McGinnis Nine-Nine: Milo’s March of Crimes

Part of a celebration of Robert McGinnis’ XCIXth birthday.



About two years ago, when I was visiting an old college friend in Minneapolis, Minnesota, we stopped by the new home of Uncle Edgar’s Mystery Bookstore (relocated after a fire in 2020). While there, I happened across a shelf filled with Paperback Library reprints of Kendell Crossen yarns from the early 1970s—all with Robert McGinnis-painted covers. Crossen, you will likely remember, produced more than 20 novels starring globetrotting insurance investigator Milo March, published initially under the pseudonym M.E. Chaber.

Needless to say, I promptly loaded my arms with the titles not already in my collection, and headed to the sales counter.

Crossen’s crime and mystery works were once very popular with readers, especially with readers of the male persuasion. And you can probably tell why, if you notice some of the cover blurbs on his March books, describing their protagonist as “smoothly impudent” and “one of the most convincing he-man detectives that ever hoisted a martini.” Those lines don’t mention March’s desirability among the female population, but the Web site Spy Guys and Gals points out that in these fast-paced and often fun stories, he “never sees a drink that doesn’t need sipping or a lovely lady that doesn’t need kissing and he is too gallant to refuse either.” McGinnis’ Paperback Library fronts only emphasized those points, being filled with long-legged and never overly attired lovelies, and March (looking very much like actor James Coburn, it should be said) inevitably with a glass and gun in hand.

Most of the Milo March books were published during the 1950s and ’60s, and for many years afterward, it was only by poking through used bookstores that they could be obtained. All that changed in 2020, when pulp house Steeger Books—with help from the author’s daughter and literary executor, Kendra Crossen Burroughs—began releasing remastered, uniform editions of the March tales boasting bonus articles, Burroughs’ forewords or afterwords, and retro-style artwork. All 21 of the originally published books are now available again, together with a previously unpublished 22nd novel, Death to the Brides, and a collection of March short stories titled The Twisted Trap.

I must admit, though, that I still have a soft place in my heart for McGinnis’ Paperback Library (PL) series, which rolled out from 1970 to 1971. While some of those March entries have already been featured on this page in the past, and need not be revisited, the remainder are making their Killer Covers debuts here. I haven’t arranged them according to the numbers PL gave each, as they do not correspond to the order in which the books first saw print, but only to the sequence in which PL brought them before the reading public.













In addition to “M.E. Chaber,” Kendall Crossen also penned crime novels under a variety of the other noms de plume, including Bennett Barlay, Christopher Monig, Richard Foster, and Clay Richards. Paperback Library made the smart decision to assign McGinnis the responsibility of creating covers for the reprints of some of those, too.





READ MORE: “Milo March #2—No Grave for March” (Paperback Warrior).

Forsaken No More!

My wife’s stepfather died in September, about two years after her mother passed away. Over the last couple of months, members of the family have been prudently cleaning out the small but overstuffed house in which those two resided for so long, trying to make sure that the rest of us take whatever we want or can use, before the remainder is dispensed through an estate sale or hauled off to Goodwill. One of my jobs has been to cull and clean all of the books on the premises, many left packaged and stored in a cold, rat-infested garage ever since my wife’s parents divorced four decades ago.

I spent most of this last Saturday opening boxes, setting aside books I thought would be of interest to individual family members, and dividing the surplus majority into piles of works that (1) were in good shape and of potential interest to a local used bookshop, or (2) were less presentable or belonged to genres (romance novels, westerns, and politically incorrect joke books, etc.) that might attract buyers’ eyes only if severely marked down for immediate sale. I was surprised at how many books had survived, given the negligent conditions under which they’d been preserved.

From the thousands of books I went through—many of which had originally belonged to my wife’s father, a crime-fiction fan—I pulled out perhaps a dozen works of interest to me. For instance, I snagged a 1944 Pocket edition of Leslie Charteris’ Enter the Saint; one of Erle Stanley Gardner’s early Perry Mason novels, The Case of the Howling Dog (1934); and a hardcover edition of Joe David Brown’s Paper Moon (originally published in 1971 under the title Addie Pray). I also happened across a 1971 Bantam paperback edition of Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel, Casino Royale—shown atop this post—featuring cover art by Frank McCarthy. (You can see the back of that book here.)

