(Above) True Detective (1986), with the artist’s hidden signature.
If you did not remember that July 24 is
National and International Private Investigator Day, have no worries. I wouldn’t have a clue about it either, had not the blog
Guns, Gams & Gumshoes—launched in 2009 by Colorado detectives Shaun Kaufman and Colleen Collins, but not updated since last summer—alerted me to this annual event way back
in 2018. With the passage of each successive year, I try to remember to celebrate. More often than not, though, I forget.
But not this time. That’s because private eyes have been much on my mind lately, particularly one such character:
Nathan Heller.
I was contacted in March by a writer who said he’d been laboring “for several years” on a “fully authorized” literary biography of award-winning Iowa crime novelist Max Allan Collins, creator of the aforesaid Mr. Heller. He went on to explain that he had read and been impressed by
my long-ago interview with Collins in
January Magazine, and wanted to know if I’d be interested in penning a foreword to his book.
Anyone who has kept up with my work in
January or
The Rap Sheet knows what a fan I am of Collins’ fiction, not just his Heller stories, but also his tales starring killer-for-hire
Quarry, his
Road to Perdition graphic novel and its prose sequels (another of which,
Road to Hell, is in the works), his more than a dozen novels continuing the not-infrequently violent escapades of Mickey Spillane’s Gotham gumshoe,
Mike Hammer, and of course, his sequel to Dashiell Hammett’s
The Maltese Falcon,
released earlier this year. So I agonized for a full few hours before deciding my answer to the offer had to be “yes.”
In the end, I delivered a 2,850-word essay that talked about Collins’ creative influences, his position in the pantheon of modern crime writers, and the three protagonists he will be principally remembered for dispatching onto the mean streets of fiction. In addition, I recounted my discovery of his first Heller yarn,
True Detective. This would have been in the mid-1980s, when I was working for a magazine in downtown Portland, Oregon. Looking for something new to read, I wandered one lunchtime into a nearby branch of
J.K. Gill, a locally owned office supply store that did a rather brisk trade in books as well. Quickly, the 1986 Tor Books paperback version of
True Detective (seen above) caught my eye, and as I recall in my foreword, “I couldn’t plunk down my hard-earned folding money fast enough to acquire a copy!”
The cover of that edition boasted three components to entice a young man of my bibliophilic inclinations: a Depression-era automobile adorned with gleaming silver grille, a wide wave of fender …
and bullet damage to both the driver’s-side headlamp and front windshield. It wasn’t until I set about writing my foreword that I gave much thought to who was behind that art. The novel’s copyright page didn’t supply that information. Neither did that same page in
True Crime, Tor’s release of Collins’ second Heller tale, which was published only months after
True Detective and looked to carry a painting by the very same artist. However, the copyright page inside Tor’s 1987 edition of
The Million-Dollar Wound, the third Heller outing, did credit its cover illustration to one Joe DeVito. Only then did I spot the name “DeVito” atop the grille of that shot-up car fronting
True Detective. It seems the artist’s signature had been hiding in plain sight all along!
Artist, sculptor, and storyteller Joe DeVito.
Not much effort was required to locate
a Web page for DeVito, which told me that he was born in New York City, grew up in New Jersey, “and graduated with honors from
Parsons School of Design. … He is the founder of DeVito ArtWorks, LLC, an artist-driven trans-media studio dedicated to creating and developing imaginative properties across publishing, film, gaming, and fine art. Among its flagship creations are
King Kong of Skull Island,
War Eagles, and
The Primordials.” It went on to mention that “Over the decades, DeVito has painted and sculpted many of pop culture’s most legendary figures—Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Tarzan, The Shadow, Doc Savage, and even
MAD magazine’s
Alfred E. Neuman. His art has graced hundreds of book and magazine covers, collectible posters, trading cards, and concept designs for film and television.” Learn more
here.
In response to an e-mail inquiry, DeVito said he has “many fond memories” of painting the covers for Max Allan Collins’ earliest three Heller books. “I began illustrating professionally 45 years ago, in 1981,” he said, “so from that perspective it was relatively early” that he undertook this assignment. What was his design process? “I believe I was given a synopsis when illustrating all three books and chose the scenes I wanted to illustrate. That said, I always ran various rough sketches by my [art director], Joe Curcio (an all-time favorite AD), before deciding on a final direction. I would then do a small color sketch to work out value/color/edges, etc. (much easier to make changes on a small sketch). Only then would I start the actual painting. I would normally draw up several thumbnail sketches to choose from, then Joe and I would discuss which one we thought worked best …”
(Left to right) DeVito’s fronts for True Crime (1986) and The Million-Dollar Wound (1987). Notice that unlike True Detective, each of these paintings contains a human. As the artist explains, “In Million-Dollar Wound I used myself in a WW II military uniform, and in True Crime I painted the reflection of a woman in the fender. The images of the figures were added later from separate photo shoots.”
Naturally, I was curious to know whether DeVito had done more with this trio of paperback titles than simply give them covers. Had he actually read the stories, and if so, what were his impressions? “I have always read both fiction and non-fiction in genres across the board,” he related. “That said, I am partial to historically accurate books and Max Allan Collins’ novels were what I would call ‘faction’ novels (fiction based in fact). I remember reading
True Detective and enjoyed it, but can’t remember all the details after all these years.”
Most of what Joe DeVito told me didn’t make it into my foreword, despite its length. But a couple of things did. You will find those in the finished book, which may appear in print as soon as the end of this year. I’ll report more on that as time passes.
In the meantime, I don’t want to end
Killer Covers’ celebration of fictional P.I.s with this single post. So over the next seven days or more, I shall roll out additional front from this subgenre. Stay tuned.
