SHADOWS IN THE WHITE CITY
by Robert W. Walker
Harper Collins
www.harpercollins.com
ISBN: 0060739967
Paperback, 352 pages, $6.99 US
Genre: Mystery

Chicago is hosting the World’s Fair in the year 1893 but there is trouble afoot. A killer dubbed the Phantom of the Fair is on the loose, garroting his victims to near-decapitation and burning their bodies. Inspector Alastair Ransom has his sights set on a young man named Waldo Denton but Denton is exonerated by Ransom’s archenemy, Police Chief Nathan Kohler. When Denton disappears, with Ransom’s help, evidence proves he was the Phantom. But another killer quickly steps in to fill the Phantom’s shoes, this one more vicious and brutal than the Phantom.

Named the Leather Apron because the killer literally butchers victims, Ransom’s investigation leads him to the underbelly of Chicago, desperate to put an end to this manic murderer who preys on the homeless. What Ransom learns shocks even this skilled detective. With the help of Dr. Jane Francis, aka Dr. James Phineas Tewes, and a group of homeless children, along with primitive forensics, Ransom trails the Leather Apron to tunnels beneath the World’s Fair, where a bloody battle has already begun.

Robert W. Walker delivers an outstanding historical mystery, with compelling characters and a shocking resolution. Dialogue and narrative magically transcend the reader to the true realism of Chicago of the late 1800s, skillfully highlighting unfolding historical events and the roles women played in medicine and society as well as the plight of the homeless. This twisting mystery provides plenty of gut-wrenching suspense embedded in a galvanizing plot that refuses to allow the reader to put the book aside. Inspector Alastair Ransom is a unique character, a man of great depth and principles who lives by his own rules, and who can easily carry this invigorating series forward.