There were a few other gems, as well: 1970s Paperback Library editions of three Milo March mysteries by M.E. Chaber (aka Kendell Foster Crossen), with fronts illustrated by Robert McGinnis; Dell’s 1958 issue of The Big Country—originally titled Ambush at Blanco Canyon—by Donald Hamilton, creator of the Matt Helm series; and a couple of John D. MacDonald books that I didn’t already own, The Neon Jungle (Fawcett Gold Medal, 1953) and The End of the Night (Fawcett Gold Medal, 1960). Scans of those six are below.







Beyond all of those, I stumbled onto a pair of romantic suspense novels, both boasting cover art by the great Harry Bennett: The Moon-Spinners, by Mary Stewart (Fawcett Crest, 1968) and Snowfire, by Phyllis A. Whitney (Fawcett Crest, 1974).



There are still more boxes for me to go through at my in-laws’ home, so we’ll see what others treasures might present themselves.

Two-fer Tuesdays: Wrong Directions

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



The Way Up, by Joseph Whitehill (Dell, 1960), with cover art by Tom Miller; All the Way Down, by “M.E. Chaber,” aka Kendell Foster Crossen (Popular Library, 1953)—the second entry in his series starring spy-turned-insurance investigator Milo March, featuring a painting by an unidentified artist.

Friday Finds: “The Lady Came to Kill”

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



The Lady Came to Kill, by M.E. Chaber (Pocket, 1959).
Illustration by Len Goldberg.

Originally published in 1958 as The Gallows Garden, this was the eighth novel to feature Milo March, a CIA operative turned “globetrotting investigator for Intercontinental Insurance.” In my look at the ninth March tale, A Hearse of a Different Color, I noted that M.E. Chaber was a pen name for New Yorker Kendell Foster Crossen, himself a former insurance investigator, later a guide book contributor and editor of Detective Fiction Weekly.

The Lady Came to Kill finds March being hired to locate a missing college professor, who has apparently disappeared in a Caribbean nation while protesting the local government. “No sedative, this,” Kirkus Reviews remarked, noting the book’s thriller-ish pacing. Pocket’s back-jacket copy strongly supports the idea of this being a sharp yarn, replete with ample twists, turns, and curves (of both the plotting and female sorts):

The door opened and she walked in--like a queen. She was small and dark and stacked. I’ve known quite a few dames but this one was something extra special.

“Señor Milo March?” she asked in a soft Spanish accent.

I admitted that was who I was.

She reached into her shiny black hand-bag--and came up with a pastel blue gun. So help me. Real pastel blue. A lethal boudoir toy with the muzzle pointed straight at me.

“I have come to kill you,” she said--and I knew she meant it.

I’m sorry to say that I do not know much about the cover illustrator, Len Goldberg, other than that he created a number of paperback covers for Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu-Manchu series during the 1960s, as well as fronts for publishers of horror, romance, and soft-core sleaze. You can see some of Goldberg’s other work here.

Artist Robert McGinnis created a very different cover for Paperback Library’s edition of The Gallows Garden in 1971, emphasizing toughness and sexiness over Goldberg’s action.

Month of McGinnis: “The Man Inside”

Part of a month-long celebration of Robert McGinnis’ book covers.



The Man Inside, by M.E. Chaber (Paperback Library, 1970) -- one in a handsome series of covers McGinnis did for Chaber’s Milo March private eye novels.

Two-fer Tuesdays: A Lothario’s Lament

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



“Richard Foster” was only one of several noms de plume employed by New Yorker Kendell Foster Crossen, an ex-insurance investigator, guide book contributor, screenwriter, and, incidentally, editor of the magazine Detective Fiction Weekly. (He also published criminal tales under the byline “M.E. Chaber”). I haven’t read either of his two books featuring “two-fisted Miami private eye” Pete Draco, but I should, because they both have knockout covers. The front of Too Late for Mourning (Gold Medal, 1960)--displayed above, on the left--was painted by Robert K. Abbett, whose work I have applauded previously on this page (see here, here, and here). As I noted, I haven’t read Mourning, but the pseudonymous Vintage45 has, and here’s a bit of what he/she has to say about it’s story line:

Pete wraps up a case involving the bugging of stables at the race track. He gets back to his office and two guys tell him to take a vacation and then work him over with a blackjack. Later he goes to the Hapsbug Hotel for a few drinks.

