Monday, October 7, 2013

Dying to Go Surfing

As I’ve often tried to explain to my friends (with limited results), sometimes paperback crime novels are worth buying simply for their fabulous covers. I have boxes of aged paperbacks that I’m planning to read someday, but in the meantime, I pull them out every once in a while just to revel in their beautiful or offbeat fronts.

Among those still not in my collection are the Operation Hang Ten novels, a paperback series--published by MacFadden-Bartell from 1969 through 1973--that featured skilled surfer and world-traveling CIA agent Bill Cartwright, and was penned by “Patrick Morgan” (in actuality, the prolific George Snyder). No matter how diligently I have hunted through used bookstores in my travels, I have yet to turn up even one of these titles. (Yeah, I know: I could probably order them online, but that would obviously take away from the thrill of the chase.) I’m particularly interested in snagging Freaked Out Strangler (1973) and The Girl in the Telltale Bikini (1971).

You can take appreciate the Hang Ten covers for yourself here.

2 comments:

Marty McKee said...

I have read a couple of these:

http://craneshot.blogspot.com/search/label/Operation%20Hang%20Ten

datrappert said...

I have Deadly Group Down Under.