True Crime Studies: The Devil in the White City review
If you ever spent the day googling “true crime books” and making a list of the best recommendations, then there’s a chance that you’ve run into this book before. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America Forever by Erik Larson is a historical non-fiction book that details the life and crimes of Herman Webster Mudgett, also known as H.H. Holmes. Nicknamed the American Ripper, Holmes is believed to have taken over 200 lives during his lifetime, many of whom have never been recovered. Their bodies were turned to ash or sold to medical universities for study.
The man and his infamous Murder Castle live on in our history’s frightful memory as if he had been the Devil reborn.
“I was born with the Devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing. I was born with the Evil One standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into the world, and he has been with me since.”
Holmes in his memoir Holmes’ Own Story
One of the few convicted murderers to have ever written a memoir, Holmes’ statement declaring himself no different than a demon has given him quite an ominous presence in American history. For some, just looking at his photo brings to mind the words “Devil” and “monster”. There’s something sinister about someone sitting in a jail cell, whose face has yet to show even an ounce of fear for their impending hanging, claim that they have the Devil in them. It didn’t help that nearly everyone who met the man was instantly charmed into submission.
Before going any further, let’s stop to clear something up. If you’re thinking that the Devil in the White City is all about Holmes, you would be wrong. This is not a detailed 390-paged account of H.H. Holmes’s life, crimes, and arrest. The Devil in the White City isn’t a true-crime book but is actually about the World’s Fair Columbian Exposition of 1893. The fact that Holmes makes an appearance is because he happened to be apart of it. It is 80% fair and 20% Holmes.
A dark shadow that lives behind the scenes
Larson chops the book into two narratives. One for the fair and one for Holmes. He conjoins them so that they rise, thrive, and fall at the exact same pace. A structure that elevates the notorious serial killer to an almost ghost-like presence. He lives and breathes in the shadows. Living just outside the marvelous spectacle that was the World’s Fair but close enough to feed on it.
While the shadowy background is filled with Holmes, the other narrative follows a man named Daniel Burnham. For those not familiar with the name, Burnham is the Chicago architect credited with building what is referred to as the White City. The 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago was the first Columbus Day celebration (if only they could see the way people hate on this holiday day- oh boy, would they be mad) that lasted six months. To properly celebrate this, an entire city was built for the occasion. The White City, named because all the buildings were painted white.
Burnham and others, including Frederick Law Olmsted, John Root, and Sol Bloom were the ones who made the fair a reality. Their struggles and architectural process are what make up most of the book.
Hiding in plain sight, spotlight for the fair
Anyone who reads this will learn EVERYTHING about that fair. Every single flaw, union riot, arguments between firms, budget cuts, etc. EVERYTHING! There will come a point where you’ll forget Holmes is even there, and this, I believe, is the point. The further you go, the less you’ll see Holmes, no different than how the city of Chicago did not see him.
One thing is for certain, Erik Larson gives a brilliant description of 1890s Chicago. He is so detailed and specific in the way that he pulls the city from history that it feels like you’re right there. You can see the people, hear them, smell their unwashed bodies as they march in the streets, and aggressively cheer in front of the Chicago Tribune when it’s announced that Chicago will serve as host to the fair.
How it deals with Holmes
Anyone familiar with H.H. Holmes knows what he did and how he did it. True crime enthusiasts know all about the Murder Castle and its many secret rooms. Any mention of Holmes guarantees a discussion about that freaking hotel and the elaborate crimes he committed inside. After a while, these same details start to repeat themselves, but this is where Erik Larson stands strong.
Larson ignores most of what happened inside the walls of the Castle. He describes how it’s built and briefly mentions what it looked like inside, how it smelled, and such, but rarely does he dive into the gory details. It’s a brilliant change of pace. He puts more focus on the victims. Those who disappear inside our obsession with murderers.
We get to know women such as Alice and Nellie Pitezel, Julia Smythe, Emeline Cigrande, and Minnie and Annie Williams; just some of the innocent victims who were so easily fooled. A study of Holmes is forgotten, and the study of those around him is put in its place. It creates a much more harrowing effect because we see what they saw and felt hours before they realized the horrible truth.
Verdict
Even though I couldn’t care less about the World’s Fair, I really liked this book. The moments featuring Holmes are incredible and the moments lacking his presence are just as good. This is a true testament to Larson’s skills as an author because the subject of architecture and generic Chicago “fun fact” history is mind-numbingly boring to me. Yet, the novel narrative technique Larson adopts in order to write The Devil in the White City makes every detail enthralling to read.
(5 / 5)
Published in January 2025, Virginia Feito’s second book, Victorian Psycho, is… hard to categorize. Much like Feito’s first book, Mrs March (which I also highly recommend), Feito has created a main character that is paranoid, violent and utterly charming. Victorian Psycho might be any classic Victorian novel about a governess. Miss Notty, entering her new place of employment and getting to know the Pound family and their two children, Andrew and Drusilla. That is if you ignore the psychopathic thoughts that keep entering Miss Notty’s head.
