Thursday, March 13, 2025

“The February Plan,” by Robert L. Duncan



The February Plan, by Robert L. Duncan (Ballantine, 1978).

Duncan, who was born in Oklahoma and died there in 1999 at age 71, was a highly productive TV screenwriter, turning out scripts for popular series such as The Man From Blackhawk, Bonanza, Have Gun, Will Travel, The Virginian, and Lost in Space. In addition, he penned mystery and thriller novels, and at least one biography, some published under the pseudonyms James Hall Roberts and W.R. Duncan.

The February Plan was published originally in 1968 by William Morrow under the author’s Roberts alias. An Amazon reader review says its story “takes place in Tokyo, Japan, and is about novelist/father Phillip Corman trying to find out what exactly happened to his Army Lieutenant son (Paul), who turns up dead shortly after the Christmas/New Year’s Day holiday. What is the Army/U.S. government trying to hide and why?”

Cover illustration by Elaine Duillo.

Sunday, March 9, 2025

Another Look: “The Judas Hour”

Warning: Artistic inspiration drawn from book titles may vary.



Left: The Judas Hour, by Howard Hunt (Gold Medal, 1951); cover artist unidentified. Right: The Judas Hour, by Howard Hunt (Gold Medal, 1959), with a front painted by Charles Binger.

“Howard Hunt” is, of course, E. Howard Hunt (1918-2007). Although he later became infamous for participating in a 1972 break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C.’s Watergate Office Building (which earned him a three-year prison sentence), Hunt spent much of his career as an operative and officer in America’s Central Intelligence Agency. He also penned dozens of hard-boiled and espionage novels, many under pseudonyms such as Robert Dietrich, David St. John, and Gordon Davis.

Publisher Cutting Edge has reissued (in both print and Kindle versions) many of Hunt’s novels in recent years, including The Judas Hour.

READ MORE:From Watergate with Love—Howard Hunt, the CIA Spy Who Wrote Fake 007 Novels” (Spyscape).

Friday, February 28, 2025

McGinnis Nine-Nine: Drum Struck

Part of a celebration of Robert McGinnis’ XCIXth birthday.




With this being the final day of Killer Covers’ 99th birthday tribute to famous American artist Robert McGinnis, let us dip back into his extensive portfolio of crime and thriller novel fronts.

The author Stephen Marlowe was actually born Milton Lesser in Brooklyn, New York, in early August of 1928. He went on to pen dozens of books, some under his own moniker, but others behind a flurry of pen names, including Adam Chase, Andrew Frazer, Jason Ridgway, C.H. Thames, Darius John Granger, and once (for 1961’s Dead Man’s Tale), Ellery Queen. His most-implemented alias, though—by far—was Stephen Marlowe. And it in that guise that he published 20 tales starring itinerant private investigator Chester “Chet” Drum.

The Web site Spy Guys and Gals describes Drum thusly:
He works out of Washington, D.C. That may be where his office is, but his beat is really the world, or at least a good part of it. Very few private eyes of fiction spend more time travelling to interesting places in Europe and the Americas than does Drum. Sometimes he is fighting spies, theirs and ours, and sometimes he works with them. Sometimes his cases are standard fare, such as blackmail and bodyguarding, and other times it is helping to take down a dictator or free a political prisoner.

Drum has a law degree, acquired so he could quit his policeman’s job and join the FBI. Having done that for a few years, he quit the Bureau and hung up his shingle in the nation’s capital, using many of his contacts [to] find paying customers. While he at times has an assistant, he keeps his agency a small affair but is now seldom without work and, unlike many other hard-boiled detectives of his time, is not constantly broke and wallowing in booze. Drum definitely makes ends meet, drinks in moderation, usually, and tends to avoid fights when possible.

That “when possible,” though, is not often and Drum’s escapades show that trouble seems to naturally follow him. Told in a first-person style, the books give the reader an excellent insight into the character’s mind as Drum goes up against very interesting opponents. The plots are fairly standard-type detective stories but with an international touch that truly make them special.
The earliest Drum yarn, The Second Longest Night, arrived in 1955 and quickly birthed sequels graced with titles in a distinctive pattern: Killers Are My Meat (1957), Murder Is My Dish (1957), Terror Is My Trade (1958), Homicide Is My Game (1959) … well, you get the idea. Among that mix Lesser (who eventually adopted Stephen Marlowe as his legal name) collaborated on a book, 1959’s Double in Trouble, which yoked Chet Drum to Richard S. Prather’s phenomenally successful (but sometimes outlandish) gumshoe, Shell Scott, on a case that encompassed kidnapping, blackmail, and labor politics.

