A Day to Give Thanks … in Some Way

Thanks to the Saint, by Leslie Charteris (Pocket, 1959). Illustration by Darrel Greene. You’ll find another Thanksgiving-appropriate paperback cover here.

Duped: “The Deadly Reasons”

The latest installment in Killer Covers’ “haven’t we seen this front someplace before?” series. Previous entries are here.



I’ve been holding onto the cover above for months now, trying to recall why that image of a rather well-endowed young brunette looked so darn familiar. I just couldn’t put my finger on the answer.

I knew that the man responsible for the painting that fronts this 1958 Popular Giant paperback edition of The Deadly Reasons was Owen Kampen (1922-1982), a Madison, Wisconsin-born artist and illustrator who once worked as an instructor with the Famous Artists School. I also knew that The Deadly Reasons was written by Edward D. Radin (1909-1966), an American criminologist and journalist whose best-known work is probably Lizzie Borden: The Untold Story (1961). The Deadly Reasons was the book he published just prior to that Borden history. Nominated for the 1959 Edgar Award in the Best Fact Crime category, it’s a collection of 10 true-crime tales about homicides and the people who commit them. As Radin explains in an Author’s Note, “in each of the cases in this book, a different motive was the cause that led to murder. While there are many motives in the broad range of human emotions, the ten deadly reasons in this book--Love, Fear, Revenge, Pride, Passion, Hate, Lust, Greed, Profit, Jealousy--are the most frequent causes of homicide I have found in a study of more than two thousand different murders.”

Of course, knowing all of that helped me not one iota when it came to pinning down why I recognized the Deadly Reasons cover illustration. But then one day last week, during a mostly frustrating Web search for an entirely unrelated book, I suddenly came across what was described as a “prostitution novel,” Martha Crane, by Charles Gorham (Popular Library, 1954). Imagine my delight at seeing that its cover--displayed on the left--used the original, larger Kampen painting from which the image on The Deadly Reasons was taken.

A short biographical note found on the backside of the 1949 Signet paperback edition of Gorham’s second novel, The Future Mister Dolan (released originally in 1948, following his publication of The Gilded Hearse), says the author “was born in Philadelphia, attended Columbia, [and] saw war service as navigator with the RAF and 8th Air Force. He has worked on newspapers and in publishing houses.” Kirkus Reviews offers this synopsis of Martha Crane’s plot:

An autopsy on Martha Crane omits flowers and provides a case history of a girl whose heart and conscience had been numbed--to refrigerated--by her father. Enlisting at eighteen in the WACS to escape him, Martha now at 24 is still embattled in her emancipation but a chance night on the town finds her pregnant. The attempt made by a home for unwed mothers in St. Louis to contact the father of the child she will bear drives her on to New York and the chance encounter with Farkas, a pimp, who arranges for the care, delivery and disposal of the child. Back in shape again, she goes to work for Farkas as a high-class call girl; her attraction to him has an unhealthy aura which is also a reminder of the father she hates; she submits to every degradation and contributes to the suicide of a client; and finally, with the knowledge that Farkas is using her child as a means of expensive extortion from the family who has adopted it, she kills him. … An anatomy of a driven as well as fallen woman, this is for those who stimulate rather than shock easily and is thoroughly demoralized.

Not exactly the most glowing review, eh? Fortunately for the author, it wasn’t the only one. The Boston Herald was kinder to Martha Crane, saying that “Mr. Gorham has created here a frightening character, one who will repel you and at the same time hit you so hard that her agony will remain with you a long time after you have put the book down.” Gorham went on to pen such works as Trial by Darkness (1952), The Gold in Their Bodies: A Novel About Gaughin (1955), McCaffery (1961), and a biography of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie titled The Lion of Judah (1966).

Friday Finds: “The Diamond Boomerang”

Another in our growing line of vintage book covers we love.

The Diamond Boomerang, by Lester S. Taube (Pocket, 1970).
Illustration by Robert Foster.

