Grisly Adams: Keeping Christie in View

Part of a series honoring the late cover artist Tom Adams.


The A.B.C. Murders, by Agatha Christie (Pocket, 1971)—a Hercule Poirot novel that’s far superior to the three-part 2018 BBC One television series it inspired.

It’s often been said that Tom Adams (1926-2019) is the best-known artist to have been associated with mystery fictionist Agatha Christie. That’s because, from 1963 to 1980, he was under commission by British publisher Fontana Books (the paperback imprint of William Collins, Sons, now part of mammoth publishing house HarperCollins) to create covers for the UK and European editions of Christie’s releases, both series and standalones.

“For many of the Christie books,” explains this excellent article on the Web site BeautifulBooks.Info, “Tom designed two, or even three different covers over the course of his work on her mysteries, and his mastery of different techniques and habit of hiding clever clues in the cover designs, combined with the familiarity of his work across different continents creates interest in collecting his paperback designs.” The site goes on to paraphrase Adams as saying that he “read each Christie novel he illustrated three times, first very quickly for the story and mood, second to make notes of characters or incidents, and third to choose ideas for the illustration. Early on he rejected the idea of showing [spinster sleuth] Miss [Jane] Marple or [Belgian detective Hercule] Poirot, rationalizing that ‘the characters were so firmly fixed in the reader’s imagination that they could never be satisfactorily shown.’”

There are simply too many Adams-illustrated Fontana editions of Christie’s works to feature here. But I’ve embedded eight examples below, to give you an idea of his oft-surreal and macabre style. (Additional paperback fronts can be found here.) Click on any of these images to enjoy an enlargement.

Adams’ artwork wasn’t confined only to Christie’s British editions. As the Web site Collecting Christie explains, “Tom Adams was contracted by Pocket Books to design covers for 26 U.S. covers, all of which were published between 1971 and 1974. Pocket Books had a different vision for the covers—ones that provided more narrative, utilizing the full cover with no white space and an image that wrapped around the whole book, using the spine and rear panel. The narrative that these covers communicate has a lot of depth and should be closely scrutinized to fully appreciate.” Indeed, Adams’ Pocket illustrations are dramatically conceived, offering a universally grim, haunting tone but plenty of handsome details drawn from Christie’s tales.

Below are 16 of those fronts. Click here to see the entire set.

Anyone wishing to learn more about Adams’ long association with best-selling author Christie should check out either or both of these two books: Tom Adams’ Agatha Christie Cover Story (Dragons World Limited, 1981) or the newer Tom Adams Uncovered: The Art of Agatha Christie and Beyond (HarperCollins, 2016).

Grisly Adams: Double Amblers

Part of a series honoring the late cover artist Tom Adams.



Judgment on Deltchev, by Eric Ambler (Fontana, 1966).



A Kind of Anger, by Eric Ambler (Fontana, 1967).

Grisly Adams: “Ghost Story”

Part of a series honoring the late cover artist Tom Adams.



Ghost Story, by Peter Straub (Jonathan Cape, 1979). You can see Adams’ full cover painting for this British edition of Straub’s acclaimed horror novel here.

Grisly Adams: Interpreting Chandler

Part of a series honoring the late cover artist Tom Adams.



I frequently kick myself for not having had the foresight to purchase—long ago, when they were new—certain books that I now wish were part of my personal library, and that are considerably harder to dig up in ideal condition all these years later.

For instance, I was just old enough (though not savvy enough) in the early 1970s to have bought all 10 of the paperback editions of Raymond Chandler works for which Tom Adams painted covers. That particularly handsome line, originally released by U.S. publisher Ballantine Books in 1971 and ’72, is today much prized by paperback collectors, with copies going for considerably more money than their original 95-cent asking price. No wonder: Adams’ Chandler illustrations are striking, dramatically composed and marginally surreal, and they manage to incorporate familiar features from the individual stories—such as “the nasty meaty leaves” of General Sternwood’s tropical orchids, from The Big Sleep, and a fish tank from “Goldfish,” one of the four lengthy yarns collected in Trouble Is My Business. It seems likely that Adams actually read Chandler’s work, rather than merely taking suggestions from an art director as to what elements his imagery might incorporate.

Naturally, I have all of Chandler’s books in my collection, in various editions—but not a single example from Adams’ Ballantine series. If I could travel back in time to tell my younger self to pick up all of those paperbacks and save them, you can rest assured I would.

Although I previously posted the front from The Simple Art of Murder as part of Killer Cover’s Tom Adams tribute, I am including it again below for the sake of comprehensiveness.

Grisly Adams: “The Rich Are With You Always”

Part of a series honoring the late cover artist Tom Adams.



