Book Review: The Devil in the White City

Image Source: GoodReads

Introduction

Author – Erik Larsson

Book – The Devil in the White City

Genre – Biography/True crime

Language – English

About the author

Erik Larson (January 3, 1954) is an American journalist and author of nonfiction books. He has written many best-selling books, including "The Devil in the White City" (2003), about the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and a series of murders committed by Holmes in the city around the 19th century. single. "White City Devil" won the 2004 Edgar Award for Best Factual Crime Category and other awards.

Review

"The Devil in the White City" is a literary documentary novel that chronicles the time of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 (also known as the Columbia World's Fair), which was designed to commemorate the landing of Columbus in the United States. This non-linear novel is divided into four parts. 

The first three parts of the novel took place mainly in Chicago between 1890-1893. However, the fourth part of the novel takes the reader to Philadelphia around 1895. Erik Larson used extensive research to recreate the lives of two real people and reshape Chicago during the Columbia World Expo. 

In the process, he created two independent but interconnected storylines and tried to fill in some gaps left by the story. One plot focuses on Daniel Burnham, the architect who built the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Another plot uses the character H.H. Holmes, a serial killer who uses the market opportunity to find the victim.

The story of Daniel Burnham, who formed a plot for the construction of the exhibition and the struggle he overcame to make the company successful. This series of events began in 1890 when Chicago won the bid to host the 1893 World's Fair. 

Daniel Burnham and his partner John Rutter at the time were fortunate to be the architects of the construction expo, so they enjoyed a higher reputation worldwide. Good for Chicago. Throughout the novel, Daniel Burnham encountered many obstacles that threatened the success of the Expo during all stages of construction. At first, Burnham was alone after his partner John Rutter died young. 

Burnham then faced many compromising forces, such as late building drafts, a significant global economic downturn, union strikes, construction injuries and deaths, and the discovery of the Eiffel Tower at the 1889 Paris World Exposition was more surprisingly attractive than the Eiffel Tower. Despite these obstacles, Burnham and his team persevered and finally came up with a proposal to surpass the Eiffel Tower: the Ferris wheel. 

In 1893, construction continued and the exposition opened, although it was not yet completed. Once the exhibition starts, Burnham still faces the challenge of completing the Ferris wheel, increasing the number of visitors to the exhibition, and turning the exhibition into profit in the economic downturn. With grace, persistence, and determination, Burnham completed the construction and raised just enough assistance to repay debts and make profits. Unfortunately, the end of the fair brought tragedy, and Chicago Mayor Carter Henry Harrison was assassinated.

As the story of Daniel Burnham progresses, another plot develops at the same time. H. Holmes arrived in Chicago in 1886 to find a job as a pharmacist or doctor. Holmes maliciously acquired a pharmacy in Englewood, a place very close to the future location of the Jackson Park World Expo. 

In the end, Holmes bought the land across the street from the drugstore and built a well-designed building that was very suitable for his practice of killing people and disposing of corpses. On the first floor of the building is his pharmacy, as well as some retail stores for Holmes's illegal activities. There are rental apartments on the top two floors of his building, with secret corridors, corridors, and pipes leading to the basement, so that Holmes can dispose of the corpse. 

After Jackson Park was announced as the venue for the At Expo, Holmes decided to transform his building into an Expo Hotel, which will undergo another construction project. Adding a basement oven can easily get rid of Holmes' victims. During his time in Chicago, Holmes had relationships with many women, married some women, killed many people with whom he had contact, got a large number of debts that he never planned to pay off, and committed various frauds.

Some of Holmes's illegal activities were about to be discovered. He fled Chicago and ran until he was finally arrested for insurance fraud in Philadelphia. Detective Frank Gale investigated Holmes' past illegal activities and found several Holmes murders in the Midwest and Toronto.

Larson's stunning new story is a fictional but completely true account of the exhibition and the killers that lurk within it. Best-selling author Larson (Storm of Isaac) struck a good balance between planning and running large-scale fairs and the ruthless and terrifying events of Holmes. 

The passage about Sherlock Holmes is fascinating and aptly claustrophobic; readers will be delighted that Sherlock Holmes' partner, architect, and exhibition supervisor, Daniel Hudson Burnham (Daniel Hudson Burnham), often escapes from a relatively sane life, he drives With thousands of workers and engineers, they brought out the huge exhibition on a staggering two-year calendar. 

As a natural liar, Holmes created a small business empire that was completely dependent on outstanding debts and established a system of personal body disposal using the power that the authorities could not coordinate. This is actually the non-fiction alien "Suicide" by Emile Durkheim, or a sidekick from "Homicide".

 However, Larson is more interested in the chaotic new opportunities generated by the rise of diligence and widespread public anonymity, rather than anomie. This book is all that popular history should have. It meticulously reproduces a rich pre-American automobile on the cusp of modernity, where the sale of "articulated" corpses is a half-decent deal and serial killers are almost ignored.

My ratings for the book is 4.1/5

You can easily buy this book from Amazon: The Devil in the White City

-    Written By - Nachiket Kekre

     Edited By - Anamika Malik