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Blood & Ink: 'the Scandalous Jazz Age Double Murder That Hooked America on True Crime
Vanity Fair's Joe Pompeo investigates the notorious 1922 double murder of a high-society minister and his secret mistress, a Jazz Age mega-crime that propelled tabloid news in the 20th century.
On September 16, 1922, the bodies of Reverend Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills were found beneath a crabapple tree on an abandoned farm outside of New Brunswick, New Jersey. The killer had arranged the bodies in a pose conveying intimacy.
The murder of Hall, a prominent clergyman whose wife, Frances Hall, was a proud heiress with illustrious ancestors and ties to the Johnson & Johnson dynasty, would have made headlines on its own. But when authorities identified Eleanor Mills as a choir singer from his church married to the church sexton, the story shocked locals and sent the scandal ricocheting around the country, fueling the nascent tabloid industry. This provincial double murder on a lonely lover's lane would soon become one of the most famous killings in American history--a veritable crime of the century.
The bumbling local authorities failed to secure any indictments, however, and it took a swashbuckling crusade by the editor of a circulation-hungry Hearst tabloid to revive the case and bring it to trial at last.
Blood & Ink freshly chronicles what remains one of the most electrifying but forgotten murder mysteries in U.S. history. It also traces the birth of American tabloid journalism, pandering to the masses with sordid tales of love, sex, money, and murder.
On September 16, 1922, the bodies of Reverend Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills were found beneath a crabapple tree on an abandoned farm outside of New Brunswick, New Jersey. The killer had arranged the bodies in a pose conveying intimacy.
The murder of Hall, a prominent clergyman whose wife, Frances Hall, was a proud heiress with illustrious ancestors and ties to the Johnson & Johnson dynasty, would have made headlines on its own. But when authorities identified Eleanor Mills as a choir singer from his church married to the church sexton, the story shocked locals and sent the scandal ricocheting around the country, fueling the nascent tabloid industry. This provincial double murder on a lonely lover's lane would soon become one of the most famous killings in American history--a veritable crime of the century.
The bumbling local authorities failed to secure any indictments, however, and it took a swashbuckling crusade by the editor of a circulation-hungry Hearst tabloid to revive the case and bring it to trial at last.
Blood & Ink freshly chronicles what remains one of the most electrifying but forgotten murder mysteries in U.S. history. It also traces the birth of American tabloid journalism, pandering to the masses with sordid tales of love, sex, money, and murder.
352 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 13, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 206 reviews
June 27, 2023
I love Historical True Crime. Especially True Crime from the 1920's. Blood and Ink tells the story of a 1922 double murder involving a married church Reverend and the church's choir singer. This book is also about the early years of tabloid journalism.
If you think the tabloids and other newspapers are bad today then you need to read about how the papers handled things 100 years. The case is unsolved but it's pretty clear who the killer or killers were. Blood and Ink is a well researched and fun read. It's not a dry Historical book. This book read more like a Thriller than Nonfiction.
If you like a little History with your True Crime than I can't recommend this book more.
If you think the tabloids and other newspapers are bad today then you need to read about how the papers handled things 100 years. The case is unsolved but it's pretty clear who the killer or killers were. Blood and Ink is a well researched and fun read. It's not a dry Historical book. This book read more like a Thriller than Nonfiction.
If you like a little History with your True Crime than I can't recommend this book more.
September 28, 2022
Reverend Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills were murdered in New Jersey in 1922, bodies found laid out under a crabapple tree. Yes, they were having an affair. The gruesome crime scene was trampled by police and thrill seekers rendering it useless in providing any viable evidence.
Since both were married Hall’s wife and her brothers were suspects and eventually went to trial some four years after the crime. Mill’s husband was also a suspect but never went to trial.
Numerous others also came under suspicion but with the totally inept police work and the suggestion that some were paid off not to investigate too closely, not to mention those ‘witnesses’ who came forward hoping for their name to appear in the papers - the case stalled.
The author investigates this case having access to long lost documents and presents more than one possibility of what really happened. His research is impressive. The case remains unsolved to this day.
