The Girls of Murder City

by Douglas Perry

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

First off.  In the extended title of this book, it says "who inspired Chicago".  It literally took me half the book to realize "Chicago" meant Chicago, not Chicago.  The play, not the city.  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.  In that light, The Girls of Murder City is fabulously done.

I'm more an ancient history person, and years of reading traditional fantasy has me deeply interested in Western Europe... but something about Chicago pulls me in.  From a purely romanticized perspective,  Chicago was its own world of blood and deceit and danger.  Between The Girls of Murder City and The Devil in the White City, color me officially intrigued in Chicago.  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.  I'm sure there is a lot to Chicago that's beautiful and fabulous, but I'm so drawn by its dark history.

Douglas Perry does a fantastic job of laying out the narrative.  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.  The best historical narratives, in my opinion, are the ones that bring history to life.  The Girls of Murder City makes you curious about Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner.  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.  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.

Not just Beulah and Belva, though.  Several women of murderesses row - or at least of that period in Chicago history - jump off the page.  If anything, Perry makes them seem larger than life, far more stylish and beautiful than they were in actuality.  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.

In short?  I loved the way the history was told and I enjoyed dipping into this period of history for the first time in several years.  If the subject interests you at all, I highly recommend it.