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Overview
A keenly intelligent, delightfully mordant novel that blends fact and fiction with the same deft hand that was at work in John Darnton’s best-selling Neanderthal.Bad news is brewing in the inner sanctum of the New York Globe, the city’s long-standing newspaper of note, whose back is to the wall. Readership, advertising, and circulation are plummeting—along with the paper’s vaunted standards—and the cost cutters have their knives out. But trouble of a wholly different kind begins one rainy September morning when a powerful editor is found murdered in the newsroom, with the spike that he’d wielded to kill stories hammered into his chest. The problem for Priscilla Bollingsworth, the young, ambitious female NYPD detective assigned to the case—besides the fact that the mayor is breathing down her neck—is that there are too many suspects to choose from.
She teams up with Jude Hurley, a clever, rebellious reporter, and together they navigate the ink-infested waters whose denizens include the paper’s resentful old guard, scheming careerists, a bumbling publisher, a steely executive editor, and a rival newspaper tycoon named Lester Moloch. But the waters thicken considerably when more bodies turn up, dead all over.
Armed with the firsthand knowledge he has acquired through forty years in journalism, John Darnton conjures up the cynicism and romanticism of the profession and gives us a cunning, pitch-perfect portrait of the declining—if not yet murderous—newspaper industry. Black and White and Dead All Over is a satirical mystery that entertains from first to last.
Synopsis
Bad news is brewing in the inner sanctum of the New York Globe, the city’s long-standing newspaper of note, whose back is to the wall. Readership, advertising, and circulation are plummeting along with the paper’s vaunted standards and the cost cutters have their knives out. But trouble of a wholly different kind begins one rainy September morning when a powerful editor is found murdered in the newsroom, with the spike that he’d wielded to kill stories hammered into his chest. The problem for Priscilla Bollingsworth, the young, ambitious female NYPD detective assigned to the case besides the fact that the mayor is breathing down her neck is that there are too many suspects to choose from.
She teams up with Jude Hurley, a clever, rebellious reporter, and together they navigate the ink-infested waters whose denizens include the paper’s resentful old guard, scheming careerists, a bumbling publisher, a steely executive editor, and a rival newspaper tycoon named Lester Moloch. But the waters thicken considerably when more bodies turn up, dead all over.
Armed with the firsthand knowledge he has acquired through forty years in journalism, John Darnton conjures up the cynicism and romanticism of the profession and gives us a cunning, pitch-perfect portrait of the declining if not yet murderous newspaper industry. Black and White and Dead All Over is a satirical mystery that entertains from first to last.
The Barnes & Noble Review
From the first chapter, Black & White and Dead All Over is loaded with evidence that John Darnton has crafted more than a murder mystery. Picture this: the body of the assistant managing editor of the New York Globe, notorious for humiliating his staff, is found dead on the floor with an editor's spike --used to "kill" stories -- driven into his chest. What follows is not only an investigation by NYPD detective Pricilla Bollingsworth and Jude Hurley, the Globe's own up-and-coming investigative reporter, but a tongue-in-cheek romp through the thinly disguised fictional landscape of The New York Times and the contemporary media industry. As Bollingsworth and Hurley traverse the gritty streets of New York and the bubblig cauldron of chaos and productivity that is the Globe's newsroom, their story unfolds like an action film. Along the way, Darnton tempers the grisly (death by mummification in the newspaper bundling machine) with the comic (the owner of the Globe plops the end of his rival's bespoke tie -- decorated with winged, pink typewriters -- into a cup of coffee), and throws in a strong dose of sardonic commentary about the news business for good measure. Drawing on decades of his own experience at the Times, where he served as a foreign correspondent and editor, Darnton brings to life a vivid cast of characters with colorful names such as Outsalot (the restaurant reviewer) and Pomegranate (he's overweight) that are just enough like their real-life counterparts to keep the reader speculating who they might be, along with the murderer, until the very end. --Lydia Dishman
Editorials
Jeffrey Frank
