Friday's Forgotten Books: The Bloody Spur by Charles Einstein

I like to consult Geoffrey O'Brien's excellent Hardboiled America: Lurid Paperbacks And The Masters Of Noir as a guide whenever I'm selecting hardboiled/noir titles to read from the classic era (1929-1960). I generally find his picks to be reliable and solid ones. If I had the free time, I'd read all the titles he includes on his checklist. As it is, I've read a good many from there. One of the 1953 hardboiled titles O'Brien selects is The Bloody Spur by Charles Einstein. Munsey's has it available is an e-book, and that's the version I read. The fine writer (I've also enjoyed reading his books) and newspaper editor Wallace Stroby has an eloquent, insightful tribute he wrote about Mr. Einstein: http://is.gd/ydkzsL. From it, I see that Mr. Einstein was an old newspaper man. His The Bloody Spur might be a newspaper noir, if there is such a subgenre. It served as the basis for Fritz Lang's film While the City Sleeps which I should watch pronto. The basic plot is the old man of a big news media conglomerate dies, and there's a four-way scramble by the rivals to get the top dog's position. There are double crosses and laugh-out-loud bawdy jokes. I also got a fascinating in-depth look at the newspaper business of the time. The novel's pace is fast, the prose lucid. Some of the anecdotes are memorable ones. One character has the odd habit of chewing strips of paper! This is first-rate vintage stuff. I just wonder why it took me this long to read The Bloody Spur, but I'm glad I finally did.