For a murder story, this really revolved around the newspapers of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. The murder itself was horrific - boys found a torso floating in the river. Shortly thereafter, while hunting for blueberries, another boy finds the limbs of the body. The head isn't with either packets of the body, leaving a mystery of not only who the man is, but also why he was killed.

The newspapers have a field day conducting their own investigations, sometimes leading the police around with their speculations which might turn out to be true.

Written mostly from the actual newspaper publications of the time, this is a bombastic story and fascinating from that point of view alone. The war between the newspapers - not just Hearst's and Pulitzer's, but each newspaper trying to keep their readers enthralled enough to keep buying - and advertisers to keep spending money - is as compelling as the murder mystery itself.