This murder brought about the birth of the tabloid newspaper industry which was solely interested in salacious headlines, the more graphic the better, to entice readers as there was a newspaper war on going for readership at the time.
Phil Payne at only 29-years old had already made a name for himself as an editor of the tabloid rag(s) and found no stunt too outrageous to print to engage readers. The Hall/Mills murder was excellent fodder for Payne and he was happy to stir up whatever crazy stories he could since he had the idea he could solve the crime but really it was all in order to sell his paper.
For true crime aficionados this is a knock-out read with enough twists to turn your head.
Since both were married Hall’s wife and her brothers were suspects and eventually went to trial some four years after the crime. Mill’s husband was also a suspect but never went to trial.
Numerous others also came under suspicion but with the totally inept police work and the suggestion that some were paid off not to investigate too closely, not to mention those ‘witnesses’ who came forward hoping for their name to appear in the papers - the case stalled.
The author investigates this case having access to long lost documents and presents more than one possibility of what really happened. His research is impressive. The case remains unsolved to this day.
This murder brought about the birth of the tabloid newspaper industry which was solely interested in salacious headlines, the more graphic the better, to entice readers as there was a newspaper war on going for readership at the time.
Phil Payne at only 29-years old had already made a name for himself as an editor of the tabloid rag(s) and found no stunt too outrageous to print to engage readers. The Hall/Mills murder was excellent fodder for Payne and he was happy to stir up whatever crazy stories he could since he had the idea he could solve the crime but really it was all in order to sell his paper.
For true crime aficionados this is a knock-out read with enough twists to turn your head.
September 14, 2022
This is an interesting look at the Hall-Mills murders from way back in 1922. There is much intrigue involved in the case, as both parties were married, and Hall was a well-known minister. It also delves into the area newspapers, and how this case become nationwide news because it was so notorious for the times.
February 6, 2023
Sometimes the problem with these kind of "lost chapter in history" books is that the author will take a really good story and gin up the details to make it into a "mind-blowing" one. Some stories really do build and build in suspense, and those make great books. But the Hall-Mills murders really doesn't have a lot of wild twists, or shocking revelations. It's just a really, really interesting story.
So the reason this book works so well is that Pompeo just lets it all stream out the way you would have learned it all as it was happening. He lets the story tell itself - the events, the way the events were seen and told and re-told at various stages of the story, the theories, the rumors, and the trial. Pompeo took a whole lot of information and laid it out in a way that the reader just gets to enjoy it all as it happens.
Pompeo is great at setting a scene - the atmosphere and details, but also the context of why things are important, and how people at the time would have viewed things. Always fun to slide back in time and immerse yourself into a story that was so big at the time but forgotten now.
I'm a sucker for great courtroom scenes and this book has a really good trial.
Don't let the gimmicky title throw you off. It's a really good book (though there's a chapter about transatlantic flight that I could have done without).
Be careful - there are some reviews on Goodreads that give away way too many plot points. It's better not to read anything about the case ahead of time.
So the reason this book works so well is that Pompeo just lets it all stream out the way you would have learned it all as it was happening. He lets the story tell itself - the events, the way the events were seen and told and re-told at various stages of the story, the theories, the rumors, and the trial. Pompeo took a whole lot of information and laid it out in a way that the reader just gets to enjoy it all as it happens.
Pompeo is great at setting a scene - the atmosphere and details, but also the context of why things are important, and how people at the time would have viewed things. Always fun to slide back in time and immerse yourself into a story that was so big at the time but forgotten now.
I'm a sucker for great courtroom scenes and this book has a really good trial.
Don't let the gimmicky title throw you off. It's a really good book (though there's a chapter about transatlantic flight that I could have done without).
Be careful - there are some reviews on Goodreads that give away way too many plot points. It's better not to read anything about the case ahead of time.
November 1, 2022
This book was just ok. I was expecting it to be much more exciting as the title would lead one to believe. It started out quite promising but I feel it kind of lost its way halfway through. There were many characters involved, making it hard to keep everyone straight and I found it a bit boring. I feel this could have been 100 pages shorter...
April 19, 2023
The premise was interesting so I gave this a try but it really failed to reel me in. Maybe it’s because the author decided to tie an unsolved double murder with the begin of the gossip newsrag age.
