Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #889119 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Customer Reviews

A solidly researched, well-written account
Harold Schechter once again delivers a brilliantly detailed account, this time about H.H. Holmes and his Castle of Horror.

Born Herman Webster Mudgett, the alias H.H. Holmes would become famous worldwide for being not only the architect of the infamous "Castle of Horror", but also as an evil genius, who posed amongst others as a doctor and an inventor. His macabre story is covered in mesmerising detail, and together with Schechter's writing style, will definetly keep you avidly turning the pages. Holmes, eventually, was brought to ground by an insurance scam that went awry, and the true horror of his dwelling abode and murderous career was revealed.

Praise must once again be bestowed on Harold Schechter, for his name not only represents pure quality, but guarantees it. Any true crime buff should have a copy of this book and also "Deranged" (Albert Fish) and Deviant (Ed Gein) amongst their collection.

No Place like Holmes'
There's nothing new under the sun. Or at least, very little, particularly this late in human history. Could the Victorians have imagined our world-spanning communications network carrying information at the speed of light in pulses of electricity, for example? Yes, very easily, because they had a network like that too: it was called the telegraph.

And could the Victorians have imagined our salacious, dishonest media concentrating sex and horror in an ever-quickening race to stimulate the public's jaded appetite? Yes, because they had that kind of media too, all the way from sensationalist newspapers to quickie paperbacks brought out to cash in on a currently notorious trial.

Like the trial described in this book, that of Herman Webster Mudgett, alias Henry Howard Holmes, a Chicago doctor, chemist, and fraudster whom this book describes as America's first serial killer. First *known* serial killer, maybe, but disputes over his claim to priority aside, Holmes is certainly one of the most interesting entries in an ever-growing list, and this book, rarely in the true-crime genre, doesn't let an interesting subject go to waste. Brought down by a life-insurance scam that went wrong, Holmes became the center of world-wide attention when the true nature of his giant, jerry-built boarding-house in Chicago was uncovered by police searches. It had been a kind of killing factory, with concealed gas-pipes, peep-holes, trap-doors, and chutes guaranteeing Holmes a steady supply of victims for a sinister cellar complete with dissecting-table, surgical instruments, and furnace.

Or so the eager newspapers and publishers gave the world to believe, and although Holmes may not have been quite so energetic in his pursuit of nubile young female victims as their reports claimed, the house was certainly fitted out in the manner they described and young women had certainly disappeared after booking in there. Precisely what Holmes did with them before he killed them, and with older victims of both sexes, is still unknown, but he seems to have had a sexual motive beside the obvious mercenary one. Working with Holmes to profit from these victims and their jewellery and cash was a petty criminal called Pietzel, who eventually fell prey to Holmes in the life-insurance scam that brought Holmes down. Rather than go to the trouble of finding a substitute corpse after Pietzel's life had been insured, Holmes killed his confederate and then set about disposing of Pietzel's large family.

Schechter concentrates on this final period of Holmes' murderous career, as the suave, merciless fraudster tricks Pietzel's wife and children into travelling all over the United States (and Canada) in quest of a husband and father he has assured them is still alive. He separates some of the children from their mother and kills them, scheming to murder their mother and remaining siblings with a vial of nitroglycerine a little later. Meanwhile, however, the insurance company is catching up with him and detectives are slowly disentangling the threads of the tangled web he has been weaving all his adult life. It's a fascinating and sometimes moving story well-told and ending as the Victorians loved their morality tales to end: with the villain paying the price for his crimes at the end of a rope.

Much to be desired.
It is a great shame, but this is a most disappointing book. The general paucity of material on Albert Fish has created a vacuum that 'Depraved' ought to have filled but does not.

From subject matter of this kind the reader may reasonably expect a faithful reproduction of all facts and testimony, a reasoned and informed discussion of the forces acting upon, and the mental attributes of this, admittedly, depraved individual, and a precise and keen dissection of the culmination and trial. This book provides none of these, and one is left to wonder as to how Mr Schechter won his professorship.

The book contains no source notes whatsoever, no bibliography, no chronology and at times reads like a wholly subjective horror story. It may be that there is a lack of first hand source material and testimony (we cannot tell and are not told), but this would be surprising given Mr Fish's enormous appetite for letter writing. Instead the author provides us with ever more irrelevant historical background information and a surfeit of press clippings that do nothing except remind us that the tabloid press are now and have ever been, the tabloid press.

The language and composition are average; occasionally they reach a phrasal peak, but just as frequently leave one saddened by their course ignominy.

It is a great shame, but I cannot recommend this book. Far from being the 'finest writer of his genre', this author must learn the art of research and award himself no more than four from ten for this effort.