Because I Needed a Coxe Fix ...

Venturous Lady, by George Harmon Coxe (Dell, 1953).

Coxe was a lively stylist and a prolific crime novelist, with a 40-year publishing career (1935-1975). Venturous Lady was among his early standalones, released originally in 1948 by Alfred A. Knopf. In its March 1948 review of this yarn, The New York Times wrote:

It is easy enough to guess who is going to be murdered. Dean Fenton’s reputation as a first-class heel has preceded him; and when he appears at the Fellhaven Summer Playhouse he loses no time in proving that he deserves that reputation. Six persons connected with the Playhouse are known to have reasons to desire his death, and there may be others. Lieutenant Baldwin of the State Police is completely stumped, and a second murder does not make the situation any clearer. There are too many suspects and too many possible motives. Then one of the suspects comes to the rescue and spreads a net which catches the murderer in its tangle meshes. There is lively action before the truth becomes known.

Cover illustration by Griffith Foxley.

Because I Needed a Blochman Fix …

Blow-Down, by Lawrence G. Blochman (Dell, 1953). Cover illustration by Griffith Foxley.

All Alone, with Trouble in Mind

Book titles containing the word “widow” suddenly seem to be everywhere on my radar. March brought the publication of Alma Katsu’s “gripping, authentic spy procedural,” Red Widow (Putnam), and earlier this month saw the re-release (by Cutting Edge Books) of Louis Lorraine’s 1961 sleaze classic, Commuter Widow. Soon after I downloaded the inarguably not-safe-for-work front cover of that new Commuter Widow edition, I had cause to search for it again in my computer files … and came up with a slew of attractive vintage novels also featuring “widow” in their names.

I’m sorry to say that I don’t know the name of the artist whose remarkable work fronts the 1958 Crest printing of Richard Wormser’s The Widow Wore Red, shown above. But I can identify the painters of most of the paperback covers below, from Bill George (Black Widow, 1954) and Harry Barton (both the undated Exciting Widow and the yarn from which it swiped its art, 1963’s That Kind of Widow) to Ernest “Darcy” Chiriacka (Self-Made Widow, 1958, and 1963’s The Torrid Widow), Bob Hilbert (1953’s Night at the Mocking Widow), and Robert McGinnis (the undated Suddenly a Widow, by George Harmon Coxe, and 1966’s No Tears from the Widow, by Carter Brown).

Charles Copeland gave us the cover for Rick Holmes’ New Widow (1963), while Weekend Widows (1966) boasts a front painted by Al Rossi, and Paul Rader is credited with creating the image for Wayward Widow (1962). You’re looking at Clark Hulings’ work on 1957’s The Golden Widow, James Meese’s artistry decorating 1957 Pocket release of Ursula Curtiss’ The Widow’s Web, and the talents of Mort Engel showcased on the 1965 Ace version of that same Curtiss tale. Finally, Griffith Foxley was responsible for the painting that introduces the 1954 Dell release of Dolores Hitchens’ Widows Won’t Wait (a singularly Erle Stanley Gardner-ish title); Mitchell Hooks was behind the 1955 Bantam cover of The Widow and the Web, by Robert Martin; and the great Walter Popp imagined the candelabra-wielding redhead on Evelyn Bond’s Widow in White (1973).

Click on any of the images here for an enlargement.

READ MORE: “Review: The Widow,” by Steven J. McDermott (Mostly Old Books and Rust).

Another Look: “Madball”

Warning: Artistic inspiration drawn from book titles may vary.



Left: Madball, by Fredric Brown (Dell, 1953); cover art by Griffith Foxley. Right: Madball, by Fredric Brown (Gold Medal, 1961); cover illustration by Mitchell Hooks. A new edition of this carnival crime novel will be released later this month by Black Gat/Stark House Press, fronted by Foxley’s painting.

Because I Needed a Dickson Fix …

He Wouldn’t Kill Patience, by “Carter Dickson,” aka John Dickson Carr (Dell, 1950). Illustration by Griffith Foxley.

Restless Eyeballing

The Stockade, by Kenneth Lamott (Dell, 1953), with a cover illustration by Griffith Foxley.

Anyone who’s worked with me knows my perfectionist tendencies. I generally hold myself to standards just shy of unreasonable, whether in my news reporting, my interviewing, my book criticism, or my blog designing. When laboring on behalf of print publications, my habitual desire to tinker with my work is restricted by deadlines and the fact that once a magazine or newspaper article (or a book, for that matter) goes to press, I can no longer polish sentences, sharpen my analysis of a subject, or correct errors I failed to spot originally. However, such limitations don’t necessarily exist in the world of Web publishing. Even after a piece is presented in Killer Covers or The Rap Sheet, I can return to it hours, days, weeks, months, or years later to make improvements or additions.

This flexibility has served me well in regard to themed galleries of vintage book fronts I’ve assembled for this page. Over the last couple of years, I have gone back to several early collections of paperback covers—including those having to do with suburban sleaze, summertime sex and scandals, captivating blondes, and showcased legs—and improved their look, beefed up their diversity, or both. This week I finally found the opportunity to enhance and expand a feature I put together a full eight years ago, about Peeping Tom covers.

I haven’t done much to that post in terms of its text, but I have greatly expanded its visual presentation. When the Peeping Tom gallery first went up in October 2009, it comprised a modest 33 book covers; now, with my having spent a few extra years collecting specimens of this breed, it has almost quadrupled in size, boasting 123 fine façades—a new Killer Covers record. There are likely other handsome examples out there waiting to be discovered. For the present, though, I declare this set pretty darn perfect.

Click here to see if you agree.

Take Fives

As I note in today’s column for the Kirkus Reviews Web site, this month marks the conclusion of my fifth year of blogging about mystery, crime, and thriller fiction for that publication. I offer a few additional thoughts on this anniversary in The Rap Sheet, but for Killer Covers, no manner of celebrating seems quite so appropriate as to display vintage paperbacks that employ “five” in their titles.

For instance, The Five Faces of Murder, by Jay Flynn (Avon, 1962), features cover art by Robert Maguire, while the illustration introducing the 1959 Dell edition of The Five Pennies, Grady Johnson’s biography of American jazz cornettist Red Nichols, is credited to Victor Kalin. Jack Finney’s 5 Against the House (Pocket, 1955), is fronted by a George Erickson painting; John Klempner’s Letter to Five Wives (Dell, 1951) showcases artwork by Bob Hilbert; Griffith Foxley was responsible for the cover of Five Alarm Funeral, by Stewart Sterling (Dell, 1954); it’s James Meese’s talent behind the façade of Neither Five Nor Three, by Helen MacInnes (Popular Library, 1952); and the 1945 Avon Murder Mystery Monthly release of Raymond Chandler stories, Five Sinister Characters, puts up a good front by Paul Stahr. The cover of 5 Murderers, another collection in that same Avon line, might also have been executed by Stahr, though I find no confirmation of that credit online. And sadly, the illustrations decorating the final two novels shown below—The Late Mrs. Five, by Richard Wormser (Gold Medal, 1960), and The Man Who Held Five Aces, by Jean Leslie (Pocket, 1950)—are uncredited.

Click on any of the images here to open an enlargement.

FOLLOW-UP: I’ve now found several places on the Web where Paul Stahr is credited as the cover artist for the above edition of 5 Murderers, so I guess we can assume he created it. Other examples of Stahr’s cover artwork can be found on Flickr.