There was enough that I liked in Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City. The premise, about the building the Chicago’s 1893 World Fair and a serial killer who also happened to be there, is a bit of a hodgepodge, which lends itself to the chaotic result of the fair; however, it was disjointed and a bit of a slog.
I probably would have preferred a book about one or the other, or maybe I read this when I wasn’t quite in the mood to appreciate a book that has parallel narratives linked by the ruthless dedication to building/destroying. If you’d like to know about the kind of city Chicago was (and in some ways still is), I’d definitely recommend this. The author takes some creative liberties, in the classic imaginings that still count as nonfiction, about how the killings took place. What this book does for the genre is vital to the craft.
As a portrait of a certain place at a certain point in time, reflecting the themes of the country on the whole, this book definitely succeeds. Definitely going to put off my reading of “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote after this, though; I don’t know if the crime / mystery stuff is my jam. My jam is raspberry.
3/5