“Too Beautiful to Live”

Today in The Rap Sheet, contributor Jim Napier writes fondly about the 1943 novel Laura, by Vera Caspary. To illustrate that essay, I used the cover from the most recent Vintage UK paperback edition. However, Laura has a long printing history, and at least two other, previous editions are worth celebrating on this page.

The front above comes from the 1961 Dell paperback version, illustrated by Gino Forté, while the one below was released by Popular Library in 1950, with cover art by Sam Cherry.

Multiple Choice

If you love vintage Erle Stanley Gardner paperback book covers (and, hey, who doesn’t?), you really ought to check out the Seattle Mystery Bookshop--Hard-boiled Tumbler site, which has lately been on quite a Gardner kick. It offers illustrated works by Robert McGinnis, Mitchell Hooks, John Fernie, and others. One of my favorites among its selections, though, is actually a photographic front (shown above), from the 1955 Pocket paperback reissue of The Case of the Borrowed Brunette, with a cover shot by Alfred Gescheidt.

This would have made a good addition to our “peeping tom” set.

If you’d like to enjoy all of the Seattle Mystery Bookshop’s Gardner cover collection, simply click here.

Beware the Curves

It’s often interesting to see how different paperback artists of old illustrated the same work of fiction. In the case of Carter Brown’s The Bombshell, though, it seems there were all of one rather suggestive mind. You’ll find many more Carter Brown covers here.

Crossing the Line

Veteran U.S. Representative Don Young (R-Alaska) invited derision last week when, in answer to a question about how technology is reducing the need for human workers, he told a radio audience, “My father had a ranch; we used to have 50 to 60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes. It takes two people to pick the same tomatoes now. It’s all done by machine.” Young soon tried to walk back his bigoted reference to Mexicans, but you can guarantee that during the 2014 election cycle, rival Democrats will use his statement to tar Republicans on a national scale. Even Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), said that “slurs” such as Young’s “do nothing to elevate our party.”

(So much for Republican outreach to Latino voters, eh?)

Maybe it’s only because I have written recently about the death of renowned American illustrator Mitchell Hooks, but the first thing that came to mind when I heard Young’s offensive statement was the 1956 Dell release, Wetback. That edition of William O’Farrell’s “strong, moving story of a woman beyond the protection of the law” featured rather powerful cover art by Hooks, don’t you think?

Those Beautiful Brits

Have you scrolled through Nick Jones’ extensive “Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s” gallery over at Existential Ennui? If not, you really should.

READ MORE: “Beautiful British ’50s & ’60s Book Jacket Design: Beyond 100 Covers,” by Nick Jones (Existential Ennui).

It’s What’s Up Front that Counts

Are these really the “most iconic book covers of all time”?

Oh No, Mitchell Hooks Is Gone

This is sad news, indeed. Canadian artist-cartoonist Leif Peng reports in his blog, Today’s Inspiration, that noted American illustrator Mitchell Hooks--whose work has been showcased several times on this page--has died. I don’t see any obituaries online, but according to Wikipedia, Hooks perished on Monday, March 18, at age 89.

Born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1923, Hooks was influenced early on by newspaper cartoon strips--Jungle Jim, Secret Agent X-9, and especially Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon. “I’ve always had an affinity for anatomical drawing,” he later explained, “and, in retrospect, I can attribute my abilities to the long hours spent studying Raymond’s beautiful drawings.” After graduating from Cass Technical High School in Detroit, Hooks worked for General Motors, converting two-dimensional blueprints into three-dimensional drawings. Following a stint in the U.S. Army during World War II, he relocated to New York City, where he found opportunities in the commercial art field before winning magazine-illustrating assignments (from The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, etc.) and establishing a career painting artwork for paperback book jackets.

Over the years, I’ve collected a number of crime novels featuring Hooks’ work; in fact, I just ordered a copy of the 1963 Signet softcover edition of Wade Miller’s Guilty Bystander, because it boasts a beautiful Hooks cover (though I understand the story inside is also quite good). After hearing that the artist had died, I went through my scans of his book fronts and pulled out just a few of my favorites, which I am posting here. As far as I’m concerned, his talent cannot be celebrated frequently or fervently enough.

If you would like to learn more about Hooks and his career, I recommend digging up the posts Peng has written about this artist over the years. You should find them all by clicking here.















UPDATE: A short obituary for Mitchell H. Hooks has finally been posted here. It doesn’t tell much more than we already knew about his career or the circumstances of his having “died unexpectedly.” But this obit does correct the date of his death--March 18, not the previously listed March 17 (I’ve fixed that information above). And it reinforces the sense that Hooks was generous with his time and talents. “Inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 1999,” the item reads, “his warm and unassuming manner encouraged many hopeful young artists who sought his inspiration. A fan remarked, ‘He was such an iconic figure in the golden age of illustration.’” Hooks will certainly be missed.

READ MORE: The James Bond-focused Web site MI6 notes that artist Mitchell Hooks gave the world [its] first look at a stylized Sean Connery as 007 on the 1962 Dr. No poster ...”

Full Steam Ahead

British author Andrew Martin, creator of the railroad-related Jim Stringer series of historical detective novels, has benefited from an attractive series of book jackets rolling out over the years. Steve Holland has now put together a galley of those covers here.

Rollin’ Out the Old Gold

An editor at Litro, the self-identified “little London literary magazine with a big worldview,” asked me recently to submit a selection of my 12 favorite vintage crime-novel covers. I hesitated to take the assignment, knowing that to pare my extensive collection down to a mere dozen choices was not going to be easy. Sure enough, in the end I left plenty of sacrificial carnage on my office floor in order to give the editor what she wanted. You’ll find those results here.

But since I know how to blog about covers myself, I am installing below the picks I didn’t have room for in Litro. Enjoy!