From what I can tell by searching the Web, this novel was originally released in 1969 by British publisher W.H. Allen under the title The Grabbers. Its author, Lester S. Taube (1920-2013), was born in Trenton, New Jersey, to Russian and Lithuanian parents. During his teens he joined the U.S. military, and in World War II fought with the Marines on the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Following that war, Taube ran an electronics company in California, then a paper stock enterprise in Pennsylvania, and eventually a logging operation in Canada. He went back to serve as a military adviser and intelligence officer during the Korean War, and ended his armed forces career amid the chaos of the Vietnam War, when he found himself stationed in Europe as “a general staff officer working in intelligence and war plans.”

(Right) A much less attractive, 1970 UK edition of Taube’s novel.

Settling once more into civilian life, this time in France, Taube apparently opened a “chain of coin-operated laundries … that would become the largest in Europe.” It was during this later period of his life that he started penning fiction, ultimately putting his name to eight novels, the last of which was The Grabbers, described on what looks like the official Taube Web site as “a diamond theft thriller.” Here’s a brief plot account:

Dan Baldwin, an ex-colonel whose life has crashed, is rescued from a gutter in North Africa and finds himself elected at gunpoint to the company of a purposeful trio about to raid the secret diamond field of a relentless south-west African cartel. He contrives to locate the diamonds, and, for his pains, is left for dead by the gang’s treacherous leader, who has conspired to secure the entire illicit haul for himself.

The furious climax is reached in London, where Dan, after a tempestuous clash and torrid love affair with the beautiful, blonde Ingrid Talaanger, daughter of the diamond cartel’s head, discovers that for all his violence and cynicism, he can again love a woman devotedly and be changed by her.

Apparently, the lithe, topless lovely depicted on the 1970 cover of the retitled Diamond Boomerang is not Ingrid, for the hue of her hair is all wrong. Nonetheless, the illustration certainly suggests that the adventure inside is fraught with risk and possible romance, all set against a territory made foreign by the endeavors and ethics of its inhabitants as much as by its natural environment. The painting is credited to Robert Foster, an accomplished (but now largely forgotten) artist who, after working during the mid-20th century as a popular instructor at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, relocated to the East Coast. He taught for a while with the Famous Artists School Correspondence Course in Connecticut, hoping to build up a portfolio that would gain him entry into the illustration market in New York City. As Tom Watson, a now-retired West Coast illustrator, art director and educator, who studied under Foster in San Francisco, recalls in this 2010 piece for the blog Today’s Inspiration,

[Foster’s] original intent was to break into the magazine illustration field, where the spotlight of modern illustration had been centered throughout the 1950s, but that market was starting to shrivel and gave less opportunity for the new guy in town. So he found a lucrative niche illustrating mostly pocket book covers for the major publishers and had built a substantial reputation, particularly in the science-fiction market.

Frederik Pohl was a well known sci-fi writer at the time and Bob did many illustrations for the covers of his books. One of his crowning achievements was a series of the first four covers for John Norman’s famous (sci-fi) “Gor” series. He illustrated the covers for other well-known writers of the day, such as Doris Lessing, Paul Gallico (The Poseidon Adventure) and Somerset Maugham, to name a few. …

Depending on the subject, his illustrations varied in their degree of realism, and some were rendered quite painterly. He was one of the very few successful sci-fi illustrators who used a unique surrealistic technique, ideal for that market. He used his anatomical knowledge to depict and render accurate human form, and blended innovative elements and backgrounds reminiscent of surrealism in a dramatic theatrical setting. Bob’s illustrations were carefully designed, positioning his figures and props to visually flow together, and to contrast and complement each other. In several examples, he extracted shapes and forms from small watch parts, gears, wheels, etc., enlarging and altering them for unique background props.

Watson’s multi-installment recollection of his time with Robert “Just Call Me Bob” Foster is well worth reading, if you’re at all interested in this artist. Follow these links to find his complete series: Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV. Watson notes, amid his memories of the illustrator’s three-piece suits and use of his students as studio models, that Foster “passed away of a heart attack in 1977, at the age of 49, after having progressively poor health.”

