Two great men, existing at the same time, brilliant at two very different things, both handsome and blue-eyed, lived in Chicago in 1893. One, Daniel Burnham, became the great architect behind the World’s Fair, known as the White City, while the other, Dr. H. H. Holmes, became a serial murderer. Erik Larson, four times New York Times bestseller, masterfully pieces together the events of that time, with old diary entries, newspaper articles, letters, postcards, and pictures, to tell their story.
The arrangement of the story in chronological order, switching between Burnham and his associates and Holmes and his psychopathic charms builds the suspense. When reading of Holmes and his seduction of his latest female victim, a reader cannot wait to see how Burnham will handle his latest challenge in building the fair. When reading about Burnham one cannot help but wonder as to the fate of Holmes’ latest woman, and whether or not she will live to tell her tale. Varied sentence structures and abrupt phrases that begin or end a chapter help convey urgency and heighten tensions within the reader. Larson successfully conveys the history of the two men, their brilliance, and their challenges.
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