I finished Erik Larson's The Devil and the White City last night. It's a good book, but I have to admit that I was much more interested in the struggle to get the 1903 Chicago Fair up and running than I was in the parallel story of the serial killer. There wasn't quite the sense of horror that I've gotten in reading about other mass murderers. Jack the Ripper, in Patricia Cornwell's Portrait of a Killer, comes off as a truly malevolent creature. The murderer in "Devil" is equally malevolent, I suppose, but somehow Larson just doesn't pull it off, perhaps because the method of killing is much less bloody. He does tell the Fair story very well indeed. Weather, strikes, bungling management committees, auditors...nothing stopped the architect/planner from getting the thing done.
Posted by Linkmeister at November 20, 2005 07:55 PM | TrackBackMe too. I was way more interested in the workings of the Fair than in the murder mystery. I loved the little side notes like the one about the origin of "The Stripper" song.
Posted by: Solonor at November 21, 2005 01:58 AMI meant the snake charmer song.... oh, they don't wear pants on the other side of France...
Posted by: Solonor at November 21, 2005 02:01 AMSince there's actually almost no real link between the story of the serial killer and the story of the Fair, I was left wondering why he even bothered to put them in the same book.
There is, apparently, one fairly definitive account of the killer's exploits, which was Larson's primary source, and since he offers little new material he probably should have left well enough alone.
I would have enjoyed a book just about Burnham and the Fair.
Posted by: Brian at November 21, 2005 03:06 AM