Four Play

• I’ve periodically happened across Web mentions of the Trevor Anderson, Agent 0008, series of “spy-fi smut” paperbacks, which were published during the 1960s and illustrated primarily by Robert Bonfils. But only this last weekend did I discover that the Pulp Covers Web site showcases the majority of those books in all their ribald, sometimes comical glory. In case you don’t know about Anderson, he’s the 30-something top agent for SADISTO (Security and Administration Division of the Institute for Special Tactical Operations), a man “in exceptionally good physical condition, which not only gives him the ability to use his considerable sexual abilities to work miracles in the field but keeps him constantly desiring more escapades, both dangerous and erotic.” (Any resemblance to Ted Mark’s The Man from O.R.G.Y. tales is, of course, purely coincidental.) There were apparently 20 Agent 0008 novels, all credited to Clyde Allison, a pseudonym employed by one William Henley Knoles, who’s been called “the greatest unknown writer of our time, and that’s exactly how he wanted it.” The Agent 0008 book fronts--which you can begin scrolling through here--bear titles (such as Gamefinger, From Rapture with Love, Nautipuss, and For Your Sighs Only) that make clear their intention to capitalize on the popularity of Ian Fleming’s James Bond thrillers. But they also represent some of Bonfils’ best work, and most include hand-lettered titles by Harry Bremner.

• Speaking of Pulp Covers, I had cause to visit that site again yesterday. I’d recently found this piece by Joe Kenney in his blog, Glorious Trash, about the 1957 novel Meet Morocco Jones in the Case of the Syndicate Hoods, written by Jack Baynes (aka Bertram B. Fowler). There were only four entries in Baynes’ series starring Chicago private eye Morocco Jones, described by The Thrilling Detective Web Site as a man “whose mind is as sharp as the edge of lightning--whose fists are as deadly as a forty-five--and whose morals---well, the less said the better.” However, their Crest Book editions were all illustrated by Barye Phillips. Glorious Trash offers the front from Meet Morocco Jones in the Case of the Syndicate Hoods, while Pulp Covers highlights the other three titles.

• You just have to love these Anthony Rome paperbacks!

• Artist Charles McVicar’s name came up in a Killer Covers post I wrote back in June having to do with his painting for the front of The Search for Tabatha Carr (1964). I’m reminded of him once more, thanks to the excellent TV history Web site Television Obscurities, which this week is rolling out write-ups about small-screen publicity posters from 1978. “To promote its Fall 1978 line-up,” the site explains, “ABC commissioned a series of seven posters--one for each night of the week--depicting characters from its new and returning shows.” So far, both of the posters presented--for Sunday and Monday--have featured McVicar’s signature. Check back later this week with Television Obscurities to see the whole set.

Friday Finds: “The Search for Tabatha Carr”

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



The Search for Tabatha Carr, by Richard Martin Stern (McFadden, 1964). Illustration by Charles McVicker.

Born in Fresno, California, in 1915, Richard Martin Stern “wrote more than 20 mystery and suspense novels as well as short stories for Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post magazines,” according to The New York Times. His 1958 novel, The Bright Road to Fear, won him the 1959 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel, beating out Harry Olesker’s Now Will You Try for Murder? and two other nominated works. Stern went on to pen half a dozen novels, including Interloper (1990), about New Mexico policeman Johnny Ortiz, “a half-breed Apache Indian who has the uncanny ability to solve homicides using his own instincts.” More importantly, perhaps, he composed The Tower, a 1973 thriller in which a huge fire consumes a new metal-and-glass skyscraper in New York City. Movie rights to that novel were snapped up quickly, and screenwriter Stirling Silliphant was hired to weave its plot elements together with those of a rather similar work, The Glass Inferno (1974), by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson, in order to produce the script for the 1974 blockbuster disaster film, The Towering Inferno. Sixteen years later, Stern returned to the subject of big blazes in Wildfire, about a mammoth scorcher in a New Mexico national forest. One fan of that novel says it will “scare the pants off” you.

The author had no such grand storytelling scope in mind when he sat down to produce The Search for Tabatha Carr, an espionage adventure that was originally published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1960. Kirkus Reviews offers this plot synopsis:

Tabatha Carr, if she can be located within two months, will inherit a million and a half dollars, and Willard Robbins, a young lawyer, is sent to find her … [Yet] before long he has every reason to believe she is working for Communist agents. Her brother and his wife prove to be unsuspected enemies of Tabatha’s--along with those [who] would keep him from finding her and murder in order to do so. But the trail, an attractive itinerary, leads from Paris to Vienna to the Tyrol for the final identification.

That same critique told readers to “look to sensuous touches for suspense,” and summed up the novel as “not too devious a diversion.” Rather faint praise, I think.

Stern died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on October 31, 2001, following his battle with a “prolonged illness.” He was 86 years old.