The Rich Are With You Always, by Malcolm Macdonald, aka Malcolm J. Ross-Macdonald (Book Club Associates, 1977; originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1976). This was the second book in Macdonald’s four-volume saga about the wealthy Stevenson family, and followed World from Rough Stones (1974). Tom Adams did a number of wraparound cover paintings during his career, and we’ll address more of those later in this series. But for now, here is his full jacket art for The Rich Are With You Always:

Grisly Adams: Fowles Play

Part of a series honoring the late cover artist Tom Adams.



The Collector, by John Fowles (Pan, 1971). Also in 1971, Adams contributed no-less-eye-catching cover art to another Fowles novel, Pan’s paperback reprint of The Magus:

Grisly Adams: “An American Dream”

Part of a series honoring the late cover artist Tom Adams.



An American Dream, by Norman Mailer (Andre Deutsch, London; 1965). This was Mailer’s fourth novel.

Grisly Adams: “A Holiday for Murder”

Part of a series honoring the late cover artist Tom Adams.



A Holiday for Murder, by Agatha Christie (Bantam, 1985). Originally published in 1939 as Hercule Poirot's Christmas, this locked-room mystery has also been released under the title Murder for Christmas. It was Christie’s 16th novel to star brainy Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot.

Grisly Adams: “Patron of the Arts”

Part of a series honoring the late cover artist Tom Adams.



Patron of the Arts, by William Rotsler (Ballantine, 1974). This same Adams cover illustration was used on another work of science fiction: Pan Books’ 1979 reprint of Capricorn Games, a short-story collection by Robert Silverberg.

Grisly Adams: “I and My True Love”

Part of a series honoring the late cover artist Tom Adams.



I and My True Love, by Helen MacInnes (Fontana, 1968).

Grisly Adams: “Colonel Sun”

Part of a series honoring the late cover artist Tom Adams.



Colonel Sun, by “Robert Markham,” aka Kingsley Amis (Jonathan Cape, 1968). This was the very first James Bond continuation novel, published four years after the death of that British superspy’s creator, Ian Fleming. The front cover, above, shows only part of Adams’ full, wraparound jacket painting; the rest can be enjoyed by clicking here.

This same art was subsequently appropriated for use on a completely different book, the 1970 Ballantine paperback edition of Brian N. Ball’s science-fiction novel Timepivot.

READ MORE: “Double 007 Design II,” by Jason Whiton (Spy Vibe).

Grisly Adams: “The Simple Art of Murder”

Part of a series honoring the late cover artist Tom Adams.



The Simple Art of Murder, by Raymond Chandler
(Ballantine, 1971).

Grisly Adams: Artistry Meets Mystery

Well, this is certainly sad news to have to deliver just before Christmas: Tom Adams, the Providence, Rhode Island-born illustrator and painter perhaps most famous for creating the covers for paperback reprints of works by Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler, died in Great Britain on December 9. He was 93 years old and had enjoyed an active, in-demand career that spanned more than half a century. As The Gumshoe Site notes, Adams’ cover work had been collected in two volumes: Agatha Christie: The Art of Her Crimes (1981) and Tom Adams Uncovered: The Art of Agatha Christie and Beyond (2015). He had also contributed his talents to Julian Symons’ Great Detectives: Seven Original Investigations (1981), a large-format book that offered new cases for some of mystery fiction’s foremost sleuths—Hercule Poirot, Jane Marple, Nero Wolfe, Ellery Queen, Jules Maigret, and Philip Marlowe.

Even if you’ve never heard of Adams, you may recognize his artistry. In tribute to this man who once thought to become an architect, but instead wound up building a career around “meticulously detailed artworks with grisly themes,” Killer Covers will roll out a series of Adams’ book fronts, at least one per day through the end of this year. We begin, below, with one of his most recognizable covers, from Death in the Clouds, by Agatha Christie (Fontana, 1976).

Adams included this book on the gallery page of his Web site. With it he added the following comment: “I am besotted by old aircraft. My father flew one in the First World War. The Imperial Airways biplane was certainly one of the most marvellous aircraft ever built. The name is a stupid mistake. It should have been Prometheus!”

Meanwhile, a poster on the photography/art site Flickr wrote, “This is the book that the Doctor had in the [May 17, 2008] Doctor Who episode, ‘The Unicorn and the Wasp,’ and the cover inspired the incorporation of the giant alien wasp in that episode featuring Agatha Christie with the Doctor and [his then companion] Donna.”

Another Look: “Friday”

Warning: Artistic inspiration drawn from book titles may vary.



Left: Friday, by Robert A. Heinlein (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982); cover art by Richard M. Powers. Right: Friday, by Robert A. Heinlein (Del Rey, 1983); cover by Michael Whelan.