The book starts off well and the murder is presented quickly, and confusingly, as a lot of locals were somehow being inserted into the speculations running amok. We find a local minister and a member of the choir are having an affair without concern for who they might hurt. The priest is shot once, but the woman is shot 3 times in the head, her head nearly cut off from a postmortem slash from ear to ear and her tongue was missing.
Oddly enough, the theories presented in the book focus more on who wanted the priest dead rather than who the poor woman had hating her so much damage to her, especially given the second bullet should have been the fatal wound.
And some of the theories are bonkers. Being that this is the 1920s and the murders taking place at night on a little dirt lane where lovers would go for a bit of canoodling under the moonlight, it seems a lot of the town was in and around the lane at the time of the murder (with conflicting stories as to what they saw/heard). Many more townsfolk managed to get there before the police even managed to get photos or sketches taken. The two lovers posed underneath a crabapple tree were the talk of the town, and trophy hunters had no problem snagging mementos, including stripping the poor tree of completely free of leaves and small branches.
The newly-emerging tabloids get involved and it’s suddenly a race to see which New York gossip paper will pull ahead in their sales figures.
The various players in the upcoming court drama are varied- and much of the testimony strains credibility, but, for a book claiming to be thorough about the double murder, the focus is primarily on everyone orbiting the adulterous couple and the locals involved.
The portion of the book directly about the homicides is over quickly and the various testimonies and theories take over, with a lot of dry insertions about the journalists involved. The lead journalist has an entire chunk of the book about what happened to him afterwards and his untimely death (rather stupid and also not really seeming important to the story in itself). The third section is the author talking about a couple deathbed clues passed around some 40 years later and which reporter covered those.
I was left wondering how can I only be 80% through the book when the author then inserted themselves: how they became interested, their own search for documents and tracking down where/how some of the key witnesses died, etc.
The author speculates a lot and relies on the speculations of others and even mentions “well this person fell of the face of the earth” at one point only to later point out “oh, no, here’s her death date and a little bit more, but I can’t find any family”. Which is funny, because a single Google search gave me the name of a nephew who has a website to the memory of this person and their known involvement.
The journalism asides of who worked where and moved to other papers and so on were of no interest to me and I began to have a hard time keeping them straight as some would get a single mention “this woman was mentored by this person” and then neither would be mentioned again or maybe just once more, pages later after I’d have forgotten them.
Too much pointless name-dropping just to show how there were female lawyers and journalists during the time. Our main journalist, however, referred to time and again was, of course, a man. I believe I learned more about his life alone than I did about the two murder victims!
Fairly dry, rambles around, but hey, I learned something about an old homicide investigation that eventually grew a little clearer with an additional online searching.
I read this on Kindle, so the photos only popped up once for some odd reason and then stopped almost as quickly. Pretty sure the formatting did not show me everything that was included.
Given how plodding this was, it’s not a surprise that someone like myself would have never known about the crime, as apparently the author, who claims that this is the most in-depth and researched about the crime”, admits the last book written on the subject was published in 1999.
The book starts off well and the murder is presented quickly, and confusingly, as a lot of locals were somehow being inserted into the speculations running amok. We find a local minister and a member of the choir are having an affair without concern for who they might hurt. The priest is shot once, but the woman is shot 3 times in the head, her head nearly cut off from a postmortem slash from ear to ear and her tongue was missing.
Oddly enough, the theories presented in the book focus more on who wanted the priest dead rather than who the poor woman had hating her so much damage to her, especially given the second bullet should have been the fatal wound.
And some of the theories are bonkers. Being that this is the 1920s and the murders taking place at night on a little dirt lane where lovers would go for a bit of canoodling under the moonlight, it seems a lot of the town was in and around the lane at the time of the murder (with conflicting stories as to what they saw/heard). Many more townsfolk managed to get there before the police even managed to get photos or sketches taken. The two lovers posed underneath a crabapple tree were the talk of the town, and trophy hunters had no problem snagging mementos, including stripping the poor tree of completely free of leaves and small branches.
