Because I Needed a Slesar Fix ...

The Gray Flannel Shroud, by Henry Slesar (Zenith, 1959).
Cover illustrator unidentified.

READ MORE: “Henry Slesar,” by Russell Atwood (Ellery Queen
Mystery Magazine).

Another Look: “The Longest Second”

Warning: Artistic inspiration drawn from book titles may vary.



Left: The Longest Second, by Bill S. Ballinger (Signet, 1959); cover illustration by Robert Schulz. Right: The Longest Second, by Bill S. Balllinger (Corgi, 1960); cover art credited to John Richards.

READ MORE: “Bill S. Ballinger’s The Longest Second,” by dfordoom (Vintage Pop Fictions).

Front to Back: Just a Matter of Crime

Part III of a series spotlighting wraparound paperback art.


The Red Lamp, by Mary Roberts Rinehart (Dell, 1961).
Cover illustration by Victor Kalin.

What’s that saying about there being no accounting for taste? While this series has already brought you abundant examples of knockout painted artwork for the wraparound covers of science-fiction and historical novels, many of the specimens I find in the crime and thriller genre feature photographs, instead. Most of them are pretty cheesy, such as those fronting the 1970s James Hadley Chase releases displayed below. Only rarely does a mystery or detective yarn boasting a front-to-back camera shot rise to the level of being memorable—an example being the Signet softcover edition of Mickey Spillane’s 1972 standalone novel, The Erection Set, which captured the author’s second wife, actress Sherri Malinou, in the buff.

Nonetheless, this literary field is not without its handsome wraparound covers. Two of the best actually appeared on hardcover editions of James Bond espionage adventures, brought to market by British publisher Jonathan Cape: the 1965 version of Ian Fleming’s The Man with the Golden Gun, with an illustration by Richard Chopping; and the first 007 continuation novel, 1968’s Colonel Sun, by “Robert Markham” (aka Kingsley Amis), which features a painting by Tom Adams. American artist Robert McGinnis took multiple opportunities to create elongated cover art. Of the paperbacks you’ll see by scrolling down this post, he was behind the fronts of The Girl Who Was Possessed, The Bump and Grind Murders, and A Corpse for Christmas (all entries in Alan Geoffrey Yates’ long-running Carter Brown series), as well as Brooks Wilson, Ltd. and Virgin Cay.

I’m sorry to say that my collection contains none of the crime, mystery, and thriller books with painted fronts that are showcased below. I can only share scans of them borrowed from other sources. Among the artists whose work is to be found here are Arthur Sarnoff (Driven), Richard M. Powers (Blood on the Desert), Tom Adams again (Hickory Dickory Death and Mrs. McGinty’s Dead), Barye Phillips (Death Is a Lovely Dame), Victor Kalin (The Red Lamp, Episode of the Wandering Knife, The Confession and Sight Unseen, The Dry and Lawless Years, and Hillside Strangler), Michael Codd (First Blood), Charles Moll (Cocaine Blues), Mitchell Hooks (The Ranch Cat), Gordon Johnson (Devil’s Gamble), and Tom Simmonds (Jaws).

Click on any of the images here to open an enlargement.

Should things work out as planned, I shall produce one final post about wraparound book fronts before wrapping up this latest series. It’s likely to show up in Killer Covers sometime in November.

Because I Needed a Pearce Fix …

The Mark of the Pasha, by Michael Pearce (‎Poisoned Pen Press; 2010). Sudan-born English novelist Pearce, who died earlier this year, penned 19 mysteries built around Gareth Cadwallader Owen, a Welsh army captain who has gone to serve as the head (or “Mamur Zapt”) of Cairo, Egypt’s secret police in the early 20th century. This congenial series began in 1988 with The Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet and concluded in 2016 with The Women of the Souk. The Mark of the Pasha was the 16th installment. Pearce’s 1992 tale, The Mamur Zapt and the Spoils of Egypt, won the Crime Writers’ Association’s Last Laugh Award for funniest crime novel of the year.

Cover illustration by John Dawson.