- SOON TO BE A FEATURE FILM FROM A24 STARRING MARGARET QUALLEY AND THOMASIN MCKENZIE”This book will be the bloody belle of the 2025 literary ball
- ” (Oprah Daily)Most Anticipated Books of 2025: Vulture, Oprah Daily, Polygon, Reader’s Digest, Lit Hub, CrimeReads, The Stacks, LibraryReads, PasteBest Books of the Month: Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, TIME, Goodreads, Gizmodo, Book Riot, The A
- V
Last update on 2025-03-03 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
The Plot.
When we begin Victorian Psycho, we meet Winifred Knotty, a young woman travelling to Ensor House through the English Grim Wolds in what feels like the Victorian era (the year is never actually pinpointed.) The reader is provided with a countdown of ‘three months till Christmas’ and simply told that “in three months everyone in this house will be dead.”
Miss Notty is to be the new Governess to the two Pound children. As she settles into her new position, she appears to be good at her job. She ensures that the children are fed, tucks them in at night, tells bedtime stories and provides them with intellectual conversation. She only jokes about eating children and really has no idea where that missing maid has disappeared to.
Highlights.
Victorian Psycho is written as a chaotic interior monologue, punctuated with intermittent dialogue as Miss Notty interacts with other characters, or eavesdrops on them from the hallway. The reader is completely immersed in this confused, violent mind, despite this, it is impossible not to like Miss Notty. I think it might be due to her witty intelligence and her keen ability to dismantle the other character’s social pretenses. Whatever it is, Feito has done a marvelous job of characterization on Miss Notty.
As an extra highlight I need to mention the way Feito has named her characters using a very Dickensian method of using words that describe their personalities. To name a few; Miss Notty, whose mind seems to be in knots, Mr. And Mrs. Fancy, who are very posh and the name that took the cake for me was the baby, called William Ebenezer Poncy Fancey, but don’t worry, you won’t have to read that name too often as he does not last long in Miss. Notty’s care.
Drawbacks.
There is a lot of confusion in Victorian Psycho, which is in keeping with our point of view main character. However, at some points in the story the confusion was so thick that I had to stop reading and try to untangle the events I had just read. If you are a reader who enjoys a clear and concise plot and action, this one is probably not for you. While you are in Notty’s head suffice it to say you have to roll with the unconnected tangents and strange metaphors, if you’re not willing to do this it would be best to jump ship.
The Final Take.
This is a perfectly perverse take on a Victorian gothic. Full to the brim with brutal horror and visceral imagery, balanced out with tongue in cheek sarcasm. Victorian Psycho flips the script on the traditional ‘women running away from houses’ theme of the gothic. Instead, we have a woman coming in and, well… you’ll have to read the book to see.
(5 / 5)
As a disclaimer, this is a review of The House of My Mother from a critical perspective. I will not be discussing my opinions of the legal case against Ruby Franke and Jody Hildebrandt. I will be discussing the merits of the book as a work of true crime alone.
In 2015, Ruby Franke started a YouTube channel called 8 Passengers. In August of 2023, Franke and her business associate Jodi Hildebrandt were arrested for, and later plead guilty to, charges of aggravated child abuse. And in January of this year, Shari Franke told her story in The House of My Mother.
The story
The House of My Mother is the true story of Shari Franke, the oldest child of one of the most famous family vlogger families.
As a child, Shari came to the conclusion that her mother didn’t like her. Soon, she began to fear her mother’s anger.
Things got significantly worse when Ruby started their family vlog. All of the families most intimate moments were splashed across the internet for anyone to watch. This became a living nightmare for Shari.
Of course, that was only the start of the family nightmare. Because Ruby was about to meet someone who would reinforce all of the darkest parts of herself.
Eventually Shari manages to escape her home. But her younger siblings were still in her mother’s clutches. She had to save them, and her father, from the monster her mother had become.
What worked
Through the book, Shari only ever mentions the name of one of her siblings, Chad. This is because Chad is the only of her siblings that is an adult at the time of the publication.
There are children involved in this story. Children who’s lives and privacy have already been damaged. Shari didn’t want to do that to them again, and neither do I.
It probably won’t surprise you that this book is full of upsetting details. But not in the way you might imagine.
Nowhere in this book will you find gory details about the abuse the Franke kids suffered. And I consider that a good thing. Those sort of details are all fun and games when we’re talking fiction. When it’s real kids who are really living with the damage, it’s not a good time.
What you’ll find instead is a slew of more emotionally devastating moments. One that stuck with me is when Ruby’s mother gives her a pair of silk pajamas as a gift after Ruby gave birth to one of her babies. Shari asks Ruby if she’d bring her silk pajamas when she had a baby. Ruby responds that yes, when Shari becomes a mother they can be friends.