Marlowe’s final five Drum books, released originally in the 1960s, established a different consistency: their names all began with the words Drum Beat. McGinnis painted covers for all of those but the first, Drum Beat—Berlin. As you can see by scrolling through this post, they make an attractive set, in more ways than one.





Although Marlowe also produced science-fiction works (1953’s The Star Seekers and 1965’s Secret of the Black Planet, for example), it’s his crime fiction that cemented him in literary memory. In 1997, the Private Eye Writers of America bestowed upon him The Eye, its Shamus Award for Lifetime Achievement. He died six years later at age 79.

Robert McGinnis has already outlasted Marlowe by 20 years, and has given us a proliferation of painted treasures. If you’d like to see more of the paperback fronts he created during his six-decades-long career, check out previous Killer Covers tributes here and here.

Thursday, February 27, 2025

McGinnis Nine-Nine: Fright Nights

Part of a celebration of Robert McGinnis’ XCIXth birthday.



Timbalier, by Clayton Coleman (Dell, 1969). The blog SpookyBooky notes the dearth of information about Coleman, suggesting the moniker may be a pseudonym. It goes on to speculate that the circa 1965 domestic suspense novel Nightmare in July was written by the same person, this time using the byline Clara Coleman.


Robert McGinnis is no slouch, either, when it comes to producing covers for paperback works of Gothic romance and horror. The commonalities seem to be women as the victims of one fright or another, and eerie mansions or—better still—sinister castles as their backdrop.



(Left) Farramonde, by “Katherine Troy” (Dell, 1969). Troy was a nom de plume employed by Anne Maybury. (Right) Wait for What Will Come, by “Barbara Michaels,” aka Barbara Mertz (Fawcett Crest, 1978). Under another byline, “Elizabeth Peters,” Mertz penned the famous Amelia Peabody historical mysteries.




(Left) Chateau in the Shadows, by “Susan Marvin” (Dell, 1969). Marvin was actually prolific New York fictionist Julie Ellis. (Right) The Diamonds of Alcazar, by Mary Kay Simmons (Dell, 1972).




(Left) House of Shadows, by Mair Unsworth (Avon, 1971). In case you’re wondering, that’s supposed to be a “brooding Welsh mansion” behind the fleeing figure in white. (Right) The Return, by Daoma Winston (Avon, 1972). According to the book-focused Web site Fantastic Fiction, “all of [Winston’s] novels have a strong occult theme and usually feature ghosts, witches, demons or magic.” Yeah, I couldve guessed that with a mere glance at McGinnis’ cover art.




Journey into Danger, by Beatrice Taylor (Ballantine-Beagle, 1974).

Wednesday, February 26, 2025

McGinnis Nine-Nine: Derring-do and Damsels Too

Part of a celebration of Robert McGinnis’ XCIXth birthday.



The Sun Princess, by Sylvia Pell (Avon, 1981).

I observed on this page a couple of weeks back that, even though Robert McGinnis is best recognized for having painted covers for crime and thriller novels, his artistry can also be appreciated on an abundance of historical novels. Below are a few more choice examples.




(Left) The Sea Hawk, by Rafael Sabatini (Popular Library, 1961). Italian-born British author Sabatini made his living during the early 20th century penning tales of adventure and romance, several of which were later made into movies. (Right) Mistress Wilding, by Rafael Sabatini (Popular Library, 1963).




(Left) Captain Blood Returns, by Rafael Sabatini (Popular Library, 1963). My all-time favorite representation of the fictional Irish doctor-turned-swashbuckling pirate, Peter Blood, can be found on Bantam’s 1976 paperback edition of Captain Blood, the first entry in Sabatini’s Blood trilogy, with illustrations by David Grove. However, McGinnis’ interpretation certainly has much to commend it, particularly his pairing above of the buccaneer with a lovely lass wrapping herself in his riches—and not much else. The original cover art is here. (Right) Master-at-Arms, by Rafael Sabatini (Popular Library, 1963), also known as The Marquis of Carabas.




(Left) The Vows of the Peacock, by Alice Walworth Graham (Popular Library, 1963), which is a recognizable updating of the 1955 Doubleday hardcover edition. (Right) Give Me Your Golden Hand, by Evelyn Eaton (Popular Library, circa 1968).




(Left) Delilah, by “Jefferson Cooper,” aka Gardner F. Fox (Popular Library, 1962), a work of Biblical fiction. (Right) Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress, by Daniel Defoe (Popular Library, 1962), which really belonged in Killer Covers’ long-ago gallery of book fronts featuring women exposing themselves to men.

(Hat tip to Tim Hewitt.)

