years and more after the event, Chicago has moved on, but the fair grounds are still used for peculiar exhibitions and one of the original buildings is still in use as a museum, so it's possible to visit the site and daydream yourself back into the glorious wonderment, not to mention the horror, if you wish.