If you're even vaguely interested in the sordid history of the Second City, or in crime history in general, The Girls of Murder City is a fascinating, interesting story and told in such a way that it would hold anyone's attention. If anything, Perry makes them seem larger than life, far more stylish and beautiful than they were in actuality. Several women of murderesses row - or at least of that period in Chicago history - jump off the page. You'll learn about these women's trials than you will from their Wikipedia articles, and with a little innocence creative eloquence, they fly off the page. They're brought to life through various interviews and articles, but they are kept separate from Maurine Dallas Watkins - the reporter who covered their stories in the '20s, and author of Chicago. The Girls of Murder City makes you curious about Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner. The best historical narratives, in my opinion, are the ones that bring history to life. There were a few times where I thought I heard the same quotes more than once, but as a general rule, the story felt like a story. I'm sure there is a lot to Chicago that's beautiful and fabulous, but I'm so drawn by its dark history.ĭouglas Perry does a fantastic job of laying out the narrative. The city pulled me into this book, and it ended up being a hybrid of crime history and theatre history and I gobbled it up. Between The Girls of Murder City and The Devil in the White City, color me officially intrigued in Chicago.
From a purely romanticized perspective, Chicago was its own world of blood and deceit and danger. I'm more an ancient history person, and years of reading traditional fantasy has me deeply interested in Western Europe. In that light, The Girls of Murder City is fabulously done. Before that, I had thoughts about the way the story had been drawn out, and why there was so much time with the reporters and not just with the murderesses (I wanted more murderesses, dammit) and it's a whole different perspective, to be honest. It literally took me half the book to realize "Chicago" meant Chicago, not Chicago. In the extended title of this book, it says "who inspired Chicago".
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