The newly-emerging tabloids get involved and it’s suddenly a race to see which New York gossip paper will pull ahead in their sales figures.
The various players in the upcoming court drama are varied- and much of the testimony strains credibility, but, for a book claiming to be thorough about the double murder, the focus is primarily on everyone orbiting the adulterous couple and the locals involved.
The portion of the book directly about the homicides is over quickly and the various testimonies and theories take over, with a lot of dry insertions about the journalists involved. The lead journalist has an entire chunk of the book about what happened to him afterwards and his untimely death (rather stupid and also not really seeming important to the story in itself). The third section is the author talking about a couple deathbed clues passed around some 40 years later and which reporter covered those.
I was left wondering how can I only be 80% through the book when the author then inserted themselves: how they became interested, their own search for documents and tracking down where/how some of the key witnesses died, etc.
The author speculates a lot and relies on the speculations of others and even mentions “well this person fell of the face of the earth” at one point only to later point out “oh, no, here’s her death date and a little bit more, but I can’t find any family”. Which is funny, because a single Google search gave me the name of a nephew who has a website to the memory of this person and their known involvement.
The journalism asides of who worked where and moved to other papers and so on were of no interest to me and I began to have a hard time keeping them straight as some would get a single mention “this woman was mentored by this person” and then neither would be mentioned again or maybe just once more, pages later after I’d have forgotten them.
Too much pointless name-dropping just to show how there were female lawyers and journalists during the time. Our main journalist, however, referred to time and again was, of course, a man. I believe I learned more about his life alone than I did about the two murder victims!
Fairly dry, rambles around, but hey, I learned something about an old homicide investigation that eventually grew a little clearer with an additional online searching.
I read this on Kindle, so the photos only popped up once for some odd reason and then stopped almost as quickly. Pretty sure the formatting did not show me everything that was included.
Given how plodding this was, it’s not a surprise that someone like myself would have never known about the crime, as apparently the author, who claims that this is the most in-depth and researched about the crime”, admits the last book written on the subject was published in 1999.
January 20, 2023
Minister and choir singer are found gruesomely murdered, with the bodies staged and arranged. Newspapers, police, and courts try to work closely together to unravel the mystery, in ways that are discouraged or illegal now (and in some cases were illegal then).
This true-crime case has everything:
• a double murder
• a not-that-secret love affair
• an heiress suspect
• wealth and poverty side by side
• blatant hypocrisy (the two murdered people used to pass each other love notes inside a Bible)
• a secret love nest
• 40 grand in a safe deposit box—where did it come from? What was it for?
• a murder victim who taunted her husband by saying "Follow me and find out" on the night of the murders
• missing persons who went unreported for long periods
• witnesses and alleged witnesses who had their own sins and hypocrisies to cover up
• and a "Pig Woman" riding her mule Jenny at midnight. (The woman described Jenny as "sagacious.") The Pig Woman's own mother repeatedly called her a liar in open court, by the way.
I'm glad a Vanity Fair reporter wrote this book because VF understands this type of tawdriness. Minus one star for the chapter on transatlantic flight, which to me wasn't related closely enough to the murder case and seemed like padding.
This true-crime case has everything:
• a double murder
• a not-that-secret love affair
• an heiress suspect
• wealth and poverty side by side
• blatant hypocrisy (the two murdered people used to pass each other love notes inside a Bible)
• a secret love nest
• 40 grand in a safe deposit box—where did it come from? What was it for?
• a murder victim who taunted her husband by saying "Follow me and find out" on the night of the murders
• missing persons who went unreported for long periods
• witnesses and alleged witnesses who had their own sins and hypocrisies to cover up
• and a "Pig Woman" riding her mule Jenny at midnight. (The woman described Jenny as "sagacious.") The Pig Woman's own mother repeatedly called her a liar in open court, by the way.
I'm glad a Vanity Fair reporter wrote this book because VF understands this type of tawdriness. Minus one star for the chapter on transatlantic flight, which to me wasn't related closely enough to the murder case and seemed like padding.
