Bennett’s Beauties: “Murder on My Street”

Part of a month-long celebration of Harry Bennett’s artistic skills.


Murder on My Street, by Edwin Lanham (Pocket, 1960).

Today will conclude Killer Covers’ month-long tribute to Connecticut artist and illustrator Harry Bennett (1919-2012). However, this is not the end of my interest in his abundant talents. In addition to the Bennett book fronts I plan to roll out in several posts over the approaching hours, I have an interview dealing with his life, family, and long career that I hope to present soon on this page; and my computer files are bursting with scans of his paperback covers that I didn’t feature over the last 31 days. So you’ll be hearing more about Bennett here in the months and years ahead.

Bennett’s Beauties: “Double Jeopardy”

Part of a month-long celebration of Harry Bennett’s artistic skills.


Double Jeopardy, by Edwin Lanham (Permabooks, 1961).

Politics Is Murder, by Edwin Lanham

In honor of today being Election Day in the United States, here’s the cover from the 1950 Bantam Books paperback edition of Politics Is Murder (a mystery originally published in 1947).

The author here is Edwin Lanham (1904-1979), who was born in Texas, but went on to work for the New York Herald Tribune and see three of his novels turned into Hollywood pictures: The Senator Was Indiscreet; If I’m Lucky, and It Shouldn’t Happen to a Dog. Sorry, but I don’t know who illustrated this cover. Any suggestions?