Book Covers We Love #1

Title: An Easy Thing, by Paco Ignacio Taibo II
Publisher: Friction Books (UK), 2005
Designer: Graeme Murdoch

To offset our periodic criticism of poorly designed crime-fiction book covers--especially those that use the same imagery, duplicate the arrangement of elements, or bang repeatedly on a theme--we’ve decided to begin an irregular series highlighting novel fronts we like for one or more reasons. Our opening candidate is this paperback edition of An Easy Thing, Spanish/Mexican author Taibo’s very first English-translated novel featuring one-eyed Mexico City private eye Héctor Belascoarán Shayne.

The story finds Shayne tackling a trio of cases, involving death at a corrupt factory, threats made against the teenage daughter of a former porn star, and the unlikely search for Emiliano Zapata, leading figure in the Mexican Revolution who reportedly died in an ambush back in 1919. But no less interesting than Taibo’s tale is the jacket of this Friction softcover. While crime novels are often fronted with imagery and typefaces that suggest roughness or resilience to the world’s malevolent forces, this one does an outstanding job of reminding us that crimes are acts perpetrated against people. People who bleed, are broken or killed, and often bear unfading emotional scars. Designer Murdoch, working with a photograph by Lynda Laird, balances a symbol of toughness (the woman’s arm in a plaster cast, the result of her having been hurt or fighting back) against one of tenderness (her exposed left breast). That combination is both striking and clear in its message.

The font used in this book’s title and the author’s name is a simple sans serif, allowing the woman’s beautiful torso to dominate, though it too is balanced against the label “A Héctor Belascoarán Shayne novel,” scrawled almost playfully in a red, more decorative typeface along the length of the arm cast. Also worthy of note is the concentration of light on the photo’s right side, drawing your eye to the drama of a delicate thing damaged, while leaving ample shadow in the lower left for the novel’s name.

As a bonus, the flipside of An Easy Thing shows the naked back of (presumably) the woman we see on this cover.

That this edition of Taibo’s book comes from Britain should be no surprise; American publishers would probably worry that they’d cause a stir with the nudity involved. Instead, they might opt for a more ambiguous but also less arresting jacket. Which is too bad. Thoughtful design shouldn’t be hampered by panties-twisted pietists. The last thing we need is another novel front that readers don’t remember two minutes after seeing it.

READ MORE: “An Easy Thing, by Paco Ignacio Taibo II,” by Guy A. Savage (His Futile Preoccupations).