I don’t usually provide, in these “Friday Finds” posts, galleries of work by the principal artists under consideration. But I am quite struck by Foster’s exceptional talent. So below, you’ll find 13 of the paperback fronts he created during his career. These include his off-kilter cover for The Dakota Project (1971, which like other of his covers, features the model Steve Holland), the stunning back and front images he created for the 1970 Avon edition of Michael Moorcock’s Behold the Man, his artwork for Dell’s 1972 paperback release of The Poseidon Adventure (a copy of which I happen to have in my own library), and his illustration for 1969’s Muscavado, a West Indies slave revolt tale touted in its time as “more explosive than Mandingo,” Kyle Onstott’s rather racy novel of the antebellum South (later turned into a movie of the same title).

Click on any of these images to open an enlargement.















Obviously, Robert Foster is an artist who deserves much greater recognition than he has received in recent years.

READ MORE: “Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: The Art of Robert Foster, Part I” and “Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: The Art of Robert Foster, Part II,” by Joachim Boaz (Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations).

Desire by Design

I was familiar with American author Jack Woodford (1894-1971) as a result of my using the covers of his books in one or two posts on this page. But I hadn’t realized, until the blog Pulp International mentioned it this week, that his tame-by-modern-standards “sleaze fiction” had, in the mid-20th century, helped Avon Books “prove that pulp readers would pay for sexual thrills.” You can appraise a small selection of Woodford’s lightly suggestive book covers here.

Two-fer Tuesdays: Patience, Patience

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



I’ve mentioned St. Louis-born author Manning (Lee) Stokes (1911-1976) in at least one previous Killer Covers post, and will undoubtedly do so again. He was a particularly productive fictionist who penned both original books and film novelizations under a variety of pseudonyms (Kermit Welles, Ken Stanton, Nick Carter, etc.) as well as his own name. His 1955 novel Murder Can’t Wait (Graphic)--shown above, left--evidently offered the one and only appearance of a New York City private eye named Vince Donnellen, who has recently lost his license to do business. This has left him in need of money, susceptible to dubious employment propositions such as the one brought his way in Murder Can’t Wait. Vintage45’s Blog provides the following synopsis of Stokes’ storyline:

[Donnellen’s] sometimes girlfriend Yvette Farrell dumps him since it looks like she’s landed a millionaire. He’s publisher David Fenston.

Later, Yvette goes to Vince’s place and tells him David wants to hire him to take his alcoholic niece Lee to a sanitarium in Indiana. Vince thinks there’s more to the job than that. He’s right.

David takes him out on his boat and tells Vince the real deal. Lee is set to inherit a million dollars in eleven days. If she dies before then, David gets the money. He needs it since he’s almost broke. He only fooled around with Yvette in order to contact Vince.

He’ll pay Vince fifty grand to kill Lee. Vince says he’ll do it. As planned, he and Lee head for Indiana. Vince comes up with a plan to make David think Lee’s dead. Before he can take that any further he has to sober Lee up.

The copy on the flipside of this 1955 paperback gives the tale in between a decidedly grim aspect, especially in reference to the targeted niece, Lee: “She was a lush, no good to anyone, a million bucks worth of body and booze and bygone husband.” Yet Vintage45’s Blog assures us that it’s a “fast-paced story that is well worth reading.” Notable, too, is the novel’s front. It was painted by Saul Levine (1915-?), who did a good deal of work for Graphic Books during the 1950s (you’ll see, on the left, his cover illustration for 1956’s The Intruder, by Octavus Roy Cohen) as well as other publishers, such as Beacon (which was behind the 1954 release of Fred Malloy’s Rooming House, also on the left).

One of Levine’s contemporaries, Rudolph Belarski (1900-1983), was responsible for creating this week’s other featured façade, from the 1951 Popular Library edition of While Murder Waits. The artwork here presents plenty of intrigue, from its clearly cautious redhead with a gun exiting what might be a basement staircase to the dark-coiffed ruffian waiting behind that stairway door, a metal bar clutched in his paw, ready to strike. Even the book’s tagline--“Night Is the Time for Killing”--abets the suspense Belarski’s illustration is meant to suggest, though Eric Beetner, in this Criminal Element piece about such cover copy, observes that it “[doesn’t] make a whole heck of a lot of sense.”

