Opinion Columnists
Email
Print
Kill the Editors
New York Times veteran scoops aspiring mystery writers, darn it!
John Darnton’s novel captures newsrooms past and present.
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: August 17, 2008
Darn that John Darnton.
It's not just that he wrote the book I had long wanted to write. Making matters worse, he also did a terrific job of it.
I knew as soon as I tore into the package and lifted out this particular review-copy book that somebody had actually done what I'd only fantasized about for years. The title is perfect, playing on an old joke: Black and White and Dead All Over. And if that's not enough, the multiple-deck headline on the "newspaper" pictured on the novel's jacket pretty much says it all:
EDITOR SLAIN IN NEWSROOM
PAPER IN TURMOIL
Body Found in Pool of Blood
Too Many Suspects
Yes, Darnton has written a murder mystery set at a newspaper, with an editor as the (first) victim and a newsroom full of people with means, opportunity and -- especially -- motive. It doesn't get much better than that. Time and again during my lifetime working for newspapers, I've dreamed of writing just such a novel. What fun it would be to kill -- figuratively, on the printed page only, of course -- that overbearing editor or obnoxious reporter or money-grubbing bean counter in the big office. (Note to any current colleagues reading this: As imaginary victims, I mean people I worked for or with long ago only, of course, at a newspaper far, far away.)
I'm sure I'm far from the only veteran newspaper employee who's had similar aspirations. Most people who start out as newspaper reporters do so at least in part because we like to write and figure that reporting is a way to earn a living (to use the term loosely) doing so until we get around to writing that great American novel. And most of us quickly learn that being a newspaper reporter is so demanding and draining that the last thing we want to do when we have a few spare waking moments is more writing. If we really wanted to write fiction, we should have taken day jobs as mail carriers or waitresses or just about anything that did not involve writing.
So we scale down a little and think about the book we'll write someday. And, after a few years in the business, the idea of a murder mystery set in the newsroom gets more and more intriguing. It's not just that newspapers have an abundance of annoying people working in stressful situations. It's also that newsrooms are colorful settings with plenty of odd characters who enrich a story even as they constitute a long list of credible suspects.
Today's newsrooms aren't as colorful as those of 30 or 40 years ago, of course. They're eerily quiet places, without the clicking and bells of the teletype machines, the clacking of the manual typewriters, the whooshing of the pneumatic tubes… Gone, too, are the old-timers with bottles and racy photos off the AP wire in their bottom desk drawers. Newsrooms are even smoke-free now.
But, despite the more sterile atmosphere, today's newsrooms still tend to attract more than their share of oddball and interesting characters. And as the industry struggles and staffs are downsized, there's still ample stress and tension that could spawn a murder.
So, despite being envious because he's actually written the book I meant to write, I took Darnton's novel along on my recent vacation. There were plenty of reasons to expect it to be entertaining. I'd loved his previous novel, The Darwin Conspiracy. And the jacket told me he's worked for 40 years as a reporter, editor and foreign correspondent for The New York Times, so the details should be authentic. Then too, I love a good mystery.
Darnton's book far exceeded my expectations. He included enough older reporters and editors with their war stories to convey a good idea of the glory days of newspaper journalism. He included enough of today's stresses and strains of the Internet age to give a good idea of what it's like to work in what's become a moribund business. He gets it all right.
His murder plot is clever, the murders fiendishly so, and there's adequate danger for fans of the sort of mystery that focuses more on people and settings and less on violence and gore.
What really made me love Black and White and Dead All Over was that despite -- or maybe because of, as in gallows humor -- the murders and the sad state of the newspaper industry, this book is laugh-out-loud funny.
I can't really be mad at John Darnton, and maybe I shouldn't. His newspaper murder mystery is so good that it ought to inspire a whole sub-genre. Maybe I can kill off a few editors yet. On paper, of course.
Linda Brinson is the Journal's editorial-page editor. She can be reached at lbrinson@wsjournal.com.
Email
Print
ADVERTISEMENT
N.C. Politics
Federal Politics
Advertisement