June 9, 2022
This book was absolutely terrific. Joe Pompeo is the senior media correspondent for Vanity Fair. He has written an array of excellent articles for a wide variety of publications. This is his first book. I was primed to find it a hard slog. Reading about media history is not my favorite and I am so familiar with this unsolved case that I expected to be very bored. Worst of all, I would be reading a galley on a laptop. But no, it is a humdinger that races you along far into the night robbing you of sleep. The Hall Mills murder is definitely the dark side but makes a really appropriate case study for the evolution of tabloids and sensationalist media. For me the greatest value of the book may be that it illuminates how we arrived at the state of distrust in the Fourth Estate (fake news anyone?) which is so critical to a functioning of our democracy. It shines a light on the operation of news gathering and the consequences of media competition. As a librarian, I expect this book to be a best seller that provides libraries as purveyors of education with a painless, enjoyable vehicle for our patrons to understand how media has become so politicized.
September 19, 2022
I am a sucker for true crime books and for books set in the interwar era. Blood & Ink fills the bill in both instances. Joe Pompeo lays out the story of the murder of the Rev. Edward Hall and his mistress Eleanor Mills. The two were found under a crabapple tree on an abandoned New Jersey farm near New Brunswick NJ in September 1922. The police did not solve it then and a hundred years later the murder remains very much a mystery. Much, however, can be said about how events played out.
Hall's wife, Frances, is a frumpy heiress decended from wealth and of blue blood. The two live with her brother, Willie, portrayed in the book as a sort of eccentric bachelor who loved to hang around the local fire house and the local Hungarian community. Another brother, Henry, lives at the shore. Frances and the rest of the family claim not to have known about the affair. So too, Jim Mills, Eleanor's husband. Perhaps the main charachter in this book is the nascent tabloid press. The Daily News' wunderkind editor Phil Payne has pioneered this format. He sees skyrocketing circulation numbers resulting from this story and immediately sends a young female reporter to cover it. The rest of the press of course follows suit. Payne stops at nothing to pursue this this tale. including staging a fake seance to trick Jim Mills into confessing. Prosecutors too sense the opportunity to boost their career and soon a grand jury is empaneled. The air goes out of the story though when the case goes cold and the grand jury returns a no bill.
Four years later, now at a new newspaper, the Globe, Phil Payne once again needs to boost circulation and his private investigators help him gin up new evidence to have another run at a murder trial Frances and her brothers are this time indicted and two of the three are put on trial. Central to the trial is the testimony of " the pig farmer"Jane Gibson who, in varying accounts over the years, says that she witnessed the murders while chasing corn thieves aboard her mule Jenny.
This is as colorful set of charachters as you might find in a Damon Runyon story and Runyon does in fact report on the trial. The account has the flavor of Ben Hecht's Front Page and, alhough we never get a definitive answer to who killed the pair, that is almost beside the point. This is an entertaining story.
There is though a larger point to be made. While it is true that this murder took place when America was a very different place, this story holds up a mirror to our own time. The seeds of shows like 48 Hours, Dateline, 20/20, and the rest were planted here. So too was the art of politicians playing to the news cycle and the media focus on the sensational rather than the important. Pompeo deserves praise for making this a parallel story to that of the murder mystery.
I would like to thank HarperCollins and Netgalley for an ARC of this book in turn for an honest review
Hall's wife, Frances, is a frumpy heiress decended from wealth and of blue blood. The two live with her brother, Willie, portrayed in the book as a sort of eccentric bachelor who loved to hang around the local fire house and the local Hungarian community. Another brother, Henry, lives at the shore. Frances and the rest of the family claim not to have known about the affair. So too, Jim Mills, Eleanor's husband. Perhaps the main charachter in this book is the nascent tabloid press. The Daily News' wunderkind editor Phil Payne has pioneered this format. He sees skyrocketing circulation numbers resulting from this story and immediately sends a young female reporter to cover it. The rest of the press of course follows suit. Payne stops at nothing to pursue this this tale. including staging a fake seance to trick Jim Mills into confessing. Prosecutors too sense the opportunity to boost their career and soon a grand jury is empaneled. The air goes out of the story though when the case goes cold and the grand jury returns a no bill.
