Whodrewit? I Like It Cool, by Michael Lawrence

Welcome once again to the continuing series “Whodrewit?” in which we look at noteworthy vintage paperback covers that are sadly bereft of illustrator acknowledgments. Today’s subject is the front of I Like It Cool, a 1960 Popular Library original credited to Michael Lawrence. This is one of only two suspense novels featuring New York City investigator Johnny Amsterdam, the “[private] eye with a beard.”

Unlike the previous Amsterdam outing, Naked and Alone (1953), the cover of Cool includes an image of the hirsute sleuth himself, leaning back with a cigarette, a shoulder holster and gun, and a playfully lifted left eyebrow that squares well with the back jacket copy (see the image at right), which begins: “Call Me Amsterdam ... In fact, call me anything just so you call me for fun and games.” Like Frank Kane’s Johnny Liddell, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, Brett Halliday’s Mike Shayne, and assorted other mid-20th-century American gumshoes, Amsterdam--a Korean War veteran, partnered with the smart but unremarkable-looking Dave Gross (he “could tail a man into his own living room without being noticed”)--enjoyed the carnal courtesies of many a well-rounded miss. He had a slick patter, a quick temper and a couple of solid fists, and what appears on the cover of Cool to be a handlebar mustache with a goatee. Amsterdam was no slouch in the snooping department, and he seemed to move comfortably through all echelons of New York society, from the “coolsville” pads of Greenwich Village, to Manhattan boardrooms, to Park Avenue bedrooms. However, he may be best recalled for that gimmick of the “chin shrubbery,” which Amsterdam seems not to have been wearing in Naked and Alone, but that left observers in this second adventure unsure of whether to treat him like a beatnik, a bum, or a bruiser.

In I Like It Cool, Johnny Amsterdam sets out to help Sandra Tyson, the sexy, club-singing younger sister of a deceased army buddy, who wants him to track down Helen Tate, a Hollywood fashion model who was on her way to visit Sandra, but never turned up. “She was supposed to contact me as soon as she arrived [in New York], two days ago,” Sandra tells Amsterdam. “I’m afraid something’s happened to her. I’ve got to find her. Right away.” Naturally, the case is nowhere near as easy or straightforward as it sounds. There are homicides and deceptions and one embittered or lost soul after the next with whom Amsterdam and Gross must contend. Lawrence wasn’t Raymond Chandler, but he claimed enough of a cynical tone for a detective yarn of his era:

We walked uptown together, along Fifth Avenue where the summertime crop of rustic sightseers gaped and gawked at the elegant shop windows. You could pick them out easily. They were wide-eyed with wonder, their necks craned to see the sights, their inevitable cameras hung from their shoulders. To the discerning eye, the rubes stood out like cactus growing on Fifth Avenue.

They would be easy marks for the shake-down boys of the city. They would be plucked and skinned by a variety of grifters, easy meat for the professional con man. And Helen Tate? Was she sophisticated enough to avoid the snares, to bypass the wandering wolves? Every year great coveys of young quail slip into the big town in search of careers, only to wind up behind the moral eight ball as commercial tosses in the trade of the tart. Every year they come and go, some lucky, others in bad trouble. The pretty gals often fall faster. And Helen Tate was damn pretty.

It’s a shame there are only two Johnny Amsterdam books. I, for one, would like to see more of what this whiskered wonder had to offer.

Now, if you’ve never heard of Michael Lawrence, don’t be embarrassed. That wasn’t his real name, and novel-writing wasn’t even his principal occupation.

“Michael Lawrence” was just one of several pseudonyms employed by Brooklyn-born “master cartoonist” Lawrence Lariar (1908-1981). “In the 1930s,” reports one source, Lariar “drew the comic strip Barry O’Neill, that was also published in early National/DC titles. In the 1940s and 1950s he scripted syndicated features like Ben Friday (later Bantam Prince, with John Spranger) and The Thropp Family (with Lou Fine and Don Komarisow). He created Inspector Keene for Young American Magazine.” The Stripper’s Guide, a blog devoted to the history of American newspaper comic strips, explains that Lariar trained early at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art, and subsequently “went to Paris on a scholarship to the school of dynamic symmetry.” In 1935 he married his agent, Susan Mayer (who specialized in “magazine gag panel” artists), and together they had two children. During various stages of his career, Lariar produced work for Collier’s magazine and The New Yorker, served as the cartoon editor of Liberty, “contributed political cartoons to the New York Journal-American,” and “did advertising and direct-mail cartoons.” The New York Times added in its 1981 obituary of the man that “For more than 20 years Mr. Lariar was cartoon editor of Parade magazine ...” On top of all that, says The Stripper’s Guide, “he emceed the CBS television show, Draw Me Another, in 1947, and created the Happy Headlines show.” Oh, and he was the president of the American Society of Magazine Cartoonists (1943-1946).

