Motifs for Murder

Giant hands were often featured on crime-fiction covers during the height of the paperback boom. The example above comes from Ride the Gold Mare, by Ovid Demaris (Gold Medal, 1957); illustration by Barye Phillips.

I’m back on the subject of vintage paperback book covers in what is, amazingly, my 20th piece for CrimeReads, posted earlier today. It seemed time to showcase some of the recurring artistic motifs seen during the mid-20th century. As I explain in my introduction,

Commercial artists were called upon to toil at speed, and usually for rock-bottom remunerations, to meet that era’s escalating demand for paperback-cover illustrations. The most talented of the bunch produced work that’s still cherished by collectors. Yet the pace they maintained in order to make ends meet, coupled with pressures to chase aesthetic trends thought to be especially saleable, led to recognizable—and occasionally eccentric—themes cropping up in their artwork. In the same way that aerial photographs of snow-shrouded forests, central figures captured from behind, and sinister children’s playgrounds have all become clichés on the jackets of modern crime, mystery, and thriller novels, so too were images of women exposing themselves to men, corpses in bathtubs, and damsels reclined—and plainly deceased—on bedsheets overly recurrent fixtures of mid-1900s paperback fronts.

Those, however, weren’t the only motifs once pervasive in this genre. Let us venture now into the deeper, dustier recesses of crime fiction’s past, where oversized pates loomed behind every shoulder, bodies had a nasty habit of tumbling from the sky, malicious mitts demanded the spotlight, and shapely shanks got all the attention they deserved.

You will find—and, I hope, enjoy—the full piece here.

The Many Styles of “Styles”

Published by Avon Books, 1951. Art by Barye Phillips.

October marks 100 years since the original publication of Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the intricate whodunit that introduced the famous, fastidious fictional Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. It wasn’t the first novel Christie wrote—that was, instead, a comedy of manners tale set in Egypt and titled Snow Upon the Desert—but it was her first book to actually see print.

To commemorate this month’s anniversary, I put together, for CrimeReads, a diverse collection of 25 covers from Styles, published over the last century. Many of those come from English-language editions, but others originated in Sweden, France, Israel, and elsewhere. I couldn’t have reasonably remarked on all of the options available (there were simply too many), but I believe this sampling represents some of the best and worst examples of Styles fronts.

Of the novel’s plot, I explain in CrimeReads:

Styles was an early and influential contribution to what’s now called the Golden Age of detective fiction, a period that stretched arguably from the 1920s through the 1940s. The book tosses us into the company of Captain Arthur Hastings, a soldier who’s been invalided home from World War I’s Western Front and has accepted an invitation to spend part of his sick leave at Styles Court, the Essex country estate of his boyhood acquaintance John Cavendish. However, his peace there is soon upset by the slaying of Cavendish’s elderly, widowed, and wealthy stepmother, Emily Inglethorp—an incident that awakened the household near the close of a summer night. Afterward, Hastings seeks help with the investigation from Hercule Poirot, a retired but once illustrious Belgian police detective Hastings had met before the war, and who has recently been living as a refugee in a cottage near Styles.

In short order, Poirot confirms his suspicions that the deceased was done in by strychnine, “one of the most deadly poisons known to mankind,” though precisely how she was dosed with that bitter neurotoxin is unknown. As is the identity of her killer. The suspects, however, are plentiful, among them John Cavendish and his younger brother, Lawrence, whose claim on their stepmother’s fortune is in doubt; Emily’s most recent and significantly more junior husband, Alfred Inglethorp, described as “a rotten little bounder”; Evelyn Howard, the late grandame’s hired companion, who exhibits singular animus toward Alfred; Mary Cavendish, whose love for husband John has suffered severely amid his dalliances and her own drab flirtations; and Cynthia Murdoch, Emily’s protégée, who happens to work in a dispensary. It’s up to Poirot, with aid from Hastings and Scotland Yard Inspector James Japp, to weigh motives and opportunities and finally suss out who among the Styles Court habitués was responsible for Mrs. Inglethorp’s premature dispatching.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles’ popularity is now so great, and the book’s prominence in Christie’s oeuvre so significant, that it’s hard to believe that as many as half a dozen publishers rejected that yarn before it finally reached the public in October 1920.

When you get a chance, enjoy that CrimeReads piece here.

READ MORE: “Strychnine at the Savoy: Was Agatha Christie’s Mysterious Affair at Styles Inspired by an Indian Murder?” by Arup K. Chatterjee (The Conversation); “True Crime Parallels to the Mysteries of Agatha Christie (2020) by Anne Powers,” by Kate Jackson (Cross-Examining Crime).

