Whitecity

=**Death Wears White Robes**=

Devil in the White City Erik Larson Vintage (447 pages) 14.95 USD

The White City- a place of innovation, novelty, extravagance, and… murder? In this gripping historical account, the pure white of the 1893 Columbian Exposition is stained red with the blood of innocents as pride and boastfulness runs through high places and theft and murder skulks through the low. Erik Larson, of Isaac’s Storm fame, tailors together two opposite worlds into one flowing narrative as triumph meets triggermen and the careless meet their killers.

The book begins with a scenario that under normal circumstances, and possibly even in this case, makes you want to drop the book like a burning coal. A group of people is standing outside of a newspaper office, waiting for telegrams to come in from the East Coast. As the scene unfolds, the narrator gives some general background about events up to this time. The narrator reveals the telegraphs are to divulge where the Columbian Exposition will be (Chicago), and from this the plot begins.

The Columbian Exposition was the creation of a few different motivations. Americans did not want to be outdone by the previous French World’s Fair, so they come up with the Columbian Exposition to honor the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus landing in America. However, an undercurrent of the fair was a strong desire to not be outdone by the French. Even though it was a competitive endeavor, the fair was very useful, as it introduced many things we think of as commonplace, like AC power or Ferris Wheels.

As the plot thickens, characters are not who they appeared to be at first. And before the plot is done thickening, there will be blood. The book begins slowly (although thanks to Larson’s incredible talent for such things, even the idle times are interesting), but as time and tempers run thin, the construction projects become a nail-biting ordeal of, “will they finish?” At this point, the alternate storylines, which Larson synthesizes so artfully, are also starting to gain momentum. The murderers are beginning their sanguinary careers, although Chicago is yet to be aware of them. However, the true testament to Larson’s ability is the eventual coming together of storylines, as in the end, all of the story lines become one in a way that makes it seem as if there was only ever one.

In the book, Daniel Burnham, a budding architect, goes from anonymity to world renown. He embodies the rags to riches attitude of late nineteenth and early twentieth century- origins in the middle class, nothing special at first, and then becoming a well-known rich craftsman. Running almost parallel to him is a man who calls himself H.H. Holmes, a serial murderer who represents the exact opposite of the purity and splendor of the White City (the fair), which is the black city of Chicago, replete with slaughter yards, gangsters, psychos, and swindlers. These two men go on to establish comparable reputations, one of greatness, the other of vileness.

Larson’s writing style successfully blends the two storylines into one contiguous plot. He turns historical fact into a running narrative, as opposed to a list of dates. The whole book is well-researched, and according to the book itself, “anything between the quotation marks comes from a letter, memoir, or other written document.” Larson makes it very clear that this is not a work of fiction, and he needs to, because the subject covered is just so unbelievable, it seems as if it is a horror novel.

The book isn’t without hitches though. Larson does tend to run on about things he found to be interesting which some readers may find to not be, like how the landscaper of the fair was the father of modern landscaping. Such tangents tend to last a couple of pages, and don’t usually contain crucial information, so skimming them is an option, but it could detract from the general forward motion of the plot.

In the end, as in most fictional novels, good triumphs over evil- but Larson makes evil so real that the line between evil and good becomes blurred. In this fast-paced read, Larson has created a juxtaposition of good and evil as is present in many renowned epics, but in this case evil is so deranged, they don’t even realize that is what they are. The evil elements in the book all believe what they are doing is right, which is much more realistic than the acknowledgement of their own evilness.

As the strings pull taut into a noose and yet another victim is snuffed out of existence, Larson weaves the string from the other end, feeding historical information into his loom of word craft and extracting a plot so sickening that reading it before bed is not recommended.