In what free time he could find (and really, it’s amazing that he found any), Lariar did a bit of mentoring. African-American novelist Charles Johnson (Middle Passage), who early in his life wanted to be a cartoonist and illustrator, recalled in an essay that in 1962 he initiated a correspondence with Lariar, whom he’d read about in Writer’s Digest. Johnson’s father had discouraged his dreams (“Chuck, they don’t let black people do that”), and the boy wanted reassurance from somebody in the business that he might realize his ambitions. “I told [Lariar] what my father said,” Johnson wrote. “Within a week Lariar mailed me a spirited reply: ‘Your father is wrong. You can do whatever you want with your life. All you need is a good teacher.’ To shorten a long story, Lawrence Lariar, a liberal Jewish man ... who frequently infuriated his neighbors by inviting black artists to his Long Island home, where he instructed them, became my teacher. (My dad, after seeing Lariar’s letter, backed off and paid for my lessons.) Two years later I was publishing illustrations for the catalog of a Chicago company that sold magic tricks, and I won two awards in a national competition, sponsored by a journalism organization, for high school cartoonists.”

Lariar harbored ambitions of his own. After more than a decade and a half of cartooning, in 1942 he began editing an annual series of books titled Best Cartoons of the Year. That was the same year in which he’s supposed to have started penning hard-boiled crime and mystery novels, using the Michael Lawrence moniker, as well as “Adam Knight” and “Michael Stark.” Among the works attributed (under those various bylines) to Lariar are Death Is the Host (aka Death Paints the Picture, 1943); The Man with the Lumpy Nose (1944), which featured protagonist Homer Bull, a comic-strip writer, and won the Dodd Mead Red Badge Prize; Friday for Death (1949); Murder for Madame (1951), Stone Cold Blonde (1951), and six additional books starring short-but-scrappy P.I. Steve Conacher; The Girl with the Frightened Eyes (1956); and Sugar Shannon (1960), built around his female private eye of the same name--an “obvious imitation of G.G. Fickling’s Honey West,” as The Thrilling Detective Web Site puts it.

By the time of his death in Connecticut in 1981, at age 72, Lariar was credited as the “author of more than 100 books.”

One of the best covers on a Lariar book, I think, can be found on I Like It Cool. It’s well-balanced and quite striking, and the typography--particularly the up-and-down arrangement of the title--adds to its appeal. Unfortunately, no signature is visible on the illustration, and nowhere inside is a credit given. If anybody out there knows who is responsible for the artwork, I hope you’ll drop word into the Comments section of this post.

UPDATE: The Today’s Inspiration Group Facebook page identifies Ted CoConis as the artist responsible for the cover of I Like It Cool.

Whodrewit? Doorway to Death, by Dan Marlowe

This is the debut of what I expect to be--alas--a series of posts having to do with exceptional book covers for which I can find no illustrator credit. The jacket from this 1959 Avon paperback-original edition of Doorway to Death, the first novel by accountant-turned-writer Dan J. Marlowe, is one of the better specimens of what might be called “come-on covers.” The blonde portrayed is clearly not wearing a stitch of clothing, other than what appear to be high-heeled shows. But the shadows are strategically arranged to prevent any intimate anatomy from showing. It’s a masterpiece of suggestion, not only because of the shapely miss herself, but because of the red and orange hues--hints at passion’s fire--that surround her. This novel must have been a real breath-stopper for men browsing the paperback spinner racks of yore. I only wish I could ascribe the artwork to somebody in particular.

Better known is the book’s author. Dan James Marlowe was reportedly born in Lowell, Massachusetts, back in 1914. According to an excellent article by Arizona reporter Charles Kelly, Marlowe’s “mother died when he was young and he was raised by two aunts. After graduating from the Bentley School of Accounting and Finance, he worked as a county club assistant manager and a timekeeper. For twelve years, he was the office and credit manager for a tobacco wholesaler and during this time was also ... a professional gambler.” After his wife perished from pancreatitis in 1956, though, Marlowe--at age 43--ditched his life in Washington, D.C., relocated to New York City, and took up full-time writing.

“Marlowe had always loved stories,” explains Josef Hoffman in a terrific present-tense profile carried years ago by Mystery*File.

He gives a lot of thought to the stories he himself now wants to tell, making drafts of scenes, dialogues and characters. Then he begins to write. He even attends writing courses in the nearby YMCA. One day, literary agent James Reach comes to give a talk to the class. Dan Marlowe attracts his attention. The two become friends. Reach sends Marlowe’s first manuscript to various publishers. In the meantime, Marlowe is already writing a sequel. He has nothing else to do. Both novels, Doorway to Death and Killer with a Key are published by Avon in 1959, just two years after Marlowe had decided to devote himself to writing.

