Blood & Ink
The Scandalous Jazz Age Double Murder That Hooked America on True Crime
by Joe Pompeo
Pub Date 13 Sep 2022 | Archive Date 08 Nov 2022
William Morrow
History | Nonfiction (Adult) | True Crime
I am reviewing copy of Blood & Ink through William Morrow and Netgalley:
On a warm but partly cloudy mid morning day on September.16.1922, Pearl Bahmer and Ray Scneider found the bodies of Reverend Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills 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 the Reverend Edward Hall who was 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 local authorities failed to secure any indictments, it took a 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.
I give Blood and Ink five out of five stars!
Happy Reading!
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