Happy Birthday, Robert McGinnis!

Above: Revenge, by Jack Ehrlich (Dell, 1958). Below right: The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper, by John D. MacDonald (Fawcett Gold Medal, 1981), the 10th Travis McGee novel.

Not everybody lives to be 93 years old. But that’s the age renowned Ohio-born artist-illustrator Robert McGinnis will turn this coming Sunday, February 3. To celebrate this occasion, I’ve composed a small tribute to McGinnis for CrimeReads. You will find that here.

The piece is enhanced with almost 40 scans of covers McGinnis has painted over the last 60 years for crime, mystery, thriller, and suspense novels. Believe it or not, that’s a paltry selection, compared with this artist’s full output. As I explain in the article,

[McGinnis] has produced more than 1,000 unique paintings employed on American paperback book covers. His works are distinguished by their precise use of color, the artist’s preference for portraiture over depicting story scenes, and especially the lithe and luscious women who are so often the focal point of his canvases. Women whom Vanity Fair once described as “a mix of Greek goddess and man-eating Ursula Andress.”

I own several stacks of McGinnis-illustrated paperbacks, and my computer files contain scans of hundreds more. Choosing just over three dozen prime examples to help readers understand the range and distinction of McGinnis’ artistry was no elementary task, and I kept adding and subtracting until I decided I’d found the right combination.

Some of the book fronts I dropped (with regret) in my concluding round of cutting have been used to illustrate this post.

A handful of the scans I’ve employed in CrimeReads came from Art Scott, an erstwhile California chemist turned author, who co-wrote—with the painter himself—2014’s The Art of Robert E. McGinnis (Titan). As Scott told me during an interview I conducted with him at the time that gorgeous hardcover publication saw print, he’s a “compulsive collector” of McGinnis’ book covers. When I spoke with him five years ago, he estimated the number of those works in his collection at 1,088. More recently, he updated that count:

The number is now 1,101. Last entry is So Many Doors, the [Hard Case Crime release] by Oakley Hall—the [Robert] Maguire-McGinnis “collaboration.” I think I’m current with all books issued since the 1,088 number, but there’s always a chance I missed a book somewhere. There are four paperbacks—two Avon Gothics and two Dells—that are on my Desperately Needing Upgrade shortlist. Were there time and funds enough, I could chase foreign paperback editions forever, but I have to be content with occasionally getting on Google Images and similar sites to download interesting foreign covers—[which] reprint, and sometimes mangle, Bob’s original paintings.

I have done my best to not mangle any of the images used in today’s CrimeReads salute to one of the foremost American paperback illustrators. Click here to read it.

Left: Flush Times, by Warren Miller (Fawcett Crest, 1963); click here to see the original painting. Right: The Case of the Duplicate Daughter, by Erle Stanley Gardner (Pocket, 1962).

Left: Daily Bread, by Ralph Moloney (Fawcett Crest, 1961). Right: No More Dying Then, by Ruth Rendell (Bantam, 1974). I, for one, did not remember that McGinnis had created any covers for Rendell’s novels; this is apparently the only one.

Left: No Place to Hide, by Charles Runyon (Fawcett Gold Medal, 1970). Right: The Left Leg, by “Alice Tilton,” aka Phoebe Atwood Taylor (Popular Library, 1968).

Left: Take a Murder, Darling, by Richard S. Prather (Fawcett Gold Medal, 1965). Right: Never Kill a Client, by “Brett Halliday,” aka Davis Dresser (Dell, 1963).

Left: Death Comes Early, by William R. Cox (Dell, 1961).
Right: W.H.O.R.E., by “Carter Brown,” aka Alan Geoffrey Yates (Signet, 1971).

A Rich “Harvest” of Hammetts

It was 58 years ago today, on January 10, 1961, that author Dashiell Hammett passed away as a result of lung cancer at New York City’s Lenox Hill Hospital. To mark that sad occasion, CrimeReads has posted 20 different covers from Red Harvest—the first Continental Op novel, and “one of Hammett’s most political works”—which was originally released by Alfred A. Knopf on February 1, 1929.

Among the fronts on display are two of my favorites, a Spanish edition published in 1979 (shown above), and Permabooks’ 1958 version, featuring a cover illustration by Lou Marchetti (below). I also like (and even own a copy of) the 1961 Permabooks edition CrimeReads editors rank as No. 1, but I have to say, there are other Harry Bennett-painted paperbacks I prefer.