Tuesday, February 25, 2025

McGinnis Nine-Nine: “The Company Girls”

Part of a celebration of Robert McGinnis’ XCIXth birthday.



The Company Girls, by Mona Williams (Gold Medal, 1965).

Vermona “Mona” March Goodwyn (1905-1991) might well have abandoned her dreams of becoming a writer, after having her first completed novel rejected by an editor named Henry Meade Williams. Instead, six years later, in 1929, she married Williams, the son of journalist, author, and Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Jesse Lynch Williams. They would go on to bear three children together. She would publish a short stack of novels and at least one collection of poetry, proving her husband dead wrong about her literary potential.

I can’t say I know much about The Company Girls. In all likelihood, its Robert McGinnis-created front teases sexy and unwholesome doings that the story inside fails to deliver without reservation. (This, after all, is a Gold Medal release, not a paperback from mid-20th-century soft-core sleaze publishers such as Midwood or Beacon.) The back-cover copy does, though, reinforce the presumption of lubricious allure:
The Company Girls knew the one basic rule for survival: don’t turn your back—ever—if you don’t want to be knifed.

The Company Girls knew all about knifing.

They knew the formulas for wrecking a reputation, stealing a man’s job, spreading the breath of scandal, seizing power.

The Company Girls were supremely shrewd, supremely efficient, and supremely female.
During her career, Mona Williams drew Hollywood’s interest, but only one among her works—a novelette titled May the Best Wife Win, published originally in McCall’s magazine—was actually translated for film, becoming the 1954 feature Woman's World, starring Clifton Webb, June Allyson, Van Heflin, and Lauren Bacall. But the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) credits her also with penning episodes of the 1950s TV anthology series The Ford Television Theatre and Lux Video Theatre.

Monday, February 24, 2025

McGinnis and Me

Part of a celebration of Robert McGinnis’ XCIXth birthday.

(Above) So What Killed the Vampire? by “Carter Brown,” aka Alan Geoffrey Yates (Signet, 1966). Of the many Brown titles, Tim Hewitt identifies this as having his favorite Robert McGinnis art. “Kind of subtle compared to some of the more ‘wow’ covers,” he says, “but it speaks to me somehow. That dark gothic touch, I guess.”


(Editor’s note: South Carolina resident Tim Hewitt is a former tech writer, marketing/public relations flack, and Web site administrator. He’s currently the co-editor (with Bob Deis and Bill Cunningham) of the forthcoming The Art of Ron Lesser Volume 3. He has spent decades collecting vintage paperback books, largely for their cover artwork. Among the painters responsible for those fine fronts, the best represented on his shelves is Robert McGinnis. I asked Tim recently to explain how he started amassing his stock of McGinnises, what lengths (and expense) he has gone to in order to acquire rare works, and which McGinnis paperbacks he still hasn’t been able to find. His essay below answers those questions—and tells us much more besides.)

I can’t pinpoint exactly when I started collecting paperbacks with Robert McGinnis covers, but I do know this: the first artist whose cover illustrations I recognized as being by a single artist was Robert McGinnis!

As a 9-year-old kid searching paperback racks for the latest Dark Shadows novel or Lancer paperback collections of Marvel Comics, I could not escape the dozens of Carter Brown paperbacks that filled spinner racks everywhere. I didn’t know anything about art styles or techniques, and I certainly didn’t know his name. I’m sure I couldn’t have looked at a lot of random covers and picked out the ones by McGinnis, but I definitely recognized that most of the Carter Brown covers were painted by the same guy, and that the art was distinct from that found on other paperbacks.

Now, I’d been a collector since first discovering comic books. (They’re numbered, right? So, if you’ve got issue #4 there’s likely to be a #5, and if you’re lucky you might even find the first three!) But I began collecting paperbacks, too, after my mom rewarded me for good grades with a copy of The Curse of Collinwood, by Marilyn Ross (I was a huge Dark Shadows fan back then).

Carter Brown didn’t really interest me. I was looking for science fiction and fantasy, sword and sorcery, and high adventure. The first paperback artist I actively collected, recognizing his name, his style, and that really distinctive signature, was Frank Frazetta. He actually made me buy books just for the cover art, and I bought them all! As the years went by, I added artists such as Jeff Jones, Boris Vallejo, Michael Whelan, Ken Kelly, and Don Maitz to the collection.

I bought my first McGinnis paperback in 1971: Bantam’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes featuring his movie poster art on the cover. That same year I picked up the James Bond movie tie-in edition of Diamonds Are Forever, followed by Live and Let Die two years later, both with McGinnis poster art on their covers. But I was still a long way from actively collecting his work.