While Murder Waits was originally published in 1937 by Doubleday Crime Club, and is by-lined “John Estevan.” However, the author was really Samuel Shellabarger (1888-1954), a Princeton graduate and well-traveled writer-educator who penned both historical adventures (such as 1945’s Captain from Castile, which was made into a 1947 movie starring Tyrone Power) and mysteries. While Murder Waits was one of five books he produced under the Estevan pen name. The only plot description I can find comes from the Goodreads site:

Retired sea captain George Gleasing named his three daughters after the reefs and then raised them as he had ruled his crew, as a tyrant and a bully. His ruthlessness roused so much hatred that, now, old and ill, but still brutal and unrepentant, he lives in fear that one of his daughters would breach the old stone walls—and take his life.

When heads begin to roll, Dr. Miles Le Breton of the Department of Justice finds himself both curious and repelled as much by the ruthless old captain as by his three daughters who mirror the sea that flows through their blood—no pity, no love, no truth; only cunning, strength, power, and, yes, beauty.

Fans of the old style mysteries will love this one.

At present, the full text of While Murder Waits is available online.

This Cat’s Got It in the Bag

While writing recently about the roots and escapades of Ernest Tidyman’s famous African-American private investigator, John Shaft, for both Kirkus Reviews and The Rap Sheet, I kept coming across references to an author known as “B.B. Johnson” and another fictional troubleshooter of the early 1970s, Richard Abraham Spade, also known as Superspade. I don’t think I have ever come across any of the Superspade novels, but The Thrilling Detective Web Site provides this brief profile of their protagonist:

Richard Abraham Spade was a strapping 240-pound fellow who went from the ghetto to UCLA, where he made All-American as an offensive tackle, acquiring the interesting nickname of “Superspade” in the process. He was headed for a pro-football fame, but was sidetracked for two years in Vietnam. Returning stateside, forty-three pounds lighter, a lieutenant with a Silver Star and a Purple Heart; he wasted no time in turning his attention back to pro ball, only to have his career cut short by a serious injury.

At the start of his first case, he is 33 years old and has been working at Greene College in Santa Barbara for three years, as the black studies lecturer and part-time football coach, while pursuing his masters in political science. But this is just the calm before the storm. When his buddy is killed for political reasons, Spade finds himself “in the middle of a deadly blitz of bullets, broads and burning revolution …”

Each of these six men’s adventures paperback originals are billed as “a tough novel by B.B. Johnson,” which we’re told is “a pseudonym for one of Hollywood’s most talented and creative black personalities.” [The series is] resonant with Black Power relevance, and full of typical “out there” plots for the time, such as Mother of the Year, which features Spade protecting a black beauty queen marked for death by a group of militant black feminists.

In an examination for Criminal Element of black 20th-century pulp fiction, Gary Phillips, creator of the Ivan Monk detective series and the Angeltown comics, adds that “If memory serves, Superspade’s super power was that he gave off a hyper pheromone that made a woman go weak in the knees for him. No, really.”

OK, since I have not (yet) read the Superspade paperback yarns, I can’t attest to whether their star exercised phenomenally seductive sway over the curvaceous women with whom he came into contact--though that would hardly have been unusual for a crime- or thriller-fiction leading man of the era. And certainly the tagline on the front of Black Is Beautiful (1970), the second Superspade outing, suggests this “other” Spade is no monk: “He’s a bad, bold soul brother up to his sweet hips in revolution--and women!”

What I do understand from conducting Web research, though, is that the man behind the nom de plume B.B. Johnson was in fact songwriter-composer Joseph Perkins Greene, who was born in Spokane, Washington, in April 1915 and passed away in Pasadena, California, 71 years later. The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) provides this page of references to Greene’s work being used in film soundtracks (including mention that Lauren Bacall performed part of his 1944 song, “And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine,” in Humphrey Bogart’s The Big Sleep). Another page on the same site offers this short record of his musical career:

Songwriter (“Across the Alley from the Alamo,” “And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine”), composer, author, producer and conductor, educated in high school and in private music study. He was a singer over KFRC in San Francisco, and later produced records for RCA Victor, Liberty and Vee Jay. His credits include conducting, scoring and writing work for television and films. Joining ASCAP in 1946, his other popular-song compositions include “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Cryin’,” “All About Ronnie,” “Make Me a Present of You,” “Soothe Me,” “A Ting A Ling,” “Chicken Road,” “Softly,” “Dusky January,” “Let Your Love Walk In,” “Tender Touch,” and “Annabelle.”

