It’s Always Good to Have a Plan

Cover design by Will Staehle.

While contemplating the imminent release, in late July, of Killing Is My Business (Tor), Adam Christopher’s second novel in his speculative-fiction/crime-fiction series starring steely eyed, tough-talking robot private investigator Raymond Electromatic, I got to thinking about how many other imaginative yarns based in the realm of crime and corruption have included the word “business” in their titles. At least a good handful, it seems.

Click on the images below to open enlargements.


(Left to right) Murder Is My Business, by Brett Halliday (Dell, 1963); and Murder Is My Business (Hard Case Crime, 2010). Both editions feature cover art by Robert McGinnis.

No Business for a Lady, by James L. Rubel (Gold Medal, 1965); and No Business for a Lady (Gold Medal, 1950).

Bullets Are My Business, by John B. West (Signet, 1960)—the fourth book featuring Manhattan boxer-turned-private eye Aloysius Algernon “Rocky” Steele—with a cover illustration by Barye Phillips; and Strictly Business, by Eunice Brandon (Midwood, 1965), with cover art by Paul Rader.

Trouble Is My Business, by Raymond Chandler (Pocket, 1965), with a front likely painted by Harry Bennett; and Trouble Is My Business (Pocket, 1958), featuring cover art by Robert Schulz.

My Business Is Murder, by Henry Kane (Avon, 1957), with cover art by Robert Maguire; and My Business Is Murder (Avon, 1954).

The Venom Business, by Michael Crichton (Hard Case Crime, 2013), featuring a captivating illustration by Gregory Manchess; and Violence Is My Business, by Stephen Marlowe (Gold Medal, 1958), with cover artwork by Barye Phillips.

Bad for Business, by Rex Stout (Century, 1945); and “Pleasure Girls Are Big Business!” (True Cases of Women in Crime, January 1951), with a façade painting by Howell Dodd.

Dead of Summer

Today is the first full day of summer 2017—a perfect time to revisit Killer Covers’ extensive selection of vintage crime-fiction fronts linked to this season. Artists represented include Barye Phillips, Robert Bonfils, Robert McGinnis, Paul Rader, Mitchell Hooks, Charles Copeland, J. Oval, George Ziel, Harry Barton, and Charles Binger.

A Father’s Day Links Round-up

• The fine Web site Atlas Obscura showcases a variety of pulp-era crime-fiction works featured at the Wolfsonian-FIU museum in Miami Beach, Florida, as part of an exhibition titled In the Shadows: American Pulp Cover Art. The display is scheduled to remain on view at the museum through Sunday, July 9.

• Editors at Literary Hub have gathered together some of their favorite risqué book covers from literary fiction. “[W]hile racy covers are expected for works of erotica,” they explain in an introduction, “literary covers like to create a little shock and awe sometimes too—and when they do, they also tend to be sneakily suggestive, in ways that compel us to keep looking, whether with their titles or their—ahem—representative iconography.”

• Which brings us to this eye-catching collection, in Pulp International, of artist Harry Barton’s numerous paperback book fronts showing men kissing women’s necks.

• You’re likely familiar with the dramatic final scene, from Planet of the Apes (1968), in which an astronaut played by Charlton Heston, having landed on earth in the distant future, discovers the destroyed Statue of Liberty. But did you know that hasn’t been the only time writers and artists have imagined Lady Liberty’s ruin?

• Backchannel examines the power of typography, which it says “can signify dangerous ideas, normalize dictatorships, and sever broken nations. In some cases it may be a matter of life and death. And it can do this as powerfully as the words it depicts.”

• And The Guardian observes that while “the digital revolution was expected to kill traditional publishing,” things haven’t quite turned out that way. Print books, it declares, are now “more beautifully designed and lovingly cherished” than ever.