The Definitive True Story of HH Holmes, Whose Grotesque Crimes Shattered Turn-of-the-Century Chicago.
The heinous bloodlust of Dr HH Holmes is notorious - but only Harold Schechter's 'Depraved' tells the complete story of the killer whose evil acts of torture and murder flourished within miles of the Chicago World's Fair.
This authoritative account chronicles the methods and madness of a monster who slipped easily into a bright, affluent Midwestern suburb, where no one suspected the dapper, charming Holmes - who alternatively posed as doctor, druggist, and inventor to snare his prey - was the architect of a labyrinthine "Castle of Horrors".
Holmes admitted to 27 murders by the time his madhouse of trapdoors, asphyxiation devices, body chutes, and acid vats was exposed. The seminal profile of a homegrown madman in the era of Jack the Ripper, 'Depraved' is also a mesmerising tale of true detection long before the age of technological wizardry.
