“Not Dead Drunk, Just Dead”

I’m pleased to see that independent publisher Raven’s Head Press has recently released a new edition of Harold Q. Masur’s first novel, Bury Me Deep. That 1947 book, which introduced Masur’s long-active lawyer-detective protagonist, Scott Jordan, was also given a favorable write-up this morning in John “J.F.” Norris’ Pretty Sinister Books blog. He explains that the novel opens with Jordan returning home to discover “Verna [Ford] in her lingerie helping herself to expensive brandy in the appropriate snifter.

She’s been waiting for someone in Jordan’s apartment but it can’t possibly be him. He was away in Miami and cut his trip to come home. No one was expecting him. Verna tries to put the moves on Jordan but he won’t have any of it. Then she downs her brandy and immediately passes out. Jordan foolishly takes her to a cab, bribes the driver to baby sit her until she comes to and asks him to let her out at her home. But the driver soon discovers Verna is not dead drunk, just dead. The lawyer is immediately suspected of doing her in and trying to dispose of the body. So he decides to find out who she is, why she was in his apartment and who poisoned her brandy. The case becomes a lot more complicated than that as it turns out Verna was involved in a legal battle involving a will that will provide millions of dollars to the proper surviving relative of a husband and wife who died in a car crash. Lots of down and dirty action that turns pretty nasty. Villainy and double crossing galore! It’s a corker, gang.

I wholeheartedly agree! And it’s a kick to see the cover illustration on Raven’s Head’s reprint, done by artist Doug Klauba, following the sexy example set by previous editions of Bury Me Deep--though I think this 1984 Quill paperback cover still has the new one beat. I’m only hoping that somebody at Raven’s Head caught the egregious typo on the back cover of this edition before it went to press. As you’ll note in the image above (click on it for an enlargement), the last line of the copy reads, “Under suspicison of murder, Scott Jordan, newest detective sensation, raced the police to a desperate killer in this rapid biting tale of pulp fiction.” Oops!

READ MORE: “Bury Me Deep—Harold Q. Masur,” by Chris Bekofske (Battered, Tattered, Yellowed & Creased).

Two-fer Tuesdays: Floor-to-Floor Fears

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



Have you ever noticed how often stairways are employed to create apprehension on vintage paperback book fronts? An unsuspecting women might find herself menaced at the base of an innocent-seeming cascade of steps by a man with a pistol. Or she might have been pushed down those steps to become a heap of laundry and bloodied limbs at the bottom. Or perhaps she is surprised at the top of a staircase by somebody who intends her significant harm. It is rarely men being menaced as they passed from one story to another; women bear the overwhelming brunt of these flights to fright.

Two examples appear at the top of this post. On the left, you’ll see the cover from the 1955 Bantam edition of Death’s Long Shadow, a novel originally published in hardcover two years before as Dear, Dead Days. It’s credited to “Jay Barbette,” which was a pseudonym used by Bart Spicer (1918-1978). Spicer is best known for penning half a dozen Chandleresque novels about Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, private eye Carney Wilde (introduced in 1949’s The Dark Light). But he and his wife, Betty Coe Spicer, also turned out four books starring newspaper reporter Harry Butten--of which Dear, Dead Days was the second (after Final Copy, 1950). I don’t own a copy of the book, but a short review on Amazon’s Goodreads site says it’s “the story of photographer Mike Chaney and his partner Dorothy Baird…

Essentially it’s a murder mystery. Mike and Dorothy become tangled in someone else’s murder and they enlist the help of Harry Bullen and his newspaper contacts to get to the bottom of things. The plot is intelligently laid out and takes place in Devon/New Devon USA.

It’s an easy read with twists and turns, which don’t break the logical plot line, that keeps your attention to the final climax in the office conference room with an unexpected ending.

Credit for the artwork that fronts Death’s Long Shadow--and graphically supports its title--belongs to the highly talented Mitchell Hooks, about whom I’ve written before on this page.

