BOOKS OF THE TIMES
BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Add a Serial Murderer to 1893 Chicago's Opulent Overkill
By JANET MASLIN
Published: February 10, 2003
THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY
Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
By Erik Larson
Illustrated. 447 pages. Crown Publishers. $25.95.
As part of his research for ''The Devil in the White City'' Erik Larson visited the part of Graceland cemetery where members of Chicago's turn-of-the-century elite are enshrined. As he puts it, ''On a crystalline fall day you can almost hear the tinkle of fine crystal, the rustle of silk and wool, almost smell the expensive cigars.''
Mr. Larson likes to embroider the past that way. So he relentlessly fuses history and entertainment to give this nonfiction book the dramatic effect of a novel, complete with abundant cross-cutting and foreshadowing. Ordinarily these might be alarming tactics, but in the case of this material they do the trick. Mr. Larson has written a dynamic, enveloping book filled with haunting, closely annotated information. And it doesn't hurt that this truth really is stranger than fiction.
''The Devil in the White City,'' a book as lively as its title, has the inspiration to combine two distantly related late-19th-century stories into a narrative that is anything but quaint. One describes planning and preparation for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and it holds an unexpected fascination. Mr. Larson is omnivorous enough to have collected data not only on the distinguished architects who collaborated on this vision but also notes that it featured a chocolate Venus de Milo and a 22,000-pound cheese.
The book's other path follows a prototypical American serial killer whose fictional counterparts are by now ubiquitous. He built and operated a conveniently located World's Fair Hotel, complete with walk-in vault, greased wooden chute and person-sized basement kiln. As for where this would lead, ''only Poe could have dreamed the rest.''
As the book illustrates, this historical moment was ideal for the man calling himself H. H. Holmes, in honor of Sherlock. (His real name was Herman Webster Mudgett.) It was a time when young women were newly ready for travel, adventure and employment, with Chicago a place to find all three. ''Holmes adored Chicago,'' the book explains eagerly, ''adored in particular how the smoke and din could envelop a woman and leave no hint that she had ever existed, save perhaps a blade-thin track of perfume amid the stench of dung, anthracite and putrefaction.''
Holmes was a charmer, and a textbook psychopath when that medical designation was new. As a child he had been terrified of skeletons; as an adult, he was mysteriously able to supply them for anatomy classes. When one of his lady friends disappeared (as they were wont to do), and no witnesses recalled having seen her after Christmas Eve 1891, Mr. Larson writes that this was not precisely accurate. ''Others did see Julia again,'' he notes, ''although by then no one, not even her own family back in Davenport, Iowa, could have been expected to recognize her.''
Holmes would further prove himself the Devil of the title by publishing a saccharine, lie-filled memoir and insisting that he wanted the real killer brought to justice. He sounds uncannily prescient, but so do the book's other major figures. Patrick Eugene Joseph Prendergast, who became obsessed with Chicago's mayor, might as well have been named Travis Bickle.
It's worth noting that Mr. Larson insisted on doing research by himself, only with firsthand sources. (No researchers, no Internet.) When he found one of Mr. Prendergast's threatening notes at the Chicago Historical Society, he says, ''I saw how deeply the pencil dug into the paper.''
The book is no less vivid about its more solid citizens, the ones responsible for bringing the World's Columbian Exposition Company into being. Over the kind of menu that featured green turtle consommé and woodcock on toast, they laid glorious plans.
Central to the book is Daniel Hudson Burnham, a galvanizing force in shaping the huge, ornate white buildings that made the fair such a wonder. One vast structure had a floor that alone required five train cars' worth of nails.
The author has found many more odd and amazing details where that came from. The book describes the perilous birth of the Ferris Wheel (although a rival plan to outdo the Eiffel Tower called for a huge tower with a log cabin on top); the arrival of novelties like zippers and Cracker Jack; and Chicago's first glimpse of a belly dancer. Assorted ostriches, mummies, sphinxes and alleged cannibals also contributed to the ambience, which is evoked with much color. So are darker events of that time. These include ruinous financial panic and the sight of the world's most dangerous weapon: a Krupp artillery piece firing a one-ton shell.
While cataloging this exotica, Mr. Larson also keeps track of certain timeless human conditions. Workaholic organizers of the fair promise to spend more time with their families when this is over. Frederick Law Olmsted, the celebrated designer responsible for the fair's landscape, frets over the impossibility of achieving perfection and sinks into depression; eventually he will be hospitalized at an asylum he designed. And, when it comes to more humdrum maladies, the fair's records cite ''1 case of extreme flatulence'' and ''169 involving teeth that hurt like hell.''
Though it risks turning into a random compendium, ''The Devil in the White City'' is given shape and energy by the author's dramatic inclinations. He succeeds in affirming the historical and cultural importance of the 1893 exhibition, which, he says, may have helped to spawn such other wonders as Disneyland and Oz. And he unearths a crime story of enduring interest, if only because Holmes, in the words of The Chicago Times-Herald, was ''so unthinkable that no novelist would dare to invent such a character.'' A smart nonfiction writer did it instead.
Photo: Erik Larson (Roseanne Olson/Crown Publishers)(pg. E6)