Lovers' Lane
The Hall-Mills Mystery
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3.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
The perfect ingredients for a juicy scandal and fascinating investigation are presented in this masterful graphic novel retelling of an unsolved murder from the 1920s. On the evening of September 14, 1922, Reverend Edward Hall and Mrs. Eleanor Mills take a stroll in the New Brunswick town park. Shots are heard and two days later their bodies are found lying neatly next to each other, love letters strewn around them, and a scarf obscures the fact that Mrs. Mills' throat has been slit. The two had been involved in an affair and the press hungrily devours the story. No evidence is sufficient to lead to an indictment, so the mystery intensifies with conjecture: Was this a dual suicide? Was this perpetrated by a jealous rival? Four years later the case reopens due to new evidence indicting the reverend's wife, but she is an upstanding member of the community who vehemently denies that her husband ever had an affair. This is a tragic story told with beguiling relish and expert illustration in a distinctive style fitting of the era.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Two lifeless bodies, one belonging to Edward Hall, a local and well-liked minister, and the other to Eleanor Mills, a singer in his church's choir, are found in a park in a quiet New Jersey suburb on September 14, 1922. The circumstances surrounding the slaying are at first unknown, but the subsequent investigation uncovers a not-so-secret affair between the two victims and attracts an array of colorful witnesses with competing testimonies on what exactly happened that fateful night. Were Mr. Hall and Mrs. Mills victims of a stickup gone wrong, a case of mistaken identity, a scorned spouse, the Ku Klux Klan, or something else? In the latest in his acclaimed Treasury of XXth Century Murder series of causes c l bres, cartoonist Geary (The Lives of Sacco and Vanzetti) recounts the infamous unsolved lover's lane murder that rocked New Brunswick in the 1920s. By providing an objective account of the murder and tumultuous investigation, Geary introduces readers to the case and allows them to draw their own conclusions based on the known facts. And his clean, purely linear artwork is not only a delight to look at but serves the narrative in a near perfect union of pictures and words.