To the right, above, you’ll see the cover from the 1958 Pyramid Books edition of House of Hate, by W. Craig Thomas (not to be confused with the late Welsh thriller writer, Craig Thomas). Again, this novel bore a different name in hardcover: The Gregory Hill (1957). A Kirkus Reviews write-up on the book supplies this plot summation:

Passions, loosely controlled, combat intelligence and love in the life of young Paul Gregory whose father’s death is judged to be an accident, but which he knows is murder at the hands of Aaron Layton. Aaron’s son, Roger, is willing to ally himself with Paul against his father, but Paul, heeding his dead father’s last wishes, tries to help and protect his mother, Lela, who, a very short time later, marries Aaron. Aaron’s humiliation when he learns that the Gregory Place is destined for Paul, not him, makes firm his efforts to thwart Paul’s dedication for carrying on his father’s ideas about the farm; Lela hardens when she is ostracized by the valley people; Roger furthers the discord by his desire for her and for discrediting his father. Aaron’s ruttish pursuit of Lela to get her to bear his child, [and] his try at killing Paul, have their climax in the truth about Lela's part in the murder and in Aaron’s permanent death-in-life from the horses who fear him, and chain Paul, Lela and Roger to a cripple whose loathing will always be a weapon. An unidentified locale, a narrow range of hatred, weakness and selfishness that almost spell defeat, limit this to morbid tastes.

Hmm. Not exactly an unstinting recommendation, is it? Still, the cover of that paperback is quite captivating. Coincidentally, it’s a second work by Arthur Sussman, an illustrator I first mentioned last month in another “Two-fer Tuesdays” post.

And now, because you are such a fine audience, I’m going to violate my usual twinned-covers format for these posts and offer you a third front (right) that also fits this week’s theme: the façade of Berkley’s 1958 edition of The 31st of January, by Julian Symons. The painting in this case is by Robert Maguire.

Down to Airth

I have been following the work of South African-born novelist Rennie Airth since 1999, when I picked up the UK edition of River of Darkness, his first novel starring then Scotland Yard inspector John Madden. I enjoyed that book so much, I reviewed it for January Magazine, and have been reading Airth’s sequels ever since.

Last week, publisher Viking released a new installment in Airth’s series, The Reckoning, about which I wrote earlier in Kirkus Reviews:

Although he’d planned only a trilogy of novels about Scotland Yard inspector John Madden, beginning with 1999’s River of Darkness and concluding with 2009’s underappreciated The Dead of Winter, Airth has suddenly introduced this fourth entry into the series. And a welcome addition it is. Set in 1947, it ropes Madden--who’s currently enjoying retirement with his village-doctor wife in the Surrey countryside--into a case of apparently random killings. The first victim was an unassertive banker, shot in broad daylight. The second was a Scottish physician, executed in like manner and perhaps with the same weapon. As Insp. Billy Styles, Madden’s erstwhile protégé, investigates these homicides and more in their wake, he’s disturbed by a note the banker left behind, unfinished, requesting contact information for Madden. The ex-cop insists he knew neither victim. Despite that, he joins Styles and a rare female detective on the London force, Lily Poole, to determine what ties the killer’s targets together, and whether they can prevent more fatalities to come.

I count this among my favorite Airth novels, made even more interesting by its rather creepy cover illustration, created by British artist Matthew Taylor (previously applauded for his efforts on a set of seven John Le Carré re-releases). Taylor also produced art for Penguin’s repackaged paperback editions of Madden’s previous three adventures. They were all inspired by the work of Jessie Gillespie, who illustrated the 1918 book Soldier Silhouettes on Our Front, by William Le Roy Stidger. You’ll find that book online here.





FOLLOW-UP, JANUARY 2020: In the years since I wrote this post, two more Rennie Airth novels have been released in the United States. The first, The Death of Kings, came from Viking in 2017 (and led me to interview its author for Kirkus Reviews). The other, titled The Decent Inn of Death, was published by Penguin just this month. Both mysteries boast Michael Taylor-created covers.

Do You Know the Way ...

In a world where it’s sometimes hard to find your way--not only geographically, but also philosophically and ethically--is it any wonder that maps have become such a popular cover-design feature? Dan Wagstaff of The Casual Optimist takes us on a tour through a gallery of the best examples of this breed.

Seeing the Sites

• East meets West in Pulp International’s gallery of Asia-themed paperbacks, featuring 23 examples of the breed. “Much of the fiction here is offensive on some level,” the blog remarks, “but then quite a bit of the old literature falls into that category. The art, on the other hand, is somewhat easier to look at dispassionately.” I’d seen most of these fronts before, with the notable exception of Kill Me in Atami (1962), one in a series of “travelogue and sexcapade book[s] disguised as … private eye novel[s],” penned by Earl Norman during the 1950s and ’60s. (The first book was Kill Me in Tokyo.) I can’t seem to locate any information online about the artist responsible for Kill Me in Atami’s cover, but I appreciate the work’s juxtaposition of beauty, delicacy … and “sudden death.”

