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Good Reading

Just finished reading The Devil in White City and absolutely loved. Last Larson book I read (and also enjoyed greatly) was The Splendid and the Vile so my expectations for this book were high. The way the two plot-lines flow in parallel supported by a common event - the World Fair, makes the book an engrossing read. The protagonists in both Daniel Burnham (the chief architect of the World Fair) and H.H Holmes (the serial killer) execute impossible things amid constraints most would find hard to overcome. A strong inner-drive and preternatural self-possession help both succeed the former in splendid and the later in a vile way. 

The thing that struck me most is how easy it was for Holmes to go about his murderous spree for as long as he did without detection. His choice of target made it so and that is still the kind of woman who would be most vulnerable. Ingenue in a big, bad city chasing dreams that were bigger than her small town would support. It reminded me of the Gilgo Beach serial killer podcast I had listened to a while back before the suspect was arrested. There is always a certain category of human (women more so than men) who are simply not considered material or relevant enough to society to warrant a sustained interest in their disappearance. It's like they were invisible the whole time - so nothing really changed when they were gone. 

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