Review by Frank Plowright

H. H. Holmes is the name known to the world, although the more time passes the more obscure he becomes, but the Beast of Chicago’s given name was Herman W. Mudgett. As Rick Geary specifies, Holmes was but one of many aliases under which the man now recognised as the first US serial killer operated. He confessed to 27 killings, but the suspicion is of the total being far higher.

As ever, Rick Geary’s investigations of murders are never whodunnits. The guilty party is named on the cover, with Geary’s interests focussing on how and where the crimes were committed. As the title indicates, this was in Chicago, a city rebuilt as a testament to modern practice after a disastrous fire in 1871, and which hosted a global exposition in 1893. With city centre accommodation at a premium, many visitors chose to stay in the suburbs, and Holmes ran what seemed a comfortable, respectable and reasonably priced establishment in Englewood.

In reality the three stories of the large corner block house were constructed piecemeal by different groups of workers. They were assigned to separate sections including eccentric doors and passages, and fired before acquiring any hint as to what the entire building held. As extensively detailed by Geary, the wonder is that the sheer amount of fraud perpetrated by Holmes from the premises never aroused any greater suspicion at the time. Those he associated with apparently accepted him as a scoundrel and said nothing, or asked no questions when he was able to aid with their concerns, while Geary suggests he bribed any persistent representative of authority.

There’s a template to both the presentation and the art of this series from which Geary rarely departs. Artistic exactitude is accompanied by formal language and absolute precision, both in outlining the circumstances and in the locations. Here Geary relishes the surroundings of the exposition, and a rare detour into style supplies a page of silhouette illustrations accompanying Holmes’ activities in the early months of 1893.

Holmes is presented as astoundingly bereft of compassion or loyalty. A succession of women were bedded or wedded before disappearing, and the latter fate could also await allies. Geary relates a departure from Chicago and an increasingly eccentric set of journeys and seemingly pointless murders attributed to mental disintegration. Tracked by the Pinkerton Agency, it was only after his arrest for fraud that Holmes’ catalogue of atrocities came to light.

Numerous TV shows and shelves of books are testament to a continuing fascination with murderers, and few detail their activities as diligently and readably as Geary.