At some point in the late 1970s, while I was working in a bookstore during college, I finally learned Robert McGinnis’ name and exactly who he was, and that he’d painted more than just Carter Brown covers. A lot more!

My first collection of McGinnis covers was the John D. MacDonald/Travis McGee novels. I was branching out in my reading, and MacDonald came highly recommended by friends who liked mystery books. Most of the covers were painted by McGinnis. Of course, being a completist, I bought them all, and soon added standalone MacDonald novels with more McGinnis fronts.

From there, I casually picked up a McGinnis cover from time to time when his artwork happened to appear on a book I was actually interested in reading, or occasionally when I found one I thought was particularly striking.

It was around the year 2000 when I seriously began to collect McGinnis. Richard Lupoff’s The Great American Paperback, along with Arnie and Cathy Fenner’s Tapestry: The Paintings of Robert McGinnis, simultaneously spurred a revived interest in vintage paperbacks and a greater appreciation for McGinnis. I found myself picking up McGinnis covers more deliberately, just for the artwork. Romance novels, historicals, mainstream fiction, whatever, and actively seeking out his early covers for Dell and Gold Medal.

The following year, The Paperback Covers of Robert McGinnis, by Art Scott and Dr. Wallace Maynard, was published. That really pushed me over the edge. So. Many. Stunning. Covers! And a checklist of every book front McGinnis had painted up to that time!

From then on, if I saw a McGinnis cover, I’d buy it. (Assuming it was in very good condition. I’m a stickler about condition. I never bought into the idea of paperbacks being a disposable commodity. Every paperback I’ve ever bought new still looks new, even if I’ve read it. I view creasing or, even worse, actually cracking the spines of paperbacks as an abomination in the eyes of the paperback gods. They do, too. Trust me on this.)

When I stumbled on a beautiful copy of 1960’s Target: Mike Shayne, I found myself thinking, “I should get all the Mike Shayne books with McGinnis covers!” Remember what I said about being a completist?

Just 81 books. Eighty covers (since the second editions of The Homicidal Virgin and Marked for Murder share the same cover art). Over a couple of years, that added a significant number of volumes to my collection.

The next obvious set was to round up all those Carter Brown books that had caught my eye as a kid. An even 100 books, if my count is correct.

On to Perry Mason. A paltry 30 books. Then the 26 Edward S. Aarons Assignment books. And the 25 books by “M.E. Chaber” (aka Kendell Foster Crossen). And … well, you get the idea.

As I write this, my stock of McGinnis covers has grown to approximately 700 books, and continues to grow. Just for comparison’s sake, of the other artists whose covers I collect, my next largest set is close to 500 covers painted by Ron Lesser. (I also have smaller collections of Mitchell Hooks, Robert Maguire, Frank McCarthy, H. Tom Hall, Ted CoConis, Harry Schaare, David Grove, and Jim Sharpe, among others.)

In The Paperback Covers of Robert McGinnis, Art Scott speculates that the top three collectible McGinnis paperbacks are Beebo Brinker, by Ann Bannon (1962); Pop. 1280, by Jim Thompson (1964); and The Big Bounce, by Elmore Leonard (1969). Many years ago, while still just casually picking up McGinnis books, I found a fine copy of Pop. 1280 in a used bookstore for a whopping 75 cents. And I put it back because it looked like a romance novel, not the gritty noir crime thriller I was looking for. Doh! Years later, it cost me 35 times that amount to add a comparable copy to my collection.



A lot of vintage McGinnis covers, mostly the Carter Browns, Mike Shaynes, and the like, can be found online for around $10 or less, depending on their condition. Ann Bannon’s Beebo Brinker is probably the stand-out exception. Copies are few, and I’ve seen them sell for well over $250. (As I write this, there’s a single, very good copy of Beebo listed on eBay for $675, with 10 watchers! Not sure if any of them are buyers, though. We’ll see.)

Like most collectors, I always try to get what I’m looking for as cheaply as possible (there’s a lot to buy, you understand), and most of my McGinnis acquisitions probably average out to around $10-$12 a book.

I’ve found that covers painted by McGinnis for smaller publishers such as Berkley, Curtis, and in particular, Popular Library are some of the most difficult to find. The majority of those covers were attached to books that sold in relatively modest numbers, done by writers who almost no one remembers, and few copies of them seem to have survived.

