McGinnis Nine-Nine: A Sizzling Start

There’s every chance that, even as you read this, renowned American artist and illustrator Robert McGinnis is blowing out candles and making wishes in celebration of his 99th birthday. That’s right: He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on February 3, 1926. So while he hasn’t yet achieved Jimmy Carter’s longevity, he is awfully damn close.

I have written about McGinnis a number of times over the last two decades. There are so far more posts in Killer Covers showcasing his artistry than the work of anyone else (examples to be found here and here). And for CrimeReads in 2019, I penned a well-illustrated appreciation of his longer-than-60-year career, which I noted back then had already “produced more than 1,000 unique paintings employed on American paperback book covers.”

While McGinnis’ abundant existing paintings continue to adorn new books, notably those published by Hard Case Crime, I understand that the death, in 2023, of his wife, Ferne—to whom he’d been married for three quarters of a century—hit him very hard, and he has ceased working. Well, he is certainly due a rest. His output his been so prodigious, and his paintings featured in so many diverse places, that even today, his fans are “discovering” new McGinnis creations they didn’t know belonged in his oeuvre. (A case in point: His cover for the 1977 hardcover novel Florinda, by Dana Broccoli.)

In honor of his 99th birthday, I intend to display, over the coming weeks, dozens of book fronts boasting Robert McGinnis’ art that have not appeared previously in this blog.

Let’s begin this morning with Miami Golden Boy, by Herbert Kastle (Avon, 1971). Born in Brooklyn, New York, on July 11, 1924, Herbert David Kastle wrote science-fiction short stories and a wide variety of genre novels during the mid-20th century, among them One Thing on My Mind (1957), The Movie Maker (1968), and The Gang (1976). However, he is best-known for Hot Prowl (1965) and The Reassembled Man (1963). “Later in his career,” explains Southern California bookseller and books historian Lynn Munroe, “he found success writing steamy ‘mainstream’ hardcover novels in the style of Harold Robbins and Sidney Sheldon for publishers like Arbor House and Delacorte.” Miami Golden Boy sounds like one of those more arousing yarns. In its write-up, Kirkus Reviews related that its plot involves people with too much money and too little sense, adding:

On the side there are diversified lubricious activities with “creaking groans” and “streaming buttocks” and spasm as an intransitive verb (he spasms—she spasms), which the arbiters of the new American Heritage Dictionary certainly would never accept. But then they never had to finalize any judgment on a book like this.

Kastle passed away on October 19, 1987.

I only stumbled across Miami Golden Boy a couple of weeks ago, but immediately decided it should begin Killer Covers’ latest tribute to Robert McGinnis. With any luck, you will make some gratifying discoveries of your own as this series goes forward.