Four years later, now at a new newspaper, the Globe, Phil Payne once again needs to boost circulation and his private investigators help him gin up new evidence to have another run at a murder trial Frances and her brothers are this time indicted and two of the three are put on trial. Central to the trial is the testimony of " the pig farmer"Jane Gibson who, in varying accounts over the years, says that she witnessed the murders while chasing corn thieves aboard her mule Jenny.
This is as colorful set of charachters as you might find in a Damon Runyon story and Runyon does in fact report on the trial. The account has the flavor of Ben Hecht's Front Page and, alhough we never get a definitive answer to who killed the pair, that is almost beside the point. This is an entertaining story.
There is though a larger point to be made. While it is true that this murder took place when America was a very different place, this story holds up a mirror to our own time. The seeds of shows like 48 Hours, Dateline, 20/20, and the rest were planted here. So too was the art of politicians playing to the news cycle and the media focus on the sensational rather than the important. Pompeo deserves praise for making this a parallel story to that of the murder mystery.
I would like to thank HarperCollins and Netgalley for an ARC of this book in turn for an honest review
April 26, 2025
This was so fascinating. I’m a sucker for anything 20s and most true crime, so this was perfect for me. All of the twists and turns and weird circumstances around this case were wild. So many different suspects and people acting oddly really made for a quick read. I did get a little mixed up with who some people were (too many Henrys among others), but that’s a me issue.
I also liked learning more about the beginnings of tabloids in the early 20th century. All the little cameos of people I’ve read or otherwise heard of were fun too.
I listened to the audiobook of the published version, but read along with my advance copy from NetGalley and there were some interesting differences in the epilogue. A section related to Trump and tabloids was excised entirely. A section related to another theory was added.
Really interesting book that I think would appeal to a number of different audiences.
I also liked learning more about the beginnings of tabloids in the early 20th century. All the little cameos of people I’ve read or otherwise heard of were fun too.
I listened to the audiobook of the published version, but read along with my advance copy from NetGalley and there were some interesting differences in the epilogue. A section related to Trump and tabloids was excised entirely. A section related to another theory was added.
Really interesting book that I think would appeal to a number of different audiences.
December 22, 2022
Not really a true crime book, but rather, a brief history of tabloid journalism with a bit of a murder mystery woven in ... The tabloid bit is on the boring side and the murder mystery part is flat and wanting ... hard to recommend
February 21, 2024
Audiobook read by Robert Petkoff
10:04:22
Fascinating story about a hundred year old unsolved double murder and the first media and courtroom circus that followed.
This is overly full of supporting characters and side stories making it tough to keep track of everyone to the point of losing interest in multiple places.
The audiobook is fun and plays out almost like an old radio mystery show - Petkoff gets into the voices the further he gets in the book.
Overall this is well researched and interesting but probably a bit too long and as Pompeo even admits, there's no satisfying ending.
10:04:22
Fascinating story about a hundred year old unsolved double murder and the first media and courtroom circus that followed.
This is overly full of supporting characters and side stories making it tough to keep track of everyone to the point of losing interest in multiple places.
The audiobook is fun and plays out almost like an old radio mystery show - Petkoff gets into the voices the further he gets in the book.
Overall this is well researched and interesting but probably a bit too long and as Pompeo even admits, there's no satisfying ending.
November 22, 2022
This book is about the double murder of a couple married to other people having an affair during the jazz age. This is when the tabloid was created and this is really the first true crime case to capture America. In many ways a negative turn for our country. I found that aspect to be interesting to the book.
How did this book find me? I somehow saw there was an event where he was talking. I had requested the book from my library and decided to give it a read.
How did this book find me? I somehow saw there was an event where he was talking. I had requested the book from my library and decided to give it a read.