McGinnis painted lush and striking covers for many of these books, sometimes engaging in stylistic experiments, such as his covers for Sarah Gainham’s Takeover Bid, Robert Nathan’s One More Spring, and Sarah Woods’ The Windy Side of the Law, not to mention the slightly surreal and trippy covers he painted for six of Phoebe Atwood Taylor’s Leonidas Witherall mysteries (all written under the name “Alice Tilton”). The scarcity of these books has often forced me to purchase copies in conditions I usually wouldn’t even consider. But beggars, you know, can’t be choosers, and when you find one, you never know if or when another will show up.

The two McGinnis books I’ve paid the most for are Popular Library and Berkley titles: fine copies of The Bigger the Bust, by Stephen John, and The Innocent, by Madison Jones. A seller from Australia (!) listed them on eBay, and after a bit of negotiation we agreed on $204 AU for both. Shipping included. So roughly $64 U.S. each (or, if I can rationalize that the outrageous postage was a business expense and not part of the actual price of the books, then they were only about $45 each). Still my most expensive McGinnis covers, but not quite the most I’ve ever paid for a single paperback book. That’s another story.

It all evens out, though. I’ve come by many bargains along the way, as well, on what are usually pricey McGinnis titles, such as a very good copy of J.M. Ryan’s Brooks Wilson Ltd. (with its gorgeous semi-wraparound cover full of McGinnis women) for just $2.50, and the $10 copy of Gaywick, by Vincent Virga, that I was lucky enough to stumble upon during a random online search. And I finally managed to pick up a copy of Beebo Brinker for less than $50, after years of searching and constantly being outbid on eBay. Patience pays off now and then.

The coolest acquisition I’ve made was also a bargain purchase. McGinnis’ art often showed up on the covers of European paperbacks, and usually not on the same book they were originally painted for. They sometimes got better treatment by the European art directors. A notable example is the painting McGinnis produced for the 1961 Fawcett Crest edition of Sylvia, by “E.V. Cunningham” (aka Howard Fast). The Fawcett cover shows a head-and-shoulders portrait of Sylvia. But McGinnis’ original painting was a full-body image of a kneeling Sylvia, her wrap and the straps of her dress undone and off her shoulders, bra exposed. Maybe just a bit too provocative for a 1961 Fawcett book? Or maybe just more than the art director wanted? For whatever reason, American readers never got to see the full image.

But Swedish readers did a year later, when Jaguar Books lifted McGinnis’ full, uncropped art for the cover of their edition of Bob McKnight’s A Stone Around Her Neck, retitled Hennes Våta Grav (Her Watery Grave). I’d wanted a copy of that Swedish novel for years, but never really expected to find one (certainly not in great condition and at a reasonable price). But one day, while searching for a good, high-resolution image of the cover online, I happened to click on an image link that took me to a bookstore in Finland. That image turned out to be the copy of the book they were selling! For only €2! And shipping to the States was only €5! I immediately suspected a scam. But I took a chance, rolled the dice, and thanks to a credit card with no foreign currency exchange fee, I was able to acquire this very uncommon and desirable McGinnis for a total of about $6.50! All the way from Finland!

I’ve reached the point where I think I have just about all of the highly sought-after McGinnis titles, but I still keep a sharp eye peeled for copies of the Popular Library edition of Hoffman, by Ernest Gebler (which employed the same cover art as Popular’s Tangerine, by Christine de Rivoyre—just more of it) and the Berkley edition of Nell Kimball: Her Life as an American Madam, edited by Stephen Longstreet. These remain the two I’ve spent the longest time looking for, yet they continue to elude me, at least at a price and condition I can accept. (The Australia deal isn’t one I’m inclined to repeat. But you never know.)

One of my college professors once told the class that “The more you read Shakespeare, the more you read Shakespeare.” I think that’s true of collecting Robert McGinnis. You get one book, and see that he painted the cover for another by the same author. Or the book is part of a series. One begats another. And the more you collect McGinnis, the more you collect McGinnis.

I didn’t set out to own a copy of every McGinnis cover ever printed, but depending on the final count, I seem to have acquired nearly half of them. And I keep adding to the collection all the time, occasionally in trickles, but sometimes in waves.

And the completist in me stirs a little.

* * *

Tim Hewitt's 6 Favorite McGinnis Covers





“Picking half a dozen of my favorite Robert McGinnis-painted covers,” writes Tim Hewitt, “is like asking a chameleon to choose a color and stick with it. Try me again next week, and I’ll likely name six different ones. A lot of my favorites are probably everyone’s favorites (who doesn’t love the original front of Robert Kyle’s Kill Now, Pay Later?), so for the sake of variety I went deeper into the McGinnis catalogue. Kyle’s The Golden Urge (Gold Medal, 1954) has always been a favorite, because in a single image McGinnis conveys that there’s so much story going on outside the frame. The other covers here appeal to me for assorted reasons (I’ve always loved hooded villains and gothic settings), and show variations in McGinnis’ style over the years.”

