Entertainment, Books - Navy Times

‘Black & White’ jumps off the page

“Black & White and Dead All Over”

By John Darnton

Knopf, 351 pp.

$24.95

There’s an abundance of gallows humor in John Darnton’s new novel, “Black & White and Dead All Over,” that is appropriate for a murder mystery set in the modern-day killing fields of print journalism.

Drawing on his storied career at “The New York Times,” Darnton delivers a well-turned whodunit that reads like “The Front Page” with additional reporting by Evelyn Waugh and Agatha Christie.

The staff of the fictitious New York “Globe” (which bears more than a passing resemblance to the “Times”) finds itself with a bigger problem than declining advertising revenue, circulation and standards. A powerful and much-despised editor is lying dead in the middle of the newsroom, an old-fashioned story spike lodged in his back.

And there’s a long list of suspects populating the paper of record.

Even the hero Jude Hurley, the reporter assigned to the story, gets a hard look from NYPD detective Priscilla Bollingsworth. She must make her way through a thicket of internal intrigue, dangerous liaisons and scandals to get to the killer.

Darnton makes it easy for those who have even a passing knowledge of the history of newspapers to play the name game with his cast of characters.

An overindulgent reporter who sounds a lot like the “Times’” late, great Johnny Apple is named Jimmy Pomegranate. Edith Sawyer, who’s caught cutting ethical corners, could pass for Judith Miller. A boorish, competing media mogul from New Zealand, Lester Moloch, is the transparent incarnation of Australia’s Rupert Murdoch.

But this is no hatchet job. Like the Sunday “Times,” it’s a great read.