September 16, 2022
A fast paced book with loads of characters from all over the spectrum of income and social level of society in the 1920s. While the book centers around who killed a prominent minister and a member of the choir from his church, it shows the birth of the tabloid newspaper and how their influence and competition among these players made true crime a most popular form of entertainment. I was fascinated by the author’s style of writing—heavy descriptive sentences that flowed and pushes the reader to want to read faster to keep up with the words on the pages. It is not boring in the least. Is there one murderer or more; was it from the two families of the victims or a random killing? Many people have their suspicions and are willing to testify in the crime of the century. Famous publishers are involved, including William Randolph Hearst, and the length that they and their journalists are willing to go to try to find the murderer but, more importantly to them, how to raise their ratings and subscription levels, This book will appeal to a wide range of readers: true crime; journalism students and the study of the Fourth Estate and the public’s reactions to fake news plus business school classes in ethics. The research with which the author dealt cannot be understated. Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for an ARC; this is my honest review.
June 29, 2023
"On September 16, 1922, the bodies of Reverend Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills were found beneath a crabapple tree on an abandoned farm outside of New Brunswick, New Jersey." Were they having an affair? More than likely. Were their spouses happy to know/hear about it? Naw...most spouses aren't. But who killed these two people? Good question. We still don't know for sure (although plenty of speculations and evidence point to the probable person/s). This is frustratingly a cold case. And that, of course, ends up feeling like an awful cliffhanger. Because 101 years later, chances of solving it are slim.
I went back and forth, in Blood & Ink, between being entranced with the case and just being frustrated with the results and the writing. It felt like the author added in a bunch of extra details for no other reason than to fill pages. I would have been satisfied if this true crime book had been cut by 50 pages or something. Definitely an intriguing case but if you're looking for closure in your true crime books, don't read this one!
I went back and forth, in Blood & Ink, between being entranced with the case and just being frustrated with the results and the writing. It felt like the author added in a bunch of extra details for no other reason than to fill pages. I would have been satisfied if this true crime book had been cut by 50 pages or something. Definitely an intriguing case but if you're looking for closure in your true crime books, don't read this one!
March 10, 2023
Wow, this one was a snoozer. I love history and true crime and gave up half way through. It was meandering and boring. Not recommended.
August 14, 2024
3.49 stars, rounded down to 3
This book is almost 2 books in one. The first book is about the murder of a likable reverend and one of the church's choir members and his not-so-secret mistress. Hall and Mills were found arranged beneath a tree on the outskirts of town. While the police had little in forensics at this time, the crime scene was trampled on by the press and bystanders and little good information was obtained there. The minister's wife was a prominent woman with ties to the Johnson & Johnson family. The choir singer was married to the church sexton / janitor. It was a scandal involving social standing and money and sex. The other book deal more with tabloids - how they came to prominence and how their reporters were intimately involved with the police and the powerful. The scandalous murder becomes a 'crime of the century' thanks mostly to the tabloid press. The murder and trial was the more interesting part of the book. I found some parts a little long and somewhat confusing as there are so many players and names and they all started to run together. Nevertheless it was an interesting account of a murder that remains unsolved to this day.
Interesting quote:
At the time of the murders, the world had emerged from the throes of war, flu, death, and sacrifice. Those who survived were eager to let loose.
This book is almost 2 books in one. The first book is about the murder of a likable reverend and one of the church's choir members and his not-so-secret mistress. Hall and Mills were found arranged beneath a tree on the outskirts of town. While the police had little in forensics at this time, the crime scene was trampled on by the press and bystanders and little good information was obtained there. The minister's wife was a prominent woman with ties to the Johnson & Johnson family. The choir singer was married to the church sexton / janitor. It was a scandal involving social standing and money and sex. The other book deal more with tabloids - how they came to prominence and how their reporters were intimately involved with the police and the powerful. The scandalous murder becomes a 'crime of the century' thanks mostly to the tabloid press. The murder and trial was the more interesting part of the book. I found some parts a little long and somewhat confusing as there are so many players and names and they all started to run together. Nevertheless it was an interesting account of a murder that remains unsolved to this day.
Interesting quote:
At the time of the murders, the world had emerged from the throes of war, flu, death, and sacrifice. Those who survived were eager to let loose.
June 22, 2023
Edward Hall, Episcopal minister married to Frances, a wealthy high society woman, is having a secret affair with Eleanor Mills, a married woman who sings in the choir and spends much of her time on her "church work". They are found brutally murdered under a crab tree out in the countryside. All sounds quite salacious for 1922!