Also shown above, clockwise: Gallows Wedding, by Rhona Martin (Berkley, 1980); All Together Now, by Bob Vichy (Berkley Medallion, 1972); The Coach Draws Near, by Mary Savage (Dell, 1972); Blade of Honor, by John J. Pugh (Popular Library, 1964); and Desert Love, by Henry de Montherlant (Berkley Medallion, 1959).

Friday, February 21, 2025

McGinnis Nine-Nine: “A Change of Heart”

Part of a celebration of Robert McGinnis’ XCIXth birthday.



A Change of Heart, by Helen McCloy (Dell, 1974).

I really haven’t given Helen McCloy her due, either on this page or in The Rap Sheet. She was quite a remarkable woman, by all reports. Born in New York City in the summer of 1904 to parents William Conrad McCloy (longtime managing editor of the New York Evening Sun) and Helen Worrell McCloy (also a writer, who contributed to such magazines as Good Housekeeping), she took up the pen herself in her early teens. At 19 years of age, she migrated to Paris to study at the Sorbonne, and following her graduation, remained in the French capital as a reporter for Universal News Services, which had been founded by William Randolph Hearst in 1918. She later became an art critic.

Different sources provide conflicting information about which year it was that McCloy finally returned to the United States (some say 1927, others 1932). But there is no disagreement about her thereafter embarking of a fiction-writing career. Having greatly enjoyed Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales as a girl, she tried her own hand at concocting mystery novels—and proved adept at the task. She introduced her series protagonist, psychiatrist-detective Dr. Basil Willing, in her first published novel, 1938’s Dance of Death. Willing would go on to appear in a dozen more of McCloy’s books, including Cue for Murder (1942), The One That Got Away (1945), and Alias Basil Willing (1951). Both character and creator are best known, though, for 1950’s Through a Glass, Darkly, a work of psychological suspense that has earned her comparisons with John Dickson Carr.

In 1946, McCloy (then in her mid-40s) wed fellow author Davis Dresser, who—using the pen name Brett Halliday—had created series private eye Michael Shayne. Together they had a daughter, and formed both a publishing company and a literary agency. Unfortunately, their marriage did not endure; they split up in 1961, but remained friends.

By then, Basil Willing’s “mother” had started composing newspaper book reviews, and in 1950 was chosen as the first woman president of Mystery Writers of America. Four years later, the MWA gave her an Edgar Award for her literary criticism. (It followed that up in 1990 by presenting her with its Grand Master Award.) And on top of all that, in 1971 McCloy helped found the first regional chapter of MWA, in New England.

(Left) Author Helen McCloy.

McCloy enjoyed a protracted and quite prolific fiction-writing career, which she did not confine to yarns involving the “tall and elegant” Willing. Under the pseudonym Helen Clarkson, she published a single science-fiction novel, The Last Day (1959), which was expanded from one of her handful of SF short stories. Among McCloy’s most celebrated crime-fiction standalones are Do Not Disturb (1943), She Walks Alone (1948), and The Slayer and the Slain (1957). Her 1980 Basil Willing novel, Burn This, won the Nero Award, an honor bestowed by a New York City-based fan organization, the Wolfe Pack, to the best American mystery of the year written in the tradition of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories. McCloy’s works have been lauded for their sophistication, psychological depth, and unusual elements (from split personalities and demoniac possession to doppelgängers).

A Change of Heart, first released in 1973 by Dodd, Mead (and reissued by paperback publisher Dell a year later, complete with Robert McGinnis-painted front), is not typically mentioned among McCloy’s premier tales. But the Golden Age of Detection Wiki does call it “a potboiler,” and provides this plot précis:
In 1934, schoolboy friends Lee and Laurie make a solemn vow: they will meet at the [pretentiously upscale] Crane Club in Manhattan on Lee’s fiftieth birthday.

Thirty-eight years later, Lee is a widowed translator working for a multinational conglomerate run by another school friend, Justin Carew. On the afternoon of his fiftieth he sets off to meet his friend and finds himself drawn into a web of robbery and bloodshed. Returning home, Lee has a stroke which renders him unable to communicate, and the unscrambling of the event and Lee’s involvement with it is left to his daughter Girzel—who still inexplicably loves him despite his giving her that awful name. And there is a romance, though fortunately an unobtrusive one.

