Happy Valentine’s Day to You, Too!

A Time to Love, by Noel O’Hara (Chariot, 1960), which seems like an ideal cover to showcase this week, when both Valentine’s Day and Mardi Gras are being celebrated. Cover painting by Basil Gogos. Enjoy Gogos’ original art for the book here.

Love and Lust, Lips and Lipsky

Cover art by Robert K. Abbett.

Ten years ago, in search of an appropriate way to celebrate Valentine’s Day here in Killer Covers, I assembled a gallery of 29 books with “kiss” in their titles. With romance abundant in the air again today, I’ve expanded my selection of fronts to 45.

One of my favorites, though, isn’t among those images: Dell’s 1961 cover—shown above—for The Kiss of Death, by Eleazar Lipsky (1911-1993), a onetime assistant district attorney for Manhattan turned novelist and playwright. That novel originally saw print in 1947, the same year it was adapted as a big-screen feature starring Victor Mature, Brian Donlevy, Coleen Gray, and Richard Widmark as a giggling, sadistic killer. In addition to Kiss of Death (also reprinted as The Hoodlum), Lipsky published such works of crime fiction as Murder One (1948) and The People Against O’Hara (1950), the latter of which was turned into a 1951 movie starring Spencer Tracy.

Before you head out to a celebratory dinner with your beloved tonight, flowers in hand, or sit down for the umpteenth showing of Casablanca, When Harry Met Sally, About Time, The Girl Next Door, or some similarly sappy flick, take a glance through Killer Cover’s lip-smacking selection of kiss covers. It may not get you in the mood for love (perhaps a few too many guns are involved?), but it will give you something to discuss over crème brûlée or popcorn.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Everyone!

Desert Love, by Henry de Montherlant (Berkley, 1959).
Cover art by Robert McGinnis.

Another Look: Happy Valentine’s Day!

Warning: Artistic inspiration drawn from book titles may vary.



Left: The Case of the Lazy Lover, by Erle Stanley Gardner (Pocket, 1952), with cover art by Clyde Ross. Right: The Case of the Lazy Lover, by Erle Stanley Gardner (Pocket Cardinal, 1958); cover illustration by Mitchell Hooks.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Everyone!

Love Me Now, by Fan Nichols (Monarch, 1963). Cover illustration by Rafael DeSoto. The back-cover can be enjoyed here.

READ MORE: “Sweetheart Sleuths for Valentine’s Day,” by Janet Rudolph (Mystery Fanfare).

Happy Valentine’s Day, Everyone!

This Spring of Love, by Charles Mergendahl (Popular Library, 1950). Illustration by Rudolph Belarski. See the back cover here.

READ MORE: “Sweetheart Sleuths for Valentine’s Day” and “Valentine’s Day Crime Fiction,” by Janet Rudolph (Mystery Fanfare).

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Season for Love, by Whitman Chambers (Monarch, 1959).
Illustration by Robert Maguire.

READ MORE: “Nothing But Lip Service,” by J. Kingston Pierce
(Killer Covers).

Two-fer Tuesdays: Grave Affections

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



With this Friday being Valentine’s Day, I thought it only right to go with a romantic theme for my latest Tuesday pairing. Or at least sort of romantic, in what seems an appropriately twisted, crime fiction kind of way. On the left you will find the 1951 White Circle paperback cover from She’ll Love You Dead, a novel I believe was first published in Britain by Collins a year prior to that. According to the French version of Wikipedia, “Charles Franklin” was a nom de plume employed by Hugh Frank Usher (1909-1976). Under that name, explains the online encyclopedia, “he published his first novel, Exit Without Permit, in 1946,” featuring his eventually best-recognized protagonist, Grant Garfield, “a young and fearless lawyer” who often “leads with [an] iron fist” and was assisted by his “charming secretary Barbara Wentworth.” Usher/Franklin later wrote series featuring either Inspector Jim Burgess or Maxine Dangerfield, the latter being “a kind of James Bond in petticoats.” She’ll Love You Dead is listed among the Garfield titles. Sadly, I don’t see the illustrator’s identity provided anywhere on the Web.

Meanwhile, above and on the right, is the front of Love Me to Death, by Frank Diamond. It was released by Ace Books in 1955 as half of a double-edition paperback; on the other side readers found Gil Brewer’s The Squeeze. The cover of Love Me to Death is credited to Verne Tossey, about whom I’ve previously written on this page.

Nothing But Lip Service

Today is Valentine’s Day, an annual holiday that apparently started out as an occasion to honor several early Christian martyrs known as Saint Valentine, but has since become an opportunity for candy, greeting card, and jewelry makers to peddle their wares. Nobody who visits this blog on a regular basis would expect me to mark this date with extravagant romantic verses. Instead, it’s a ripe chance for me to exhibit some of my favorite book covers--those endowed with romantic-sounding names, even if the stories they contain don’t offer much in the way of happily-ever-afters.

The 45 fronts embedded in this post all contain the word “kiss” in their titles. Most are works of crime fiction. But that’s about where their similarities end. You’ll find illustrations here by artists as varied as Robert K. Abbett, George Ziel, Robert Maguire, Ron Lesser, James Avati, and Barye Phillips, the last of whom painted the “good girl art” for the 1951 Gold Medal edition of To Kiss, or Kill, by Day Keene, that’s shown above. This is by no means an exhaustive gathering of covers along this theme; I’ve left out such obvious other candidates as Wallace Stroby’s The Barbed-Wire Kiss, James Patterson’s Kiss the Girls, Ronald Tierney’s Good to the Last Kiss, and of course Ed McBain’s straightforward Kiss, the wrappers of which aren’t as striking as those below). However, I think it’s a good, representative sampling. You might be amazed to discover how many novels--and not simply those plucked from the mystery and thriller stacks--incorporate “kiss” in their names. Then again, given the obvious human attractions of that word, maybe you should not be.

Click on any of the covers below for an enlargement.

ADDITIONAL ROMANTIC ENTANGLEMENTS: “Valentine’s Day Mysteries,” by Janet Rudolph (Mystery Fanfare).