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

True crime is a tricky genre-it’s tough to assemble all the facts, disparate as they maybe, into a coherent narrative - but it’s even tougher to make that narrative compelling. Pompey succeeds at the first but fails at the second. More of a recitation of the facts ( which are interesting) than a compelling story. Recommended as interesting but not a great read.

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.

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.

I love true crime in this book is no exception. This case is so interesting you would think it’s actually fiction but it’s not. A perfect book to lose your weekend with…

I was not expecting this book to read like a thriller, but I was pleasantly surprised. The writing flows so smoothly that it was so easy to be immersed in this book. Joe Pompeo really did his research and it showed. When you first encounter this book, you may assume it will be dry or boring due to it being a well-researched dive into a 1920s scandal, but I can promise you it is a fun ride.

I highly recommend this book for fans of history and true crime!

Terrific! I just finished Blood and Ink and it's 4:15am. I will be on the lookout for future books by Joe Pompeo - he is a natural writer of true crime and no doubt, other forms of nonfiction (he writes for Vanity Fair and other prominent periodicals). His writing pulls the reader along smoothly. The "characters" are vivid, the story is told with suspense, and boy, does he do his research. There are other books about this murder case and I have not read any of them. But I do feel comfortable in recommending this one very highly.

I finished this book in one day — a day when I was supposed to be working.

Blood & Ink has everything, absolutely everything, I want from a true crime book: objectivity, impartiality, and nitty-gritty primary source research. The author never resorts to teasing the reader with sleights of hand or hare-brained theories because the Hall-Mills murder itself provides enough twists, turns, and excitement to keep the pages turning. And the parallel story of New York City's developing tabloids and the role they played in the unraveling of the case — albeit not quite as thrilling as a double homicide featuring a preacher and his mistress — is fascinating in its own right. Blood & Ink is a double-barreled shotgun of a read.

Perhaps I am just not as interested in true crime as I used to be, but this true crime story didn't interest me at all.

I feel sure if I'd seen a hot-off-the-presses print copy of this title, I'd be giving it 5 stars. Some galleys come with images but this one did not and I missed, never having been to New Jersey unless we're counting the airport, having a map of the area where the murders took place and where the Halls and Mills lived as well as some grainy 100 year-old crime scene photos.
Quite possibly, I am being stingy and should give Pompeo that fifth star just for the exhaustive research he put into this book. He's done far more work putting this book together than any law enforcement officer ever did actually investigating the murders of Reverend Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills. In addition to probably giving himself asthma digging through decades of police reports and witness statements, the Vanity Fair writer has also produced a riveting history of the birth of tabloid reporting in the U.S. as well as the daring reporters, editors, and big time players (Hearst et al.) who pushed them to bring in the most sensational stories.
Please don't let my use of the words "research" and "history" lead you to believe this book is a dry read by any means. William Shakespeare would have been proud to have created this cast of characters. I could probably be persuaded to read a whole book just about Jane Gibson. This book will appeal to both true crime fans and history buffs alike.

Wow. Blood and Ink is a fast paced thriller that I could not put down. Murder, scandal, wealth and the "trial of the century" make this a fascinating study into the culture and historical moment that the murders occurred.

Extremely well researched and written this book should be at the top of your reading list.