Douglas Perry

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 show more 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. show less

Somehow both bland and trashy at the same time. Douglas Perry's The Girls of Murder City focuses on the brief period in 1920s Chicago when a number of women who had almost certainly murdered their husbands or boyfriends were not only acquitted of their crimes but became minor local celebrities—a phenomenon which ultimately inspired the play and later the musical Chicago.

But while the marketing for this book promised a gripping social history, this is really a fairly shallow recounting of show more the events (Perry mentions in passing that African American women in similar circumstances were treated very differently, but foregoes the opportunity to trace one of their stories and so look with a clearer eye at how whiteness played a role in the construction of the "Beautiful Killers") with some truly awful prose ("Maybe he would take her now, right here on the couch. Yank her underthings off and split her open, with the breeze from the window rolling over them"? Ugh). Forgettable. show less

Excellent coverage of Ness and how his TV series persona ( and worse, the film version of The Untouchables) are an exercise in myth making and fail to capture the man with all his assets and flaws. Ness has much to commend him on many fronts as he was honest and obsessively dedicated to the mission of dismantling gangster operations. After he moved from Chicago to Cleveland as Public Safety Director, he took on the enormous task of rooting out corruption in the Cleveland police ranks and show more battling the underworld empire there. In the process he made Cleveland a forerunner in using modern law enforcement techniques such as use of patrol cars instead of the foot beat, and establishing profiling suspect systems based on polygraphs, fingerprints, and crime patterns.
Unfortunately, his commitment to his job made his personal life a shambles, leading to neglect of his wife and a divorce. Contrary to his squeaky clean image, Ness was a heavy drinker and womanizer, which would ultimately contribute to his undoing. show less

Let me start by saying I'm a sucker for popular history books, and I tend to judge them all against "The Devil in the White City." Perry's coverage of the Chicago murders that eventually inspired the musical Chicago is a very enjoyable read if you like creative non-fiction or even true crime of a certain type. It's fascinating to see the legal and social culture in which these murders were committed, and Maurine Watkins, who is really the main character of the story, comes across as a show more charming and nuanced figure. Perry is best when he's explaining Watkins' motivations--her ambition and faith and bravado. Clearly, Perry's goal here is partly to rehabilitate Watkins' image in the history books, and he does an admirable job of it. The pacing of the book is excellent--even though you already know the outcome--and while Perry is not quite the wordsmith that Erik Larson is, his enthusiasm for his topic is contagious. Well worth the read if you're a fan of the genre, the era, or even just a fan of the famous Broadway show. show less