Bogus Bookshelf Bounty

In March of this year, I alerted readers to a new feature on the art, culture, and photography site Zoom Street. Editor Derek Pell said he’d created a pictorial series of 100 “missing mysteries”--“rare books you never knew existed.” These were in fact crime and mystery novel jackets of Pell’s pure and clever imagining, each of which was accompanied by a spurious story description.

After only a few installments, though, the series seemed to run out of gas. “I’d stopped posting them, as the response was rather underwhelming,” Pell told me in a recent e-note.

But fortunately, the Missing Mysteries are missing no more.

Pell posted a number of new covers just yesterday, all of which can be seen here. They include everything from Murder Is a Four-Letter Word, by Dashiell Hammett, and The 40 Steps, by John Buchan (“the notorious sequel to The 39 Steps), to Eric Ambler’s Bankster and Brett Halliday’s No Restroom in the Boneyard, Baby. These are all kinds of fun, well worth checking out when you have a free moment.