And to My Beloved Husband, by Philip Loraine (Pocket, 1953)
Artist: William Rose



The Butcher’s Wife, by Owen Cameron (Dell, 1956)
Artist: William Rose



Call Me Deadly, by Hal Braham (Graphic, 1957)
Artist: Walter Popp



Murder in Majorca, by Michael Bryan, (Dell, 1957)
(Bryan was a pseudonym used by Brian Moore.)
Artist: Unidentified



Let Them Eat Bullets, by Howard Schoenfeld (Gold Medal, 1959)
Artist: Barye Phillips



Bare Trap, by Frank Kane (Dell, 1960)
Artist: Harry Bennett


Solomon’s Vineyard, by Jonathan Latimer (Pan, 1961)
Artist: Sam “Peff” Peffer



Guilty Bystander, by Wade Miller (Signet, 1963)
Artist: Mitchell Hooks



Incidentally, my post about vintage covers is just one of several mystery- and crime-fiction-themed pieces appearing this month in the pages and on the Web site of Litro. A number of other free posts can be found here, including several short works of fiction worth reading when you find a spare moment or two.

Favor of the Months

Anyone who has kept up with this blog knows that one of my favorite paperback and pinup artists is Ernest “Darcy” Chiriacka. So, naturally, I noticed when Pulp International posted scans of Esquire magazine’s 1952 calendar, featuring “twelve luscious lovelies in full color,” all by Chiriacka himself. I presume that men who originally purchased copies of this “Esquire Girl” almanac (at 50¢ apiece!) flipped through its offerings regularly, and saved the work for later reference.

The Line on Hooks

This morning brings us the final segment of a five-post series in Today’s Inspiration, based around a 1988 Paperback Parade interview with noted American illustrator Mitchell Hooks. Over the course of these posts we hear about Hooks’ early days painting paperback covers, his favorite painting medium and his work with models, his fronts for a series of Ross Macdonald softcover reprints, some thoughts on his fellow artists, and much more. Blogger Leif Peng has peppered in plenty of Hooks’ art, so readers get a better sense of what the man accomplished over his three-decades-long career.

You can leap immediately to the full run of Peng’s posts at these locations: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V.

Not at a Bookstore Near You

I’ve written a couple of times about efforts by Northern California artist, photographer, and author Derek Pell to create a pictorial collection of 100 “missing mysteries,” puckish fronts for whodunit and thriller novels that never actually existed. He started out by periodically dropping new covers in that line onto a page of his online magazine, Zoom Street. More recently, however, the “missing mysteries” seemed to go missing themselves; last week, I could no longer find a link to that once-growing set from Pell’s site. So I shot him an e-note, asking what had become of those book covers.

Well, it seems that Pell had hoped to create a full, printable book of “missing mysteries”--with plot descriptions of each imagined work--but when he couldn’t find a publisher (“Rizzoli nearly did it,” he says, “but backed out.”), Pell let the project slide, concentrating his energy instead on another venture, Black Scat Books. Fortunately, my query about the “missing mysteries” provokeed Pell to post his whole (189-page) unpublished book online as a PDF document. Click here for a free download.

Where else, I ask, can you find such long-forgotten masterpieces of mystery fiction as Malice in Wonderland (“a hare-raising tale”), Dashiell Hammett’s obscure Sam Spade novel, Murder Is a Four-Letter Word, Raymond Chandler’s Call Me Shallow, But Bury Me Deep, and Odor in the Court (“a scratch ’n’ sniff mystery”)?

Pixels to Paper

Try to visualize if you can, what some of today’s most popular Web sites might look like were they re-created as old-fashioned paperbacks. Can’t quite get your mind around that assignment? Don’t worry: French illustrator Stéphane Massa-Bidal has done all of the imagining for you. The Book Haven blog has now posted 10 of Massa-Bidal’s creations, representing Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, and other online resources.

Leggin’ It

Having already written once on this page about the attractions of crime novels exploiting shapely women’s legs to capture buyers’ attention on bookstore shelves, I now feel quite inured to any further criticism of my male fascination with such fleshy appendages. Therefore, let me put forth this question: Was publisher Mysterious Press wise in switching up the front cover of Thomas Perry’s new standalone novel, The Boyfriend?

The jacket above--designed by Carlos Beltrán and using a stock photo from FabioFilzi/Getty Images--is the one you’ll find on the finished book, which its flap copy describes as “a riveting, sexy novel of unbearable suspense.” The one below appeared on advance copies of Perry’s book. Which would you be more likely to purchase?

Rewards of Random Discovery

Sean Manning writes the blog Talking Covers, which examines how various contemporary book fronts came to look as they do. In an interview with another blog, Imprint, he remarks on how e-books (or “eBooks,” as he writes it) have the potential to do away with one of the greatest rewards of browsing conventional bookshops:

I used to be really anti-eBook. I even edited an anthology in defense of print books. But I've come around--anything that gets people reading more. And I think the new format could change storytelling in a lot of really exciting ways.

But I do worry that if bookstores go extinct, so will the experience of picking up some random book just because of the cover. I’ve discovered so many of my favorite books and authors that way. That’s how I first got into Joan Didion. I was 21 and found a first edition of Play It As It Lays--hot pink and orange with a big, black snake. I didn’t know who Didion was, but that cover was so cool I had to read it.

You’ll find the full Manning interview here.

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Speaking of Talking Covers, not long ago it recently posted a feature about the memorable line of Vintage Contemporaries novels, published by Random House, beginning in the 1980s. The woman who gave that paperback imprint its handsome, uniform look was Lorraine Louie, who, “though she revolutionized book design, ... never received much fanfare.” If you own (as I do) many of the works in the Vintage Contemporaries line, or at least remember the books, then click here to learn more about their origins.