• Are these five book covers really the worst ever? I agree that the Wuthering Heights front is pretty darn bad, but the lurid 1950s cover of George Orwell’s 1984 (evidently highlighting the tale’s “Anti-Sex League,” and intended to draw readers who might not otherwise have looked twice at this dystopian yarn) is neither the handsomest nor the ugliest face that novel has ever worn. In fact, I rather like it. The Guardian’s Sian Cain could almost certainly have dug up some more atrocious examples of book façades, including this one.

• Unlikely to appear on anybody’s list of ugly paperbacks are these four, with cover paintings by the great Harry Bennett.

• I am not a young-adult fiction reader, but if I were, I’d be happy to see these 20 book jackets awaiting me in bookstores. I am particularly fond of the skewed-perspective photographic front of Imaginary Girls, by Nova Ren Suma.

• And in Canada’s Globe and Mail, book-design blogger Dan Wagstaff (The Casual Optimist) writes about recent trends in cover art and picks a few of his favorite wrappers from the year so far. I’m pleased that he mentions Jamie Keenan’s design for The Metamorphosis--an edition I had to purchase for its creepy look.

Two-fer Tuesdays: Oceans of Trouble

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



Ahoy there, readers! With my hometown of Seattle, Washington, having just concluded its annual summer celebration, the nautical/pirate/Navy-themed Seafair, I’ve decided to showcase a couple of novels this week with distinctly seafaring fronts. The first is the 1950 Pocket Books edition of Perilous Passage, by Arthur Mayse. (That work had been released in hardcover the previous year by William Morrow, and at least two parts of the tale had appeared in successive issues of The Saturday Evening Post in May 1949.)

A 1949 critique posted in Kirkus Reviews calls Perilous Passage a “thriller, adventure packed,” set in the Pacific Northwest:

Two young people become enmeshed in some mysterious and questionable activities. One is a youth wanted by the police for escape from a reform school; the other a girl trying to be man of the family in her dead father’s stead, and to buck the predatory activities of her dissolute stepmother. This phase of the story alone might raise question[s] of suitability in some minds--so a word of warning. On the adventure side, and the really unusual handling of a rocky road to romance, the story will appeal to the upper teens as well as to adults.

According to biographical sketches here and here, author Arthur William (“Bill”) Mayse was born in Manitoba, Canada, in 1912, but spent his teenage years in a couple of British Columbia towns: modest Nanaimo and much larger Vancouver. He attended the University of British Columbia, where he became “a prize-winning poet,” but left school “one course short of graduation” in order to work as an “ace reporter” for Vancouver’s best-selling newspaper, The Province. He later moved over to covering labor and politics stories for The Vancouver Sun, before taking the position of fiction editor at Maclean’s magazine in Toronto, Ontario. From the 1940s to the 1960s, Mayse peddled short stories to both Canadian and American periodicals, and published not only Perilous Passage, but also, in 1952, an adventure yarn titled The Desperate Search, which was soon after made into a motion picture starring Howard Keel and Jane Greer. In later years, Mayse and his family moved back to B.C., where he penned a column for the Victoria Daily Times and wrote scripts for The Beachcombers, a long-running CBC TV series. He died in 1992.

Oh, and the façade of Perilous Passage? That was done by the prolific James R. Bingham, about whom more can be learned here.

Now let’s sail quietly over to this week’s second cover, shown above: So Young a Body, by Frank Bunce (Pocket, 1951). Again, I turn to Kirkus for a brief plot description:

Mousy Mr. Humble, on a vagabond cruise, finds that being known as a private detective is more glamorous than admitting he is an accountant, [but] takes it hard when he is asked to take charge of a murder--later another--aboard the coastwise freighter. Able assistance is rendered by a cocky, memory-trained girl, a frustrated actress, and a long-lasting haunting is cleared up when Mr. Humble latches onto the killer.

Unfortunately, finding out anything about the author of this work has proved frustrating. Not to be confused with the New Zealand rugby player of that same name, Bunce apparently composed at least one other novel during his career, 1962’s Rehearsal for Murder, as well as the short story “Too Big to Lick,” which featured in the January 1, 1938, edition of Argosy Weekly. Beyond that, though, I don’t see any biographical information available online or in the many resource books lining my shelves. The artist behind So Young a Body’s cover illustration is equally elusive. All I can say for sure is that the piece is credited to Casimer (“Cass”) Norwaish, who also did the front for the 1948 Bantam edition of Anthony Gilbert’s Murder Cheats the Bride. If anyone out there knows more background on Bunce or Norwaish, please share it with the rest of us.

READ MORE: “Maritime to Die” (Pulp International).