Entertainments Elsewhere

Sorry for the notable recent silence on this page, but I have a good excuse. As I explained in The Rap Sheet, just over a month ago I took a bad fall, leaving me with a concussion exacerbated by a subdural hematoma. My recovery was slow, but steady, and left me unable for a long time to sit in front of my computer and write much. Only recently have I started to catch up a bit with editorial obligations, though I still have much more to accomplish in the short term.

I am working on an extended project for Killer Covers, which should roll out soon. Meanwhile, here are a few links worth mentioning.

• In Dark City Underground, Ben Boulden recalls all 21 of John D. MacDonald’s renowned Travis McGee novels, using book covers.

• In her Euro Crime blog, Karen Meek this month recalled the 110th anniversary of the British ocean liner Titanic’s sinking with a selection of novels in which that tragedy is featured. There are so many more examples she might have cited.

• Amid Russia’s recent saber-rattling about the use of nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe, I recalled Pulp International’s 2017 display of “mid-century book covers featuring nuclear explosions.”

• And do you remember “stepback covers”? As the blog Sweet Savage Flame explains, they were also known as “tip-ins”—slick pages inserted into paperback books after the binding process, which helped create a secondary artistic spread behind the front cover. Tip-ins were frequently used in late-29th-century genre fiction (especially romance novels), allowing “the respectable-looking outer portion of the cover [to hide] the more ‘lurid’ illustration beneath.” Part I of Sweet Save Flame’s history of stepbacks can be found here, with links to the full series at the bottom of that post.