If it seems strange that a musician would eventually turn to composing crime novels, the Toledo Blade newspaper explained the shift in a syndicated article from May 17, 1970:

Orphaned at 14, Greene [said he] “earned all the education I got.” One of the ways he earned it was to peel 100 pounds of potatoes every morning before going to school.

Greene displayed musical talent early, sang and played in local bands, then drifted south to San Francisco to become a radio singer.

“I made band arrangements in bed and sold them to orchestras,” Greene said. “My biggest break came when Stan Kenton recorded one of my songs, ‘And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine.’ Following that I had ‘Across the Alley from the Alamo,’ which sold 4 million records by Kenton, the Mills Brothers, Woody Herman, and others.”

Greene established himself as a song writer, record producer, and composer of musical scores.

This prompted Paperback Library to commission the Superspade series, which are by-lined “B.B. Johnson”--“in case I get tired of writing the books and they hire someone else.”

The author of that newspaper piece, Associated Press Hollywood correspondent Bob Thomas, explained as well that Greene’s novels had already drawn film-industry interest. Producer Saul David (Fantastic Voyage, Our Man Flint) was said to have been planning a James Bond-like movie franchise based on the Superspade stories, with major help from Greene. But as far as I can tell, nothing came of that partnership. In his exceptional new book, The World of Shaft, Steve Aldous mentions that Greene had also submitted a proposal to Ernest Tidyman and his filmmaking partners for a sequel to the 1971 motion picture Shaft, but it had also been rejected. (The sequel was instead Shaft’s Big Score!)

Yet Greene’s conviction that “Negroes need to have their own heroes” did leave us with those half-dozen action-packed books, all of which were published between 1970 and 1971, and boasted cover illustrations by the extraordinarily talented Mitchell Hooks. I’m embedding images of those novels above and below, in order of their original appearance. You can find short synopses of the stories inside by clicking on this page from the Museum of Uncut Funk site.

Pop Porn, Anyone?

Caustic Cover Critic’s J.R.S. Morrison has nice things to say about the jacket of a soon-forthcoming memoir by author-screenwriter Chris Offutt, My Father, the Pornographer (Atria), but is less thrilled with the sleazy covers of works the senior Andrew J. Offutt produced during his lifetime, “almost all published under various pseudonyms by various dodgy outfits.” Cringe at his gallery here.

Point of Disorder

According to this new article in The Washington Post, Ted Cruz, the Canada-born junior U.S. senator, low-polling presidential contender, and right-wing extremist from Texas, enjoys and actually tries to exploit the intense animosity he has stirred up during the mere two and a half years he’s served on Capitol Hill. A related post by Washington Monthly’s Martin Longman notes that

The piece has the familiar stories. When Cruz filibustered John O. Brennan’s nomination as director of the CIA, fellow Republican Senator John McCain called him “a wacko bird.” Back in August, then-Speaker John Boehner said that he was grateful that Cruz’s presidential ambitions kept “that jackass” out of Washington, D.C., where Cruz is always trying to tell him how to do his job. This past October, [former] President George W. Bush even got into the act, mentioning at a fundraiser for his brother that he just doesn’t like the guy. [Post reporters Katie Zezima and David Weigel] dutifully assemble quotes from several senators and Senate staffers who all seem to agree that Cruz is not a team-player and that he puts his own ambition over any other consideration.

Back in late-September, I noted that Cruz had become more unpopular with his colleagues than any senator since at least the notorious Joe McCarthy. This is not a recipe for being an effective legislator, but Cruz has never aspired to be the next Lion of the Senate.

