The Devil in the White City

"It is an astonishing story about one of the earliest known and most famous, or infamous is probably a better word, serial killers in the United States—a guy calling himself Doctor Holmes. It takes place during the 1890s and there are these two parallel stories woven together. One is the construction of the Chicago Fair of 1893—this great World Fair, and all the marvel and wonder and engineering and ingenuity and innocence involving the construction. But there is also this really brutal psychopathic serial killer plotting and using the Fair to lure young women to this house of horror, this chamber that he has built in the basement of a Bates’ Motel type place. It is a classic story of good and evil playing out side by side. “There is queasiness around detectives: ‘Is he a spy?’ ‘Is he prodding into our lives like an intruder in the sanctity of our home’? ” Larson was one of the first to show me­—because my new book draws a lot on history—how you can tell these stories and set them in their historical context. The crimes are sensational but, in a way, the things I remember as much in that book are about the World Fair and the engineering and the planning behind it and how people dressed and talked. Larson just has a wonderful eye for detail. And he has a way of showing how a crime is not an isolated incident but part of the larger fabric of society. Yes, very much so. There is a really distinct sense of place and, again, of the social forces that are being unleashed at the time—just as you said, with women having liberties and freedoms at the Fair. I think for these stories to work or to elevate themselves as crime stories, they do need to be almost like a portal—a window into these worlds. A crime story has a sort of built-in narrative power, in the sense that there is often inherent suspense, but within the form, I believe there is an opportunity to delve into important questions. This is certainly the case in The Devil in the White City which is about the birth of a modern country: the United States. It’s extraordinarily evocative. I always get the sense from Larson that he’s done an enormous amount of research, though he doesn’t let it overwhelm the narrative. He definitely shows more than tells, too. And I think when recounting true crimes that is extremely important: to let the facts speak for themselves. What both Larson and Summerscale demonstrate is what I would call the power of investigative history. They are not merely collecting facts; they are unearthing them. And I think that’s what often separates a mediocre crime book from a great one."