The Art that Dreams Are Made of

I’m not too proud to admit this: I envy the folks at paperback publisher Hard Case Crime for the quality of their book jackets. These aren’t your typically innocuous, mood-inducing, but generally meaningless covers. Instead, they’re get-your-motor-runnin’ jackets, revisiting a formula most familiar from the mid-20th century: give men sexy paperback fronts and suggestive come-on lines, and they’re likely to judge a book by its cover with fondness. And--ka-ching!--you have another sale.

Now, I understand that this approach doesn’t work for all men, and I’m quite sure it won’t work for scores of women. But from my perspective, it’s difficult not to look forward to covers like these two showing up in bookstores come next year:

Blackmailer, by George Axelrod (“the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Manchurian Candidate”) is due out in June 2007, with Songs of Innocence, the sequel to 2004’s Little Girl Lost, by Richard Aleas (the pseudonym of Hard Case publisher Charles Ardai), scheduled for release in July of next year. In both cases, the cover art comes from California illustrator Glen Orbik, who also did the front for Stephen King’s 2005 crime novel, The Colorado Kid.

You’ve gotta love ’em!

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Speaking of Hard Case, author Christa Faust reports that she will be “the first woman ... included [in] the Hard Case line up.” Her novel, Money Shot, is scheduled for release in February 2008. As Faust reports on her blog: “Everyone who reads this blog knows Hard Case is like my ultimate dream date. I still can’t quite wrap my brain around the idea that one of my books will be underneath one of those knockout covers. Never mind the fact that I’ll be on the same shelf as Shell Scott creator Richard S. Prather. Excuse me while I do a really embarrassing little dance.”

READ MORE: “I Can Die Now,” by Christa Faust (Deadlier Than the Male).