A Serial Killer's Home Is His Castle

By June Pulliam

01/05/2005

Larson, Erik. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair that Changed America. New York: Vintage, 2004. 464 p.

I picked up this book because it was about, among other things, a serial killer who hasn't gotten much attention in the past 20 years. Herman Mudget, aka Dr. H. H. Holmes, is the infamous serial killer who took the majority of his victims during the World's Fair in Chicago at the dawn of the 20^th century. For those of you unfamiliar with Mudget, he came to Chicago relatively impoverished, only to work for the widow of a pharmacist and take over her business when she died soon after, more than likely by the hand of Mudget himself. From there, Mudget was able to use his considerable charisma to charm customers, especially women, and turn his pharmacy into a huge business, ultimately amassing enough money to erect a building that took up an entire city block and house his business and other offices and residences.

However, this building had secret passages, sound proof chambers, and even a large incinerator: the prefect dwelling for a serial killer who wished to have a convenient place to imprison, and eventually stalk his victims, and later dispose of the evidence. The World's Fair provided the perfect opportunity for Mudget to find victims, as it lured a great many strangers to Chicago, and he rented out rooms to single female visitors in his complex.

Both Mudget and Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the Chicago World's Fair, are the subject in this work of non-fiction, unusual for its paring of these two in a sort of chiaroscuro of the fin de siecle Windy City. This pairing too was something that intrigued me. Alas, The Devil in the White City suffers from what my daughter would refer to as TMI (too much information). Reviews for The Devil in the White City proclaim that it is a history that reads like a novel, from which I can only conclude that these people don't read too many novels, or perhaps only read novels written by Henry James. The pace was plodding, requiring that I slog my way through to get at particularly interesting nuggets of information. So many details, especially about Daniel Burnham, I found irrelevant, such as his relationship with his first fiancé's sister (she died, and he married the sister), or the entire menu for one of the lavish meetings.  Perhaps it's not so much that these details are intrinsically boring as they were poorly incorporated. After all, any good novel that I might enjoy is heavy on description. This is something I particularly enjoy about Anne Rice's better novels.

Instead, perhaps the problem is that Larson attempted to write a history that read like a novel, but wasn't a novel. Of course, I don't expect all histories to be written as infotainment, but the unusual juxtaposition of these two figures screams for something that at least ties the two together in some satisfying way. That never happened.  Mudget and Burnham co-exist in the White City without ever really meeting, either in person or in the narrative confines of the book. Since each chapter alternates between writing about Mudget or Burnham, I found myself skipping the chapters about the World's Fair's architect, reading only those about the serial killer.

On the plus side, Larson has produced a wealth of information about each man, but the pairing of the two didn't work for me. The Devil in the White City would have been better if it had focused on only one man or the other, although I personally know very few people who would choose to read about an architect when there is a serial killer narrative on the bookshelf.