Rick Geary
New Brunswick, New Jersey, Thursday, September 14, 1922. Reverend Hall and Mrs. Eleanor Mills take a stroll in the town’s park in the evening. Shots are heard. 2 days later, their bodies are found laying on the ground very neatly next to each other with her hand on his thigh, love letters strewn around them, the scarf on her neck covering up the deep bloody slit in it. Reverend Hall, himself married, was in an open secret of an affair with Mrs. Mills, a married woman of his choir.
The perfect ingredients for a juicy scandal and fascinating investigation which the nation’s press hungrily devours. Alas, no clues or evidence are sufficient to make an indictment stick. Was it suicide? A jealous rival? The case reopens again 4 years later as new information is brought to light, indicting the reverend’s wife but she is an upstanding member of her community, denying to the last that her husband had any affair…
REVIEWS:
"As usual, he proves to be an adept and thoroughly engrossing storyteller and Lovers’ Lane is another excellent entry in this rather admittedly macabre series."
-Chris Mautner, Robot 6, Comic Book Resources
"Another gem! This double-murder of an adulterous couple set suburban New Brunswick, N.J., all atwitter with saucy speculation in 1922 -- and it has the same effect today."
-Andrew Smith, Minneapolis Star Tribune/Scripps Howard News Service
"The perfect story for our uncertain times, one involving illicit romance, death, finger-pointing, sex leading to scandal, and no solid answers to stand on."
-Comics Worth Reading
"Geary is probably one of the three or four most talented and accomplished North American cartoonists alive today… The delight in Geary’s ongoing investigations into some of the weirdest murders in history is seeing how he gathers his facts, and how he lays them out for us, and the little touches he injects along the way that add gravity, legitimacy and often whimsy to his reflections on the darkest of all human impulses."
-Alan David Doane, Trouble With Comics
"He uses his detached style to get at something essential in the story he’s telling, contrasting his placid portraiture with the roiling passions just under the surface…"
-The Onion AV Club
"In my search for bad love gone worse, Lovers' Lane delivers. More a true crime graphic novel than a romance comic, it's pretty salacious, even with an affair at the center of it all. In fact, that's the tamest part of the story and, even as a '20s story going up against the horrors of today's modern news, the tale is still pretty jarring."
-Playback:stl
"A great series of books and this latest was fascinating. What I love about this book and in truth all of Geary’s books in this series is his fair minded telling of the tale. While he may lead the reader towards a solution he leaves it to the reader to draw conclusions from the facts as we know them."
-Crimespree
"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."
- Publishers Weekly
6x9, 80pp., B&W jacketed hardcover, $15.99
ISBN 9781561636280