The title could easily refer to the current ailing state of the newspaper industry, a subject John Darnton does not ignore in his mordantly funny, dark comedy about a murderer who knocks off high-profile staff members at a prestigious New York daily.
That we’re firmly in “roman a clef” territory here is never in doubt. Darnton, author of the novels “Neanderthal” and “The Darwin Conspiracy,” spent 40 years as a reporter, editor and foreign correspondent for The New York Times, and anybody familiar with the Times staff will note plenty of similarities — many of them broad and hilarious — to real people.
This hugely entertaining book is a must for anyone working in the newspaper business or merely familiar with its foundering attempts to stay relevant in a multimedia, attention-span-challenged world. The insider tone may put off some readers — only journalists are going to get why it’s funny that a reporter’s dog is named TK — but overall Darnton’s sharp wit and considerable experience serve him well.
The first victim is, of course, an editor. Ask any reporter; he’ll tell you that such a scenario is likely, especially on deadline.
Feared assistant managing editor Theodore S. Ratnoff is found dead with an editor’s spike — an old-timer’s tool on which rejected stories were impaled — wedged in his chest. Ratnoff is generally considered an SOB, so the list of suspects is about as long as the one Hercule Poirot compiles in “Murder on the Orient Express”: Just about everybody in the building has a reason to want the man dead.
Reporter Jude Hurley (computer password: L-U-D-D- I-T-E) is assigned to cover the murder for the paper and soon joins forces with ambitious detective Priscilla Bollingsworth, formerly of the Upper East Side (a conceit that doesn’t quite work). Soon, there are other victims, each dispatched in a method crazier than the previous. Darnton clearly has been keeping up with his Carl Hiaasen.
Re-creating life in the profession is Darnton’s strength: the round-the-clock nature of the job; the boozy storytelling sessions; the anger over the dumbing-down of content; the frustrations of the New World Order, in which the website racks up 1.5 million hits a day while serious newspaper readership plummets.
And there is always the need to feed the beast, more complex now than ever. Jude “had had to write fifteen hundred words . . . and dash off a summary and feed the Web site and record a podcast and make a radio broadcast and wrestle the copy editor.”
Darnton leaves journalists with one pleasant thought: Newspapers are eternal. After all, bird cages need something at the bottom, and “how many other newspapers are used to wrap fish? That’s something the Internet can never do.” Good to know there’s some way left to be useful.
