Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Two-fer Tuesdays: Take That, Sucker!

A twice-monthly pairing of book covers that just seem to go together. Click on either of these images to open up an enlargement.



There were times during 2013 when I felt as if this was the way the year had decided to treat me. One whack to the head after the next! The best-laid plans blowing up in my face, unexpected (and expensive) alterations/repairs to my house, electronic equipment in urgent need of fixing--2013 packed all of that in, plus more. So I can’t say I’m particularly sorry to see the curtain slam down on this last 12-month period. 2014 has to be better, right?

The covers above were both painted by Paul Kresse, an artist whose work I’m familiar with, but about whom I know next to nothing. (If anyone out there can supply information about his life and career, please do.) The image on the left comes from the 1950, first Pocket Books printing of It’s a Crime, by Richard Ellington (1914-1980). During the late 1940s and early ’50s, he penned five mystery novels featuring Manhattan-based actor-turned-private eye Steve Drake. It’s a Crime was the second installment in that series, following Shoot the Works (1948). In his write-up about Steve Drake for The Thrilling Detective Web Site, Kevin Burton Smith said Ellington’s series was “not as hard-boiled as [Mickey] Spillane, perhaps, but generally offering some good local color, an appealing medium-boiled hero and some deftly plotted, satisfyingly complex mysteries.”

More familiar to fans of mid-20th-century paperback detective fiction is the cover on the right, from the June 1943 edition of Raymond Chandler’s second Philip Marlowe novel, Farewell, My Lovely. Pocket reprinted Farewell eight times between 1943 and 1951, but this Kress-created front was easily the most eye-catching of the lot.

Here’s wishing all Killer Covers readers a fine and gentler 2014!

High Style, Front and Center

Flavorwire Tyler Coates has posted what he says are “The 15 Best Book Covers of 2013.” With the possible exception of Herman Koch’s The Dinner, these aren’t mystery or thriller novels. But their bookshelf presentations are interesting, nonetheless.

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Oops, I Thought that Read Santa’s Sister

Merry Christmas, everyone, from Killer Covers!



Satan’s Sister, by Tony Angelo (Archer Press UK, 1951).
Cover art by Reginald Heade.

Monday, December 16, 2013

Only the Best for You

You want book covers? Well, we’ve got loads of them, both old and new. Start by checking out Philip K. Dick--born 85 years ago today, in 1928--with a gallery of the “mind-bending art from his paperback novels.”

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Just Imagine the Rest of Her



After re-releasing 25 of author Jim Thompson’s pulpy crime novels in e-book format, publisher Mulholland Books now promises to bring out (sometime next summer) trade-size paperback versions of those same often-stunning 20th-century works. The covers for these new editions are pretty cool, including the leggy example--shown above--from A Swell-Looking Babe (1954). You can see the whole lot of Mulholland’s new Thompson fronts here, including one--for Bad Boy (1953)--that shares its artwork with at least two other novels.

(Hat tip to Seattle Mystery Bookshop Hard-boiled.)

READ MORE:Jim Thompson: An Appreciation,” by Joe R. Lansdale, and “The Greatest Crime Writer,” by Jo Nesbø (Mulholland Books).

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Two-fer Tuesdays: Copper Topped

A twice-monthly pairing of book covers that just seem to go together. Click on either of these images to open up an enlargement.



Several years have passed since I last had occasion to write about the once-prolific husband-and-wife writing team of Francis and Richard Lockridge. Back then, I was remarking on the 1960 paperback front from one of their Mr. and Mrs. North novels, Death Has a Small Voice. This week I’ll address Case of the Murdered Redhead (shown above on the left). That novel, originally titled The Faceless Adversary, was first published in hardcover by J.B. Lippincott back in 1956. The conspicuously scarlet cover featured here comes from the retitled, 1958 Avon paperback edition. Sadly, the artwork is not credited anywhere on the book.

The Faceless Adversary/Case of the Murdered Redhead was the opening entry in the Lockridges’ third detective series, starring New York City police detective Nathan Shapiro. As Wikipedia explains, “Shapiro was a sad-sack of a detective, who always assumed some other detective would be more skilful or more insightful. He always thinks that the promotions he receives are undeserved. People he encounters wonder what makes him appear to be so depressed.” The Lockridges eventually penned 10 Shapiro books, the last of those being The Old Die Young (1980). But it’s Shapiro’s debut that concerns us here. I don’t own the copy of Case of the Murdered Redhead I’m highlighting atop this post, but I can at least give you a sense of its story line by quoting the back cover copy:
Was He an Upright Citizen or –
The Killer of the Beautiful Redhead?

John Haywood #1: respectable young banker engaged to a lovely girl, mild-mannered, rigorously upright

John Haywood #2: cold-blooded killer, notorious bachelor playboy, given to violence, criminal mastermind

The police had John booked as #2, for the murder of the gorgeous redhead …

Was he cleverly framed – or did he have a double life?
Our second book in the spotlight this week, The Case of the Radioactive Redhead (Belmont, 1963), was composed by Gloria and Forrest E. “Skip” Fickling. They’re certainly best remembered as the authors of 11 novels featuring “beautiful, brainy, and very much determined” private eye Honey West (later the star of her own half-hour TV series), but they also produced four books focused on Erik March, “a high-priced … personal consultant/private investigator for large corporations in and around the Hollywood/Los Angeles area.” The Case of the Radioactive Redhead followed March’s inaugural appearance in 1962’s Naughty But Dead. Again, allow me to quote from the back of the Ficklings’ novel:
The Private Eye Meets the Curvaceous Kook

Two tapering legs waving straight up in the air, flaring downward into mesh-covered buttocks and a billow of gold cloth that played frantic peek-a-boo over the torrid torso of Frenchy Appleton …

I’m Erik March, private investigator. The fee is a grand a day (plus expenses). Amigo, I knew all the angles … until I met The Radioactive Redhead.

Settle back in your chair while I spell out this caper. It’s a dilly.
I can’t say that I feel any wiser for having read (and transcribed) that text, but then the jacket copy on mid-19th-century paperback crime and mystery novels wasn’t really supposed to inform so much as titillate. This work’s book-rack appeal was further enhanced by its cover, illustrated by the great Robert Maguire.