He notices a good-looking brunette and the bartender fills him in. She’s Susan Sienna from New York. With her are Frank and Katherine Thorney. Katherine is decked out with expensive jewelry. Pete wants to make some moves on Susan, but instead Katherine makes moves on him.

Hours later Pete finally manages to get out and go home. The next morning he gets a visit from his friend Lt. Dick Weston. The D.A. wants to see him. Frank Thorney has been murdered and the jewelry stolen.

You’ll find Vintage45’s full review here. And click this link to see the cover from Bier for a Chaser, Pete Draco’s 1959 outing.

Everyone who’s been reading this blog from the beginning should be quite aware by now that I’m a fan of Frank Kane’s more than two dozen novels starring New York City private eye Johnny Liddell. Even though Kane wasn’t exactly Shakespeare, and he tended to repeat himself from book to book, he could really make a story move. And that’s just what he does in The Mourning After (shown above, left). A plot synopsis of this 1961 tale reads:

A hurry-up call from L.A. brought Johnny Liddell 3,000 miles to the sprawling Beverly Hills estate of TV star Dirk Messner. New York’s shrewdest private eye found the handsome playboy in the middle of a press conference. The reporters were asking questions. Messner didn’t feel like talking--and from the looks of the gaping hole in his chest, he wouldn’t feel like doing anything again. …

It’s hard not to love a private-eye yarn that can be summed up in such punchy fashion. And the cover of this Dell paperback is no slouch, either. It’s by the great Harry Bennett, whose sexy paintings graced a number of the Liddell titles.

A Hearse of Another Color, by M.E. Chaber

Certainly the most common element of illustrations fronting crime-fiction paperbacks during the mid-20th-century was sexy women. Usually sexy women in distress and undressed to the extent that publishers and retailers would bear. Men were hardly banished from those classic book covers; however, they usually appeared in tandem with lightly clad lovelies. After all, the principal audience for such inexpensive novels was males, and they were more likely to be attracted by skin and sin than by depictions of masculine heroics.

Today’s showcased cover, from the 1959 Pocket Books edition of M.E. Chaber’s A Hearse of Another Color (originally published in 1958), finds an artist trying to do something a little different, yet not abandoning tried and true formulas. The illustrator in question is the prolific James Meese, who during the 1950s and ’60s created the fronts for novels by Gil Brewer (77 Rue Paradis), Sax Rohmer (Return of Sumuru), Richard S. Prather (Dagger of Flesh), Ellery Queen (The Glass Village), Erle Stanley Gardner (The Case of the One-Eyed Witness), Gordon Davis (I Came to Kill), Raymond Chandler (The High Window), Ian Fleming (Live and Let Die), and so many others.

While his excellent jacket for Hearse focuses on the story’s private-eye protagonist, the fedora-wearing and cigarette-smoking Milo March, Meese also set out to please the Pocket Books sales team and male shoppers everywhere by including the image of a shapely legged, high-heeled woman slinking down what looks like a building’s emergency escape ladder in a skirt that’s entirely too tight for such escapades. The cover’s teaser line heightens one’s expectations of salacious high jinks even further: “MILO MARCH, looking for a corpse, turns up a body that’s blonde dynamite!” That exclamation point seems superfluous. How can that line be read without ending on a high note?

To my mind, Meese’s front for this edition of Chaber’s novel is far more intriguing than the better-recognized 1970 Paperback Library Inc. edition. Yes, the latter (shown above, left) features an illustration by Robert McGinnis. However, its depiction of the martini-quaffing and poetry-spouting March makes him look too much like the 1960s action film star Derek Flint (James Coburn) from Our Man Flint and In Like Flint--a similarity even more pronounced in McGinnis’ 1970 jacket for another March outing, A Lonely Walk (also displayed here).

A Hearse of Another Color was the eighth installment in the successful Milo March series, which eventually ran to more than 20 titles, from Hangman’s Harvest (1952) to Born to Be Hanged (1973). “M.E. Chaber”--a moniker that evidently derived from the Hebrew word for author, mechaber--was one of several noms de plume employed by New Yorker Kendell Foster Crossen, an ex-insurance investigator, guide book contributor, and editor of the magazine Detective Fiction Weekly, who later wrote for such TV programs as 77 Sunset Strip and Perry Mason, and in 1940 created the superhuman Buddhist crime-fighter Green Lama, a character immortalized by others in a series of comic-book adventures. As if all that weren’t enough, Crossen also penned science-fiction novels, one of those being the dystopian yarn Year of Consent (1954). According to The Thrilling Detective Web Site’s Kevin Burton Smith, Crossen “wrote over 400 radio and television dramas, some 300 short stories, 250 non-fiction articles and around forty-five novels.”

