The Chicago World Fair was the greatest fair in American history. This is the story of the men and women whose lives it irrevocably changed and of two men in particular: an architect and a serial killer. The architect is Daniel Burnham, a man of great integrity and depth. It was his vision of the fair that attracted the best minds and talents of the day. The killer is Henry H. Holmes. Intelligent as well as handsome and charming, Holmes opened a boarding house which he advertised as 'The World's Fair Hotel' Here in the neighbourhood where he was once looked up to by all, he seduced, tortured and murdered young women, incinerating them in the furnace he had built in the basement of his hotel. Salting the narrative are the sad, charming, and funny stories of a supporting cast of other real-life characters including Buffalo Bill, Scott Joplin, Theodore Dreiser and George Ferris, the Pittsburg steel tycoon whose mammoth wheel becomes America's answer to the Eiffel Tower. The interweaving and the juxtaposition of the two men's different 'missions' - one good and one evil - provides the core to a non-fiction suspense drama of the highest order.