However, a great deal of this book focuses on the role the media played in this investigation. The author did a great deal of research on the investigation, the many publications going after this tantalizing story of the day, and the many people investigated as having played a part in this murder which remains unsolved to this day.
For me there was too much on the parts I wasn't interested in with the media of the day and not enough on the murder investigation. But it was a well-research, well-written book.
My thanks to Net Galley and William Morrow for an advanced copy of this e-book.
{NG kindle, Audible}
However, a great deal of this book focuses on the role the media played in this investigation. The author did a great deal of research on the investigation, the many publications going after this tantalizing story of the day, and the many people investigated as having played a part in this murder which remains unsolved to this day.
For me there was too much on the parts I wasn't interested in with the media of the day and not enough on the murder investigation. But it was a well-research, well-written book.
My thanks to Net Galley and William Morrow for an advanced copy of this e-book.
{NG kindle, Audible}
December 11, 2022
Blood and Ink is a good look at a specific true crime case, a double murder, in New Jersey during the early Roaring Twenties. The author does an excellent job at revealing the beginnings of tabloid news that began in that time period corresponding with the murders. Photography became as important as the juicy details, and the news spread quickly across the nation.
The murder victims, shot near New Brunswick New Jersey in 1922, were a middle-aged reverend and his younger attractive girlfriend who was a member of the church choir. Rumors of the murder spread so fast, there were hundreds of voyeurs on the murder site the same day, destroying much of the evidence. During part of the investigation, the reverend’s wife and her wealthy family were implicated as suspects. They were later put on trial for the murders, but were acquitted because of the lack of evidence.
The murder victims, shot near New Brunswick New Jersey in 1922, were a middle-aged reverend and his younger attractive girlfriend who was a member of the church choir. Rumors of the murder spread so fast, there were hundreds of voyeurs on the murder site the same day, destroying much of the evidence. During part of the investigation, the reverend’s wife and her wealthy family were implicated as suspects. They were later put on trial for the murders, but were acquitted because of the lack of evidence.
August 8, 2024
An unsolved mystery makes for a great basis for a book and this one is no exception - centered around a 1920s murder than remains unresolved to this day. In addition to all the lurid details of murder, this book also chronicles the interactions between the murder case and the press, each influencing the trajectory of the other. A fascinating book and I appreciated the author's concluded thoughts, as he attempts to give the best resolution to this case as possible.
January 3, 2025
Actually true to the genre, this historical true crime novel exceeded my expectations. I thoroughly enjoyed the way the author intertwined the crime and the story thereof with the rise of tabloid media and the overall importance and roll the tabloid played in this tragedy and its aftermath. The read was almost scholarly in its approach, but not pretentiously so, which offered an enjoyable atmosphere for the story to unfold. Masterful and engaging, this was a great book to get myself back into reading with after a way-too-long hiatus.
January 4, 2023
A fascinating attempt to blend journalism history and true crime. I don't know that it 100 percent worked--the prosecution of the crime is somehow both too boring and too complicated--and I wanted more interpretive work. But it was still fascinating, fast paced, and offered an interesting look at the tabloid journalism and the history of the crime beat.
November 10, 2023
A fascinating book that accomplishes two distinct but parallel goals. First, it is an in depth examination of the still unsolved 1922 double murder of a wealthy minister and his working class mistress, with all the requisite twists and turns of a classic whodunnit. Secondly, it is a look at how this case, and how it was covered, gave rise to the tabloid newspaper industry and changed media coverage forever. The author succeeds admirably on both counts.
December 21, 2022
Interesting history of tabloid journalism overlaid on a salacious 1920s murder mystery that helped them along.
February 25, 2023
3.5 stars
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September 30, 2023The book started out slow. Each chapter introducing a new person and telling their life story. Really picked up once the trial began.
December 29, 2023
True crime from the 1920s is probably my favorite time period to read about for the genre.
July 22, 2024
Quite the fascinating story, interesting history of tabloid journalism
February 23, 2023
285 p.
November 15, 2022
Interesting story about an historical true crime and the newspaper coverage of it. I was less interested in the history of news reporting than of the crime itself which accounts for 4 instead of 5 stars.
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