The book gets off to a slow start and is padded with unoriginal homilies on twentieth-century life. The plot devices—like the stroke—creak with age, and the resolution is dull and puts it all down to the convenient scapegoat of corporate wickedness, which it assumes is capable of anything, no matter how mean or implausible. At sixty-eight [years old], McCloy may have been running out of ideas: certainly there is nothing about this book to suggest that its author had already had a long and distinguished career in GAD fiction.
Helen McCloy, who had always been modest about her impact on the crime/mystery-fiction genre, passed away in 1994 at age 90.

Thursday, February 20, 2025

McGinnis Nine-Nine:
“The Case of the Cautious Coquette”

Part of a celebration of Robert McGinnis’ XCIXth birthday.



The Case of the Cautious Coquette, by Erle Stanley Gardner
(Pocket, 1963).


Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason was certainly the most famous fictional criminal defense attorney of the 20th century, appearing in 82 novels, so it was only to be expected that the prolific Robert McGinnis would have illustrated at least some fronts for the paperback reissues of those books. In fact, he painted more than two dozen of them, in eye-catching colors and boasting women of conspicuous comeliness.

The Case of the Cautious Coquette was Gardner’s 34th novel about his incredibly successful Los Angeles attorney. The following plot summation comes from the PaperBack Swap Blog:
Mason is seeking witnesses to the hit-and-run accident that left his client (a poor college kid) with a broken hip and his mother (a widow) all shook up. Complexity rears its head after a newspaper ad yields two drivers of two suspected vehicles and eventually two settlements for one accident. Mason is further astonished when found shot to death in a garage is a chauffeur that turns out to be the driver of one of the guys who settled. In typical Dickensian-Gardnerian fashion, the vic was named Hartwell L. Pitken.

Attractive and cunning Lucille Barton wants Mason to represent her in an alimony action, which he declines since he doesn’t do divorce cases. But Mason is with Lucille when Pitkin’s body is found in the garage of her apartment building. Mason directs her to report the body to the police and then leaves. Just like his usual conniving client, Lucille doesn’t make the call and a neighbor provides a positive ID of the hottie, but is less sure of Mason. To avoid having to answer awkward questions from the police, Perry decides to cite attorney-client privilege. This lands him with a client he doesn’t want, so he has to prove her innocence when she is arrested for [the] murder of the driver.

In a rare linking of talents and resources, Homicide Detective [Arthur] Tragg and Mason join forces. Tragg’s rival on the force, Sgt. Holcomb, throws Tragg under the bus, so Tragg gratefully takes a tip from Mason. He cheers – silently, of course – when Mason tricks Holcomb and a witness into a false identification and makes Holcomb look like a big dummy in court. Mason and Tragg are even involved in a car chase, a rarity in the Mason novels.
Curtains—of the shower variety and others—pop up occasionally in McGinnis’ work, typically concealing the anatomy of fetching females. This particular front, however, seems to have been inspired by a somewhat more revealing 1949 jacket of the same novel.

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

McGinnis Nine-Nine: “A Flag Full of Stars”

Part of a celebration of Robert McGinnis’ XCIXth birthday.



A Flag Full of Stars, by Don Robertson (Fawcett Crest, 1965).

Don Robertson (1929-1989) may be largely forgotten nowadays, but that Cleveland, Ohio-born author certainly made his mark during his time. As the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History recalls, “Robertson’s first novel, The Three Days, was blasted by President Eisenhower for the obscene language used by its soldier characters. Robertson would publish eighteen more novels, many of which were set in Ohio and revolved around historical events. Among his best known books are The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread, Praise the Human Season, The Second Murder, and Paradise Falls. His novel The Ideal, Genuine Man was published in 1988 by Philtrum Press, Stephen King’s small publishing house. King called Robertson one of his three greatest influences and one of the best unknown published novelists in the United States.”

As if driven by the insistent seductions of sentimentality, Robertson set many of his tales in what to him would’ve been the recent past. And, “like John O’Hara, Robertson often linked novels that were not substantially related by including brief allusions to characters and events in his previous works,” explains Wikipedia.

I don’t find much information online about A Flag Full of Stars, which was first published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in 1964. But I do know it was set amid the 1948 U.S. presidential election, which—contrary to a memorable banner headline in the Chicago Tribune—saw Democratic incumbent Harry Truman beat Republican New York governor Thomas E. Dewey. Kirkus Reviews had this to say about the book:
[This] is a very big novel which promises an enormous pay-off that it more than half delivers. It is generically modeled after Dos Passos’ U.S.A. and its story takes place everywhere on the special day chosen for the drama—the day when Truman beat Dewey in the upset of the century. Robertson tunes his typewriter up for nostalgia, but vamp as he will those leaden keys of realism, it rarely comes across. But in the many scenes, which are part of the fictional device on which the novel is built, the reader is here and there and everywhere, with candidates running for office, a movie, star, a major-league ball player, or a 110-year-old Civil War veteran. His death occasions one of the more imaginative moments in the book. Robertson … often writes much better than his characters talk, and the whole book revels in the irony of Truman’s triumph. … This may catch on.
I don’t see many copies of the 1965 paperback edition, bearing Robert McGinnis’ cover illustration, available through the Internet. But acquiring the hardcover version at a reasonable price is much easier.

