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Showing posts from August, 2015

Mystery in the Windy City - Historical (Non-Fiction - Mostly)

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Mention historical crime in Chicago and most people will think of Al Capone , the St. Valentine's Day Massacre , Eliot Ness and the Untouchables , More recent history brings us to serial killers Richard Speck and John Wayne Gacy , or the all-too-common gangland killings that keep today's death tolls high. And then there is the notorious murderer H.H. Holmes , who terrorized women at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair - the Columbian Exposition, killing and disposing of his victims at his "terror castle." Holmes had faded into obscurity until Erik Larson's brilliant book, THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY became a best seller.  (Images and blurbs from Barnes & Noble's BN.com) Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the cou