Erik Larson's 2003 The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America ranks as one of the best true crime books I have ever read. I put it up there with Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.
Larson shapes his story about serial killer H.H. Holmes against the context of the era's social and economical events and the history of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Now, The Devil in the White City may come to the movies. According to internet sources, Warner Bros. named Graham Moore to write the script for the film version. Leonardo DiCaprio, whose production company optioned the rights, will play Holmes. The movie is projected to hit the screens in 2013.
If this ever gets made, it should be an enthalling movie. The project certainly has rich source material, as I pointed out in my original review of this book.
In The Devil in the White City, nonfiction author Erik Larson's look at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago gave more than just a view of one of the events that brought America squarely into the 20th century. The history of this event parallels the evolution of America—its progress, ingenuity and violence. With meticulous research, Larson creates a fascinating nonfiction book that reads like a novel and is more unbelievable than fiction. [And I am quoting from my review here.]
"In Chicago at the end of the 19th century amid the smoke of industry and the clatter of trains there lived two men, both handsome, both blue-eyed, and both unusually adept at their chosen skills," begins Larson's tale.
One man is Daniel Burnham, an architect who was a director of works for the exposition and the builder of many of America's most famous structures, and H.H. Holmes, a physician, con man and hotel owner who is considered to be the country's first urban serial killer.
Burnham, the architect of the Flatiron Building in New York City and Union Station in Washington, DC, among others, organized the six-month fair despite political barriers and constant in-fighting among his teams. His mission was to "out-Eiffel Eiffel," whose still-standing tower had been the hit of the Paris World's Fair. 
Today, the only building that survives is the Palace of Fine Arts, which was remade into Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry.
The Columbian Exposition introduced products and traditions with a lasting effect on American culture, including Cracker Jacks, shredded wheat, the Ferris wheel and the Pledge of Allegiance.
Keep in mind, took, that during 1893, the country was in the middle of one of its worst depressions and high unemployment. Yet the fair inticed an estimated 27.5 million visitors came to the fair; that was almost half of the total number of people who lived in the United States. On a single day, a record 716,881 people attend during "Chicago Day," on Oct. 9, 1893.
This World's Fair also allowed Holmes to operate his chilling trade.
During the fair, Holmes ran a hotel called "The Castle" nearby to appeal to visitors and young women coming to Chicago for work.
In reality, The Castle was a chamber of horrors that was designed for Holmes' grisly plans.
"It's so easy for people to disappear," Holmes said. And scores of people were lost inside The Castle's walls.
It was not until long after the fair closed its gates that Holmes' crimes were discovered. It is believed that Holmes killed between 27 and 200 people.
The story is here and Graham Moore has the skills to pull it off. Moore wrote the intriguing The Sherlockian, which mixed an incident in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's life with a modern-day search for the author's diary.