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

McGinnis Nine-Nine: “One Wife’s Ways”

Part of a celebration of Robert McGinnis’ XCIXth birthday.



One Wife’s Ways, by Gardner F. Fox (Gold Medal, 1962).

New York City-born author Gardner F. Fox (1911-1986) has shown up several times in Killer Covers, under his own name as well as assorted noms de plume. He may be best remembered nowadays for the work he did as a comic-book writer, laboring over such DC titles as Flash, Hawkman, Doctor Fate, and Sandman. He also created Barbara Gordon, which as any Batman fan knows, was the true identity of Batgirl.

Fox, though, began his lengthy career concocting stories for pulp magazines in all genres, especially science fiction and westerns. His first published novel, a historical romance titled The Borgia Blade, was released in 1953 by Belmont. He went on to pen a succession of sword-and-sorcery yarns, historical adventures, and—under the pseudonyms Rod Gray, Glen Chase, and Troy Conway—a wealth of rather risqué espionage tales. He’s credited, too, with a few suspense novels.

One Wife’s Ways fits into that last category. Here’s a plot synopsis:
Somewhere there was a woman who knew the truth about the automobile that plunged over the cliff, the truth about the odd robbery attempt that was no robbery at all, the truth about the bomb that was meant to kill Dan Kinnick.

Somewhere there was a woman …

Midge—liar and cheat, and long past caring whether somebody was really trying to murder Dan Kinnick.

Donna—lover and protector, and courting death the way some girls court mink.

Thyra—temptress and hoyden, not caring how many times the killers failed to get Kinnick, just so long as she could keep him in her bed.
After being long out of print, this slender work was reissued in 2018 by Wildside Press—with its original Robert McGinnis cover art!

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE: Read Chapter One of this novel by clicking over to Kurt Brugel’s extensive site, The Gardner Francis Fox Library.

Monday, February 17, 2025

McGinnis Nine-Nine: “The Valiant Strain”

Part of a celebration of Robert McGinnis’ XCIXth birthday.



The Valiant Strain, by Kenneth E. Shiflet (Dell, 1959).

You might not be surprised to learn, after appreciating the cavalry lineup featured in this Robert McGinnis cover, that author Kenneth E. Shiflet served much of his life in the U.S. military. Born in western New York state in 1918, he went on to become a signal corps communications officer during World War II. He was stationed variously in Africa, Sicily, and Italy, “and helped develop mobile communications units used during the invasion of Italy,” according to his obituary in The Washington Post. Subsequently, Shiflet assisted signal corps in Germany and Ecuador. During the late 1960s, he was a member of the staff of General William Westmoreland, who was then the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army.

Shiflet started writing while he was still in uniform. In the aftermath of World War II, he apparently took first-place honors in an Army-sponsored short-story competition. He made his first magazine fiction sale to Esquire, his tale (“Donna”) reaching print in 1951. After he retired from the military with the rank of colonel, in 1972, he joined the Congressional Schools (now “School”) of Virginia in Falls Church, and by the time of his death half a dozen years later, at age 60, had risen to the chairmanship of that institution’s English department.

The Valiant Strain was the first of two historical novels penned by Shiflet. I don’t a copy of this work, nor do I know much about the story it contains, having not found a single review online. So I am left to rely on the back-cover text—which is really just a longer version of the teaser on its front—for even the most modest understanding of its plot: “A story as big and rugged as the Oregon Territory in 1855 … A story of a long Dragoon company fighting for a future it might never see, and of a shavetail lieutenant who had nothing in common with his men, except the valiant strain the brought them to their final glory.”

Both that 47-year-old Post obit and Shiflet’s Find a Grave page confidently state The Valiant Strain “was made into a movie by MGM,” but I have yet to find any corroborative evidence.

Shiflet’s only other novel, The Convenient Coward, was released in hardcover by Harrisburg, Pennsylvania-based Stackpole Books back in 1961. Its jacket flap copy describes it as “a fictionalized biography based on the life of Marcus A. Reno, who commanded the battalion of the 7th Cavalry that survived the Custer Massacre [of 1876].”

Friday, February 14, 2025

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).