Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, is publishing a new review of Black & White & Dead All Over by John Darnton. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.
Black & White & Dead All Over by John Darnton
Non-series
Anchor Books (Trade Paperback)
ISBN-10: 0-307-38742-9 (0307387429)
ISBN-13: 978-0-307-38742-4 (9780307387424)
Publication Date: August 2009
List Price: $15.00
Review: John Darnton provides an insider's view of the world of newspaper publishing, with a little murder on the side, in the entertaining Black & White & Dead All Over.
The "dead" is Theodore S. Ratnoff, The New York Globe's editor in charge of style, standards, and usage--the "coin of the realm", as it were--and famous for dressing-downs to subordinates, especially copy editors, who "labored in suffering obscurity like half-blind medieval monks churning out illuminated manuscripts." Someone apparently took exception to one of his verbal lashings of the whip for a dangling modifier or figurative stabs with red-hot poker for a pejorative anonymous quote to thrust an editor's spike, once used before computers to literally kill a story, into the senior editor. Investigative reporter Jude Hurley is assigned the story. "Don't worry," he tells his boss, metro editor Bernie Grabble, "If I solve the murder, you'll be the second to know ... right after the murderer, of course. We'll need comment from him."
Black & White & Dead All Over can be read as a murder mystery, but (as illustrated by some of the quotes provided above) it's almost more entertaining as color commentary on the state of the newspaper publishing business today, replete with characters who are thinly disguised versions of their real-life counterparts. The murder investigation itself is crafted really well, with plenty of suspects and motives and red herrings. The attention to detail is remarkable, stemming from the author's considerable knowledge of the industry, and adds to the authenticity of the story. And though the plot frequently teeters on the edge of being overly complicated, in the end it comes down to Jude Hurley being the good reporter he is, realizing the facts behind the murder of Ratnoff, and later two others, are much simpler than the elaborate stories being put forth by those around him.
Special thanks to Random House for providing a trade paperback edition of Black & White & Dead All Over for this review.
Review Copyright © 2009 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
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Synopsis (from the publisher): A powerful editor is found dead in the newsroom—stabbed with the very spike he would use to kill stories—and in the cutthroat offices of The New York Globe, anyone could be the murderer. Could it be the rival newspaper tycoon? The bumbling publisher? The steely executive editor?
As more bodies turn up, it will fall on Priscilla Bollingsworth, a young and ambitious NYPD detective, and Jude Hurley, a clever and rebellious reporter, to navigate the ink-infested waters of the case.
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