Reading this put me in mind of a vintage mystery novel that might’ve been titled with the loathsome Cruz in mind: The Case of the Hated Senator, by Margaret Scherf. Published by Ace Books in 1954, and part of a “double novel” set that featured Gordon Ashe’s Drop Dead! on its reverse side, The Case of the Hated Senator was actually this tale’s second title. It had originally been published in 1953 by Doubleday/Crime Club as Dead: Senate Office Building. A short review on the Goodreads site offers this rather cryptic plot synopsis:

Frank Scott is a much reviled senator who has mysteriously disappeared. Milo works for a small New York trucking company summers to pay his college tuition. When he finds that the safe he picked up for shipment to the senator’s Washington office should not have been as heavy as he found it, he gets an idea. Perhaps meeting Athalie, the petite blonde daughter of one of Scott’s enemies, has inspired him? The ending is a little flat, and there's less of Scherf's trade-mark humor in this book.

Responsibility for the art fronting The Case of the Hated Senator goes to Puerto Rico native Rafael DeSoto (1904-1992), more of whose illustrations can be appreciated here. If you’re not familiar with prolific author Scherf (1908-1979), check out this brief online bio, or perhaps this one about her trio of juvenile mysteries.

Bonds Away!

With the 24th and latest James Bond film, Spectre, scheduled to premiere this weekend in U.S. theaters, it’s no wonder my mind has been active with all things 007. Just this afternoon, I remembered that I had in my files the cover from the November 9, 1999, edition of The Sunday Times Magazine, a supplement to The Times of London. Illustrated by Robert McGinnis--who over the years had done the artwork for posters promoting a variety of Bond films, including the 1967 spoof version of Casino Royale, 1965’s Thunderball, 1967’s You Only Live Twice, and 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever--it was published to coincide with the release of The World Is Not Enough, the 19th Bond flick and the third to star Pierce Brosnan.

Click on the image below for an easier-to-study enlargement.



Edward Biddulph explains in his blog, James Bond Memes, that McGinnis’ complex picture for the Times Magazine was

Conceived to resemble an ornately framed painting, though also alluding to a certain extent [to] the heraldic-style artwork used alongside the main poster campaign for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the artwork is topped by a crown (representing Bond’s service to Queen and Country) flanked by near-naked and suggestively positioned women. The faces of the Bond actors are placed below the crown--naturally Sean Connery is at the centre--and below them is the main body of the artwork, which celebrates the best of Bond with representations of iconic moments from the film series, which are divided into themes of space, land, and sea. The panel is bordered by the faces of the most memorable villains of the series, and the whole artwork is framed by more scantily clad women.

Biddulph goes on to provide a more detailed examination of this magazine front here, noting that “Thunderball, Diamonds Are Forever, The Spy Who Loved Me, and Moonraker are Robert McGinnis’ principal reference points. Perhaps these are his personal favourites, but undoubtedly each have contributed more than their fair share of classic scenes and images.”

Two-fer Tuesdays: Hard Times Ahead

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



What kind of a moniker is Ovid Demaris? Apparently, it’s better than Ovide E. Desmarais, which is the name this 20th-century newsman turned novelist was given at the time of his birth in 1919. A native of Biddeford, Maine, Demaris went on to become a newspaper reporter and a correspondent for the United Press (later United Press International) news agency. During his time (he lived to be 79 years old, finally passing away in 1998), Demaris also penned a number of books. Some of those were non-fiction, such as 1961’s The Dillinger Story (aka Dillinger), 1966’s The Boardwalk Jungle, and 1980’s The Last Mafioso. He even worked with Judith Exner--who claimed to have been a mistress, during the early 1960s, of both President John F. Kennedy and Mafia boss Sam Giancana--on her 1977 memoir, Judith Exner: My Story. In addition, however, Demaris concocted at least 17 novels, among them Ride the Gold Mare (1957), The Gold-Plated Sewer (1960), The Organization (1965), and what has been called an “anti-Mafia potboiler,” Ricochet (1988).

