"Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson, #1 National Bestseller!

[Ed Augusts]

"THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY : Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair
that Changed America",

by Erik Larson

This was a hugely popular book when it came out, riding in on the
heels of Larson's "ISAAC's STORM" which I reviewed a few days ago.

First, discount the title, it is a poor and misleading title for this
book. The DEVIL
referred to is not a black man in a "white" city, or anything like
that, although that is
the impression one look at the book gives you. The WHITE CITY is the
1893 Columbian World's Fair that was held in Chicago. Lit-up
throughout by thousands of electric lights, it gave the impression of
a city in white. I'm glad that at least the subtitle mentions "Fair",
otherwise a glance at the title would give a prospective reader an
entirely wrong impression. But "The Devil" in this case is a snappy,
short word that tries to describe the doings of a THIEF (absconding
with the funds of his victims and pulling insurance scams with himself
the beneficiary), MULTIPLE and SERIAL MURDERER of both many women, a
number of children, and a man or two, and GHOUL (stripping bodies of
their flesh and selling the skeletons to scientific establishments and
colleges, and manipulator of people's lives and deaths (as in: a major
"control freak!"). Yet, you may not believe me when I tell you, this
monster and his crimes IS NOT the main focus of this book, it is
nothing but a side-show. I think the author didn't enjoy having to
think about and compose the criminal elements, and
so there is a feeling of a 'hands-off' approach to the crimes which I
think may have been proper for Victorian America of 1893, but not at
all proper for the lurid 21st Century and its jaded, eager-to-be
thrilled, readers.

Despite its great popularity, this book feels very much like some
strange concoction you've never quite seen before. You may initially
find it fascinating... like a coffee mocha with a shot of (God knows
what!) maybe sarsparilla or creme brule' flavoring in it, or
something... but you quickly realize it's a concoction that may not
quite come up to the sum of its parts.

What ARE its parts? For one thing, it is the veritable biography of
Daniel Hudson Burnham, the architect of the Flatiron Building in
Manhattan, Union Station in Washington, and much of the architecture
that we read copious amounts of, thorughout this book. There are
generous portions thrown-in about various Chicago luminaries and power-
brokers of the 1890's. This material practically forms a complete
book, all by itself. It is held together by the interesting device of
starting the narrative with Burnham, 19 years later, sailing across
the Atlantic as one of his World's
Fair compatriots is crossing the ocean going the opposite direction --
on the Titanic!

Even though it is a thorough portrayal of its material, I think the
publishers, or perhaps the author, decided to include some "killer"
material that would perk-up an otherwise
near-scholarly historical piece on the Chicago World's Fair. And
that's why, thrown into the mix, are pieces and snatches and
conjectures, everything the author could find, and, I believe, all
that the author could stand, about Herman Webster Mudgett, better
known after he changed his name to H. H. Holmes.

There is an awful lot of text here in "ThE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY"
that would not have been successfully published or publishable on its
own. I don't know, perhaps it was submitted as two books originally,
and the editors had the sense to suggest that Larson combine the two
threads into one book. The story about the man purporting to "H. H.
Holmes", builder of a block-long 3-story house of murder, was simply
TOO HORRIBLE to be a theme for an entire book. Therefore, the editor's
solution may have been to dilute this ultimately offensive, perverse
material, with an entire book length text just about a dozen or so
personalities who were behind the concept, design, and construction,
and day-by-day management of the Chicago WOrld's Fair, the "Columbian
Exhibition" of 1893. There is quite a bit of excitement, to be sure.
A catastrophic fire causes some of Chicago's finest to perish, and a
whirlwind sweeps across the fairgrounds, almost toppling the 24-story
tall Ferris Wheel.

But in the end, the author relies on the infernal character of H.H.
Holmes (Mudgett) to
attract most of his millions of readers, and it is there,
unfortunately, that despite all
his efforts at documenting Holmes/Mudgett, and listing, broadly
outlining, his crimes,
Larson is just too nice a guy to put himself in the shoes of the
criminal and show much about the murders that took place.

He allows a figure who crops up late in the book, Detective Frank
Geyer, to chase down the leads about various disappearances linked to
Holmes, and in more than 30 pages of text, going from Chicago to
Cincinatti and then Toronto and back again, Geyer tracks down the last
days of a trio of children who disappeared. A lot of emphasis is put
on these children, but the author finds it impossible to tell what
must have happened to them in the clutches of the fiend. Not saying
how they died is a little like living with Anne Frank through her
diary for a couple of years, and then seeing her suddenly vanish and
never REALLY knowing what happened to her. That's how you feel about
the murdered children and the murdered women, as well. In an earlier
part of the book, the murderer neatly dispatches a mother, then slinks
off to the bedroom of her nine year old daughter, ostensibly to kill
her, as well, but that crime, and others involving young innocents,
receives only the barest mention and is never shown actually
occurring. You never even see a kid's eyes bug out in fear, or cry
for their mother, which I think could well have been included in a
horrific tale of a serial killer like Holmes / Mudgett. The murderer
is made to keep his "hands off" his victims, other than the conjecture
that, in some cases, he pressed a chloroform-soaked rag
onto their faces, or locked them up in a sealed room where he could
sit back and enjoy hearing their consternation turn to fearful
screaming before gassing them to death. Yet the process seems devoid
of emotion. Mudgett is a ghoul, but he isn't a rapacious ghoul, he is
a doctor who is made to seem to behave very respectfully in the
presence of his victims, and that, although fascinating in its own
way, is so dry that it almost loses my attention.

Just as another crime takes place and the narrative seems to be going
somewhere with Mudgett / H.H Holmes, the book swings back to the
artistic, cerebral, business of the Chicago Wprld's Fair again, and
instead of two good stories I end up feeling like I didn't get even
one really good one.

Larson has a difficult time with characters. (I'll say that again, if
you want me to, although I'm sure that's a minority viewpoint!)
Larson poked all around the writings and remembrances of Isaac Cline,
the U.S. Weather Bureau man in Galveston, in his best-selling "Isaac's
Storm", he must have researched that man and everyone he knew, half to
death--if Cline hadn't died already--and yet I never felt for a moment
that I really got a coherent view of the man, of what the world really
did look like through his eyes. And his alienation from his brother
is never truly met head-on, either. We are left with shoelaces when
what we needed was track shoes! And the reason I mention it, is that
that's exactly the way I feel about Mudgett, alias H. H. Holmes. The
man remains a cipher at the end of "Devil in the White City", the same
way Isaac Cline is still a mystery even after we know just about
everything it is possible to know about him. It seems the author
should have taken a leap and took a stand about both these men, and
portrayed them as more than mysteries. We don't have time to form a
clear picture of either of these men as we read these stories, but
Larson certainly could have, as he researched and wrote about them for
several years of his life! That would have made these good, popular
books, even greater!


Best, -----Ed

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