Black and White and Dead All Over is a perfectly capable whodunit, and that old-fashioned word describes an old-fashioned, even Agatha Christie-like narrative…Along the way, Darnton has written an affectionate, romantic and at moments sentimental book about newspapers, or at least newspapers as they were before the Internet intruded…He gets almost everything about newspapering right, notably the atmospherics of a gossipy newsroom, with its discontents and ambitions, a place where it seems impossible to get anything useful accomplished.—The Washington Post
Joshua Hammer
addictively enjoyable…Darnton deftly captures the after-hours banter in neighborhood bars and the atmospherics of the big-city newsroom—the petty rivalries, the resentment felt by middle-aged burnouts, the deskbound ex-war-correspondents who pine for their swashbuckling youth. For the most part, the book charts a neat course between page turner and media satire, mining laughs out of everything from the Afghan coffee vendor more knowledgeable about Globe gossip than the paper's own staff to a teenage millionaire blogger whose Web journal, teenage.snivel.com, draws "close to 1.5 million hits a day." The ending is a bit of a letdown. But no matter. Black and White and Dead All Over is fun to read, and surprisingly gripping.—The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
William Randolph Hearst meets Agatha Christie in this entertaining crime novel from Pulitzer Prize-winner Darnton (The Darwin Conspiracy). When assistant managing editor Theodore S. Ratnoff is found murdered in the offices of the New York Globe, a major newspaper struggling to stay afloat amid ever-decreasing readership, circulation and stock value, the killer could be any number of Globe employees who've been humiliated by the tyrannical Ratnoff over the years. Aided by enigmatic NYPD Det. Priscilla Bollingsworth, the Globe's investigative reporter Jude Hurley begins the daunting task of exonerating a laundry list of suspects, who include rogue cops, a reporter suspected of plagiarism and a disgraced executive editor. When the Globe's gossip columnist and food critic turn up dead, the case suddenly becomes much more complicated-and dangerous. Loaded with subtle social commentary and wry humor (a teen's Web journal, teenage.snivel.com, gets "close to 1.5 million hits a day"), this highly intelligent whodunit will keep readers guessing. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Library Journal
When a hated editor turns up dead in the newsroom with a news spike in his chest, it looks like an inside job at the New York Globe. Hot-shot investigative reporter Jude Hurley gets the story assignment shortly before the gossip columnist is murdered in a bundling machine. Then the food critic is poisoned during a live, televised cooking demo while the killer leaves taunting literary teasers. Jude and an attractive, young NYPD detective warily work together trying to stop the carnage while keeping the paper going. Although Darnton's four previous novels incorporated a science element (The Experiment; The Darwin Conspiracy; Neanderthal; Mind Catcher), here he makes skilled use of his four decades as a New York Times reporter, editor, and correspondent. Wit and sarcasm show in the insider anecdotes, the jabs at editors, even in characters' names. A Murdoch-like empire builder is named Moloch, and the publisher's twin sons are Rosen and Guilden. It's a lot of fun with melodramatic twists all arising from a really bad lede. Recommended for public and academic collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ3/1/08.]
—Roland Person
School Library Journal
Adult/High School
This fast-paced whodunit entertains on several levels. A domineering, powerful, spiteful editor of a major national newspaper is found murdered with the same spike in his chest that he used to kill reporters' stories. A young, single, clever female detective teams up with a young, single, clever male reporter to solve the case. The evidence points to a multitude of suspects. Then another victim is found dead, and then, still another. Each time, the method of murder is more gruesome, and more telling. Obviously, the murderer (murderers?) is sending a message, but exactly what that message is remains elusive. The suspense mounts, and most readers will remain puzzled to the end. In addition to these elements of a traditional mystery, readers are treated to an inside look at a rapidly changing, and some would say dying, profession of print journalism. With considerable attention to detail, Darnton portrays the key players in this transformation: the resentful old guard, the clueless publisher, the aggressive career builders, the talented but unappreciated reporters, the self-centered columnists, and the ruthless international media tycoon. With abundant wit and panache, the author navigates his way between the rising cliffs of cynicism and romanticism to arrive at some semblance of truth concerning this not-yet-expired institution in our society. The daily newspaper is still alive in America, even if several newspaper workers are dead all over in Darnton's entertaining and enlightening tale.-Robert Saunderson, Berkeley Public Library, CA