Whereas most writers produce for years in vain before having a work published, Marlowe is successful in his new life right from the start. Before the very eyes of his reading public he acquires and perfects his craft.

His first five novels, published between 1959 and 1961, featured Johnny Killain, whom Hoffman describes as “a night porter, bouncer, and part-time detective in [New York City’s Hotel Duarte]. ... Killain is a character very typical of the ‘hard-boiled detective story’: of massive physique, aggressive, cool, reckless, a survivor. He is bubbling with sarcastic wit and, of course, is a great man for the women.” In Doorway to Death, Killian must deal with what the product description at Amazon terms “a schoolmarm from a small western town” who, after taking up residence in the Duarte’s Room 1109, “left her morals at home, stripped off the drab veneer and became an armful of seething hell.” Further complicating this tale, it seems that “The ‘salesman’ in 1938 peddled death on the side--until he turned up cold ... very cold ... on a hook in the hotel icebox. Johnny had the keys to all the doors--to lust, love, greed ... and murder!”

(Personally, they had me at “an armful of seething hell.”)

However, Marlowe didn’t ensure his writing success until the publication, in 1962, of The Name of the Game Is Death, which introduced killer, bank robber, and definitive “anti-hero” Earl Drake. To quote from a post I wrote some years ago for my main blog, The Rap Sheet:

Bill Pronzini has said that Name of the Game is “about as good as original paperback writing can get.” It was that same gangster story-cum-detective yarn that brought Marlowe to the attention Al Nussbaum, an early 1960s bank robber serving a 40-year stint in federal stir. Explains Hoffmann: “[Nussbaum] was so impressed by the book that he got in touch with the author through the publishers. After his arrest he wrote to Marlowe from jail. Marlowe then visited Nussbaum, got to know him, and wrote about him. This resulted in a life-long friendship.” According to Mike Ashley’s The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Modern Crime Fiction (2002), “in a succession of letters, [Nussbaum gave Marlowe] the inside dope on safe-cracking, ballistics, alarm systems--the works. Thereafter, [Marlowe’s] books became so authentic that he had to dumb them down rather than be charged with writing a do-it-yourself bank-robbing guide.” The Endless Hour (1969), which reintroduced Drake--after having undergone cosmetic surgery, and now pitting himself against the Mafia (Ashley calls him “an honorable villain, if there is such a thing”)--clearly demonstrates the influence of this newly gained criminal knowledge. In Flashpoint (1970), which won an Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original, Drake becomes an undercover agent for the U.S. government, a job he then held through eight more books--until author Marlowe suffered a major stroke in 1969 that “damaged his memory. He no longer knew who he was, where he lived, what he had done before, etc.,” writes Hoffmann. “All of his personal memory was gone.” However, Marlowe’s “writing and language abilities ... were still intact,” and allowed him to continue penning short stories, if not longer novels--with Nussbaum’s assistance.

Marlowe had moved to Harbor Beach, Michigan (on Lake Huron, north of Detroit), at the height of his crime-fiction-writing career. But following his mysterious memory loss, he took up residence in Los Angeles, California, with the paroled Nussbaum. “He wrote a number of very short novels, many sports-oriented, meant for an audience of young people or of adults trying to learn to read,” recalls Hoffman. “And he completed one more novel, a 1982 generic action-adventure called Guerilla Games, written under the name Gar Wilson as part of the Phoenix Force series published by Gold Eagle.” By the early 1980s, Marlowe had split with Nussbaum and found a small apartment of his own in the San Fernando Valley district of Tarzana. He died of heart failure in August 1986.

There have been several efforts made since his death to bring Dan J. Marlowe’s fictional visions to the silver screen; yet they’ve all fallen through. Several of his books, including Doorway to Death, have been brought back into print by Black Mask and Stark House Press, but for the most part, Marlowe “hovers in obscurity,” as Charles Kelly wrote.

At least Marlowe’s identity is known, though--which is more than I can say about the artist who created the jacket illustration topping this post. If anyone can say for sure who deserves credit for that 1959 Avon paperback, please tell me in the Comments section below.

READ MORE: “Dan J. Marlowe on Writing,” by Gonzalo B
(Sweet Home Alabama); “A Review by Noel Nickol: Dan J. Marlowe, The Vengeance Man” (Mystery*File); “The Wrong Marlowe,” by Charles Kelly (Los Angeles Review of Books); and in February 2012, Nick Jones of the Existential Ennui blog, filed a five-post series about Dan J. Marlowe and his protagonist Earl Drake that’s well worth reading (see Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V).

A MYSTERY NO LONGER: As blogger “Snidely Whiplash” points out here, the fall 2010 launch of Rebecca Kalin’s Web tribute to her father, artist Victor Kalin (1919-1991), finally answered the question of who was responsible for Doorway to Death’s cover illustration. I’ve written about some of Kalin’s other fine artistry here.