The Long Night was, as far as I can tell, Demaris’ fourth novel, a paperback-only Avon release from 1959. It marked the second appearance (after 1957’s The Hoods Take Over and before 1960’s The Gold-Plated Sewer) of fictional Los Angeles private eye Vince Slader, described by The Thrilling Detective Web Site as “an ex-cop with a weakness for booze and dames in trouble.” (In other words, he was very much like other for-hire gumshoes of the Eisenhower era.) In the blog Vintage Hardboiled Reads, August West noted that

The Long Night has a unique start. Slader is in front of a Senate Crime Committee hearing, sassing it up against two powerful senators. It seems that the private eyes in L.A. have been getting a bit out of control and Slader is the committee’s poster boy. He leaves the hearings with warnings that they will be watching him and he better keep his nose clean. Like that’s going to happen. Slader is hired by a scumbag casino owner to find a guy called Ben Russell. Russell has a $28,000 gambling debt and Slader gets a percentage if Russell pays up. Russell also has a young wife who has plans of her own, and those include a life insurance scam. Of course P.I. Vince Slader gets caught in it. He first gets set up to be murdered and burned to a crisp in Russell’s car; the idea is that the authorities will believe he was Russell. Slader gets banged up pretty bad, but survives. Next he walks in on Ben Russell’s actual murder, and here is where he gets pegged as the murderer. Along with Mrs. Russell’s motives to get her husband’s life insurance money, elements of the local crime organization have an interest in this case. So besides the Senate Committee, Slader has thugs and cops after him now.

As for a plot, there is really no new ground breaking in this one. It’s your typical P.I. being played for a patsy story. But that’s OK, it still was an enjoyable read. The Senate Committee angle in the story was different and refreshing. Slader has an ex-con as an assistant called Emilio Caruso, who he kiddingly refers to as his “little wop.” I liked the guy, unfortunately he doesn’t make it through to the end of the novel. There is a good dose of explosive (and descriptive) gunplay in The Long Night. One of the best takes place in the desert outside of Las Vegas, with Slader having some fun with two hired killers. Slader plays the ladies throughout the story and even with his rough mug, they are attracted to him. He even gets serious with a redhead who helps him survive in the end.

Having not yet read The Long Night myself, I’m not sure of the identity of the dead woman decorating its façade (above); I presume the male figure is supposed to be Slader. What else I can tell you is that illustration was done by Ernest “Darcy” Chiriacka, one of my favorites among book cover artists of the last century. Nobody should be at all confused about what kind of story can be found inside. The front--with its wonderful hand-lettered title--positively screams “crime fiction.”

Less obvious about the nature of its contents is The Long Nightmare (Crest, 1958), displayed above and on the right. Credit for its cover painting goes to Charles Binger, but authorship of the tale inside belongs to John Roeburt (1909-1972), who has been described as “an American writer and criminologist.” Roeburt’s hard climb to recognition in the mystery- and detective-fiction field might have begun with the publication, in 1944, of Jigger Moran, which introduced J. Howard “Jigger” Moran, characterized (again by Thrilling Detective) as “a disbarred Illinois attorney and sometime-cabbie who now cruises the streets of Manhattan at night, keeping an eye open for the main chance, when he’s not shooting craps.” Moran starred in two more post-war novels, There Are Dead Men in Manhattan (1946) and Corpse on the Town (1950). During the same period, Roeburt took jobs as a scriptwriter for the radio mystery series Inner Sanctum and won an Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1949 for Best Radio Drama. He subsequently did some TV writing.

But it was novels into which John Roeburt seemed to invest most of his heart. His résumé soon ballooned to include Manhattan Underworld (1951), The Case of the Hypnotized Virgin (1956), Sing Out Sweet Homicide (1961), and The Mobster (1972). The Long Nightmare was originally published in hardcover as The Climate of Hell (Abelard-Schuman, 1958). It was a standalone yarn with a plot that Kirkus Reviews described this way:

Larry Stevens, a fisherman in Florida, is brainwashed into the identity of Kirk Reynolds, taken--by three men--to New York to live the life of a gilded bum, to renew his marriage with Laura, a lush, and to witness the murder of his presumed father--before his will is changed. Running away--to give himself up--he must finally face the revelation of his own responsibility in the situation to which his sick, truant conduct has led. Up from the pulps, loud and lewd and lurid.

The back cover of Crest’s The Long Nightmare (embedded above, on the right) features a quote from now-famous New York Times critic Anthony Boucher, praising Roeburt’s novel as “a memorable nightmare of menace.” Honestly, though, I think “loud and lewd and lurid” beats that judgment by a long shot.