Tri-X, Ink and Blood is a memoir of the late Chicago journalist, photographer, and writer Denny Johnson. The book, which was compiled and edited by his son Jeffery C. Johnson, uses the pieces of Denny’s unfinished memoir, entitled Heroes and Villains (2003), and builds on it with original photos, interviews and contextual information.

The story that is told is a peculiar tale that began in the 1950’s as a boy working at his father’s small Chicago-area newspaper office in Brookfield, IL. to the center of the Tabloid world at the National Enquirer in Lantana, Florida in the 1990’s. It was a dream come true, from suburban to national, until the reality became an albatross around his neck in an increasingly changing industry.

Along the way Denny knew and met assorted characters including Chicago area mobsters, corrupt politicians, journalists, and everyday people. Many of the characters, from Chicago to Lantana and beyond are here and Denny shares his personal accounts of many of them.

This is a memoir in fragments, and while no memoir is complete at defining a life, hopefully through these pieces Denny Johnson and his work will become real in some way.