Scoop

(no dust jacket) [light shelfwear to bottom edge, some weakness in the binding in the middle of the book (but all pages still attached), spine cloth faded, one-time owner's name on both pastedowns]. Novel about a hard-drinking Irish-American newspaper reporter, Snakes Shiel, who gets sent to the slammer for drunk driving. During his ten-day(!) jail term, he uncovers evidence of corruption in the form of a system that permits the wealthy and/or well-connected to buy themselves pardons. Resuming his journalistic pursuits after his release, he sets out to investigate and expose the scheme; along the way he falls in love with a Jewish woman (the Cohens and the Kellys, anyone) whose brother, a convicted murderer, was among those who was able to bribe his way out of prison. The authors, whose first and only novel this was, were young reporters on the Providence (R.I.) Journal; according to one contemporary review of the book, their "melodramatic and intermittently exciting tale [was] neither a celebration nor indictment of the fourth estate," but was "punctuated with passages of racy brilliance." My research has turned up no further trace of work by Mr. Hart, but Mr. Byrnes, as it turned out, was just settling in to what would become a lifelong tenure at the Journal, as a reporter, critic and editor; he retired in 1974, and was the co-author, six years later, of a history of the paper's first 150 years.

Product Info

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Year: 1930

Type: Used

Binding: Hardcover

Seller Info

ReadInk

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Country: United States