My mother-in-law refers to me as "the devil" - so I thought I'd review something appropriate

This wonderful little (well not so little really) book tells the tale of two men; Daniel Burnham, the creator of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and H. H. Holmes, a notorious serial killer preying on the attendees thereof. In some sense it is a Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde type thriller with half the story set in the upper classes of turn of the century New York and Chicago and the other half in the seedy underbelly of the Windy City. The book is stunning for it's detail architecturally, and somewhat sickening in it's details of the murders. It barely manages not to be too voyeuristic, but close enough to make the reader have a hard time putting the book down. It is worth the read for the extremely interesting historical trivia that it provides as well as the exquisite prose style that the author uses. For those of you who despise traditional history and it's useless dates and mindless trivia though this book offers more: a story. That story is engaging, at times frightening and exposes the human (or inhuman) face of two men caught in the changing tide of industrialization.

A-