What a lovely way to make a little girl feel like she’s not worth anything unless she reproduces. And, if she does decide to have children, who is going to bring her silk pajamas?
- From eldest daughter Shari Franke, the shocking true story behind the viral 8 Passengers family vlog and the hidden abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother, and how, in the face of unimaginable pain, she found freedom and healing
- Shari Franke’s childhood was a constant battle for survival
- Her mother, Ruby Franke, enforced a severe moral code while maintaining a façade of a picture-perfect family for their wildly popular YouTube channel 8 Passengers, which documented the day-to-day life of raising six children for a staggering 2
Last update on 2025-03-02 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
In the end, this isn’t a story about ghosts or demons. It’s not about a serial killer waiting on a playground or in the attic of an unsuspecting family. Instead, this is a story about things that really keep us up at night. It’s the story of a woman so obsessed with perfection that she drove away her eldest daughter. The story of a young woman who’s forced to watch from afar as her beloved brothers and sisters are terrorized and abandoned. These are the sorts of things that really keep us up at night. These are the real nightmares.
More than that, though, The House of My Mother is a story of survival. It’s about a family that was ripped apart and somehow managed to stitch itself back together again. It’s about a brave young woman who managed to keep herself safe and sane in the face of a nightmare. If you haven’t read it yet, I can’t recommend it enough.
For more like this, check out my review of Shiny Happy People.
(5 / 5)
Boreal: an Anthology of Taiga Horror is a collection of twenty-two haunting tales that dwell in the deepest darkest woods and frozen wastelands, edited by Katherine Silva and including Haunted MTL’s very own Daphne Fauber. Each story has even been gifted with its very own poster, hinting at the horrors to be found within it, bestowing a beautiful visual collection as well.
The tales are varied and touch upon the environment in new and different ways, each hearkening to a sort of epiphany or raised awareness. These stories exude both dread and wonder at the smallness of our human existence in contrast to the sacred world we have isolated from, sheltering ourselves in our comfortable houses with centralized heat and everything we could possibly need or want at the ready. The taiga becomes a sanctuary outside of our own dulled awarenesses. It is a holy place imbued with powers beyond mortal human reach, a wilderness that threatens to swallow us – both whole and bit by bit, simultaneously.
The protagonists enter into this realm through ritual, superstition, longing, stubbornness, and their own hubris – yearning to survive its dangers, and to make their own marks upon it. The starkness of their surroundings harbors delicate moments that would be all too easily missed if not deliberately sought or pointed out. The softness of fur, the dappled sunlight shining through trees, the hazy clouds of breath forming in crisp air, the brittleness of bleached bone… those quiet experiences that beg to be forgotten, to lay safely sleeping just below the frozen surface, awaiting spring.
There are those who followed in the footsteps of their predecessors, seeking to escape the constraints of their parent’s and elders’ indoctrination, traditions, madness, and abuse, yearning to find their own way despite also being inextricably bound to their own pasts. There are those who just wanted to go for a walk in the woods, and remained forever changed by what they experienced. There are those who wished to impose their will upon the wilderness, their order falling to disarray, unable to make lasting impact. There are those who sought to leave behind the world of mankind, looking for oneness in the natural order of things through isolation, leaving a bit of themselves behind after being consumed by the terrors they encountered. There are those who truly found communion with the woods, became one with its wildness, and invited its spirit into their hearts to find peace, even at cost of their own lives. And then, there are the spirits themselves…
(3 / 5)
All in all, I give Boreal: an Anthology of Taiga Horror 3.0 Cthulhus. I love existential angst so I found it to be an enjoyable read, and I appreciated the myriad manners in which the biome was explored. But there were points in which I found myself struggling to follow along, as if the words were swept up into their own wilds in ways that alienated myself as reader, as if my mere voyeurism into this otherworldly place was not enough to comprehend the subtle deviations in storytelling mannerisms fully. I suppose in some sense this seems appropriate, but at the same time, it left me feeling a bit unfulfilled, as if I had missed a spiritual connection that should have resonated more deeply.
- English (Publication Language)
- 248 Pages – 02/25/2025 (Publication Date) – Strange Wilds Press (Publisher)
Last update on 2025-01-23 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
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I just finished reading this book and really enjoyed how much impact the Chicago Columbian Exposition has had on modern life, holidays, phrases and even some of the developments in technology of the era, all giving rise to how we perceive things even now. I rather enjoyed the back and forth interplay between Burnham and Holmes, both men’s rise to realize their visions despite obstacles, and the desire to fulfill their purposes. It was a grand foray into the opulence of the era and the shadows lurking behind its facade. The fair is equally as important as Holmes, and the contrast between the two paints a clearer picture of the horrors hidden between both realities.