Devils among us.

In some ways, The Devil in the White City seemed an unlikely bestseller. Granted, the subtitle (Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America) promises a virtual trifecta of qualities most Americans can't deny. But in addition to the three M's is a reoccuring theme of...architecture and landscape design?

As far as true crime goes, Larson's 2003 book hits the major points: a well-researched account of an almost unbelievably bold murderer whose total body count will probably never be known. In the person of Henry Holmes, Larson has found a character stranger than fiction. A man of purportedly prodigious charm, Holmes had an early fascination with human anatomy and death that led to many of his victims' being turned into lessons--often as skeletons sold to area teaching hospitals. But the manner and the galling ease by which he killed his victims terrified a nation at the cusp of a new century, once his crimes finally came to light.

But the book isn't really about a crime. Rather, Holmes' activities form a perfect foil to the goings on at the nearby Chicago's World Fair of 1893. In direct contrast to the horrors in Holmes' dark building, the White City of the fair seemed to promise a bright future for America and especially the host city Chicago. But the struggle to get the fair going proved to be almost as dramatic as the murder mystery, which Larson recounts with a dramatic flair. Intrigues, squabbles, sudden deaths, and the prospect of building a magnificent city on a swamp makes for unlikely nailbiters, but Larsen pulls it off. He does tend to get occassionally bogged down in detail and the lack of pictures makes the White City a little harder to visualize, but Larsen's ability make historical figures come across in such vivid characterization generally makes up for such deficiences.

One can't help but have Larsen's successful work in mind when considering Harold Schechter's The Devil's Gentleman: Priviledge, Poison and The Trial That Ushered in the Twentieth Century. Like the earlier work, Schechter mixes a charming young man, a bustling, glamourous city, sex and deviously plotted murders. Here, the story surrounds that of one Roland Molineaux, celebrated amateur athlete and rising businessman, who had recently married a young woman after patiently courting her. Or so it first appears. After one of Blanche's former suitors receives a vial of cyanide of mercury in the mail (and unwittingly gives it to his aunt, killing her), the yellow press pounced on the story. Playing up the sensation aspects of sex, society and power (Molineaux's father was an esteemed Civil War general), the media attention assured that Molineaux's trial would command the entire attention of the nation for years--and gave birth to the phenomenon of media circus trials.

Alas, keeping my attention fixated was more difficult. Unlike Larsen, who focused primarily on the crimes of Holmes, Schechter wades into tremendous detail with Molineaux's trial. There are some high points (especially Blanche Molineaux's spectualarly purple prosed memoirs), but even those points became bogged down in the minutae that characterized the trial. I pushed on through to the end, which held a twist worth waiting for, but I nearly gave it up at several times, in spite of reading more than halfway through. For the legally inclined, it might be worthwhile, but for true crime in a historical perspective, it doesn't quite make an enthralling read.