During his career, Crossen created several series sleuths, including Brian Brett and Pete Draco. But he’s best remembered now for Milo March, a spy turned “globetrotting investigator for Intercontinental Insurance.” As Smith puts it, “The general consensus about the series is that it’s fun, if not exactly Chandler.” Writing in the Golden Age of Detection Wiki, mystery history expert Mike Gross remarks specifically on A Hearse of Another Color, which takes place at least partly in New Orleans:

It’s a genuine mystery story, with fair play clues pointing toward the final solution, and other subplots along the way. The tale focuses relentlessly on detection throughout, with March constantly attempting to learn more about the crimes. The story never degenerates into a thriller or suspense tale. I found the puzzle plot of the book very easy to solve, but it is still there, unlike some private eye writers.

The tale suggests that nothing is as much fun as the lifestyle of 1950s corporate America, with its endless flow of money, expense accounts, and the opportunities to pursue such activities as travel, nice clothes, cars, fine dining and romance. Both Milo March and some of the characters live in such a world, which is designed to be a pleasant fantasy experience for the readers. There is a relatively realistic tone to Crossen’s work, at least when compared to such contemporaries as Richard S. Prather. Both men like the high life of the day, but while Prather spins fantasies about a private eye’s life, Crossen sticks to a fairly realistic account of the opportunities open to a well-to-do business exec of the time. Of course, most Americans of the era could not afford to live on this scale. Still, Crossen’s desires are relatively modest, and his delight in travel and good food would increasingly become affordable to the majority of Americans.

Milo March stories differ radically in tone from those of Raymond Chandler. Chandler’s stories are dark, and they depict a world full of evil characters. Crossen despises mobsters and crooks, but basically he likes 1950s America and the world in general. Neither he nor March seem alienated, which is the word I’d use to describe Philip Marlowe and his successors. Instead, Crossen and March preserve a sunny, good-natured attitude towards most of life. Indeed, Crossen’s tone is generally comic throughout. Even his mob villains have a slightly tongue-in-cheek quality. Parts of the story even approach the comedy of manners, something one associates more with Golden Age sleuths than 1950s private eyes. Milo March also has a different attitude towards the men he meets, than most private eyes. Usually he winds up making friends with them, and the book is full of scenes of male bonding. March is especially fond of government agents, such as police and FBI men, Madison Avenue-type executives, and artists. All of these types are described glowingly in Crossen’s work. All of these men represent success, in different forms and professions. They tend to be highly competent and glamorous.

A Hearse of [Another] Color strongly endorses integration and the Civil Rights movement. Indeed, its best parts deal with black “diviner” Willie Morell. Willie is the most colorful of the New Orleans locals March meets, and he is a character whose verbal facility and unique way of talking mark [him] out as an original. Crossen’s sympathy with black Americans reminds one of Ed Lacy.

It is symbolic of investigator Milo March’s onetime popularity, that he managed--if only briefly--to cross over from the literary to the cinematic world. In 1958, a British film adaptation of Crossen/Chaber’s 1954 novel, The Man Inside, was released with tough guy actor Jack Palance playing the smooth Mr. March, and Anita Ekberg and Donald Pleasence helping to fill out the cast. Adventure thrillers were very popular in movie theaters during that time, and would become even more watched as the James Bond films were introduced, beginning with Dr. No in 1962. Yet even with Palance in the lead role, and with Albert R. Broccoli working as a producer, March’s big-screen career didn’t take off.

Author Kendell Crossen died in November 1981, age 71. Reports are that he left behind an unpublished Milo March novel called Death to the Brides, which he had composed in 1974. Kevin Burton Smith says that Crossen’s publisher, Henry Holt & Company, “had refused to publish [it] back in the seventies because it contained an unflattering portrait of then-president [Richard] Nixon, and a spy mission to Vietnam.” Wikipedia explains that the manuscript “is preserved along with the rest of Crossen’s papers in the 20th-century collection of the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.” Whether that missing last entry in the March series will ever surface is anybody’s guess at this point, but perhaps it could serve as the beginning of a Milo revival. Isn’t it about time?