Perhaps only because it wanted to cap its selections at 20, CrimeReads neglected to feature two other versions of Red Harvest: Pan Books’ 1980 version (below, left), and a handsome 1989 paperback edition from Vintage/Black Lizard (below, right).



READ MORE: “A Look at Hammett’s Red Harvest,” by William Lampkin (Yellow Perils).

Let Us Now Praise Mapbacks

No Coffin for the Corpse, by Clayton Rawson (Dell, 1948).
Cover illustration by Gerald Gregg.

As I explain today in The Rap Sheet, I recently put together a piece for CrimeReads that showcases Dell Books’ outstanding “mapback” editions of the mid-20th century. You will find the completed CrimeReads post right here.

During my work on that article, I poured through the 600-or-so paperbacks comprising Dell’s memorable line. I slowly culled out 28 examples of the breed that I thought best represented the publisher’s intents and successes with those mapbacks. Ultimately, however, I had room to feature only 13 such covers in CrimeReads.

Above and below, you can see the other 15 examples I left behind on the cutting room floor. Most of these fine fronts were painted by Gerald Gregg, though a few represent the equally familiar artistry of Robert Stanley. Almost all of the backside crime scenes are credited to Ruth Belew (with more of her work available here).

The Smell of Money, by Matthew Head (Dell, 1948).
Cover illustration by George A. Frederiksen.

No Mask for Murder, by Andrew Garve (Dell, 1952).
Cover illustration by Robert Stanley.

Death Knell, by Baynard Kendrick (Dell, 1949).
Cover illustration by Gerald Gregg.

The Bat, by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood (Dell, 1948). Cover illustration by Gerald Gregg.

The Blackbirder, by Dorothy B. Hughes (Dell, 1947).
Cover illustration by Gerald Gregg.

A Man Called Spade, by Dashiell Hammett (Dell, 1945). Cover illustration by Otto Storch or Gerald Gregg.

Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, by Gerald Butler (Dell, 1947).
Cover illustration by Gerald Gregg.

The Case of the Constant Suicides, by John Dickson Carr (Dell, 1945). Cover illustration by George A. Frederiksen.

Through a Glass, Darkly, by Helen McCloy (Dell, 1951).
Cover illustration by Robert Stanley.

One Angel Less, by H.W. Roden (Dell, 1948).
Cover illustration by Gerald Gregg.

Dead of Night, by Stewart Sterling (Dell, 1952).
Cover illustration by Willard Downes.

The Opening Door, by Helen Reilly (Dell, 1947).
Cover illustration by Gerald Gregg.

The Feathered Serpent, by Edgar Wallace (Dell, 1944).
Cover illustration by Gerald Gregg.

The Circular Staircase, by Mary Roberts Rinehart (Dell, 1952).
Cover illustration by Robert Stanley.

“Sleep” Covers Worth Waking Up For

Today marks the 130th anniversary of author Raymond Chandler’s birth in Chicago. There have been lots of posts written in association with this occasion, including several in The Rap Sheet (see here, here, and here). One of the most interesting tributes, however, at least for those of us who appreciate classic book covers, is CrimeReads’ look back at 25 classic covers from The Big Sleep, Chandler’s 1939 first novel, which includes the premiere of Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe. Featured in CrimeReads’ gallery is the retro-style front from Vintage’s 1976 paperback release of that book, shown above. (Artwork by Richard Waldrep.)

Another of the Big Sleep fronts CrimeReads showcases is the 1978 Vintage movie tie-in edition (a better scan of which can be appreciated here). The façade art for that one was created by American Richard Amsel (1947-1985), whose illustrations are familiar from a wide variety of covers he developed for books and TV Guide, as well as from film posters. The Amsel painting that graced the placard advertising Robert Mitchum’s version of The Big Sleep was the source of the artwork found on Vintage’s softcover. Below, I have embedded the final poster—overlaid with performance credits—followed by Amsel’s preliminary design for the notice. Observe that the earlier variant shows Mitchum with a somewhat neater hairstyle, and actress Candy Clark (who played nymphomaniac daughter Carmen Sternwood) with a less-fearful expression on her face.





Curiously, while CrimeReads highlighted more than two dozen Big Sleep covers, it failed to mention the attractive specimen displayed below: a 1973 edition from The Netherlands. Credit for the cover illustration on this one goes to Jos Looman.